The second we entered Lake Manyara, animals were greeting us.  A large contingent of baboons had taken over the visitors’ center at the entrance.  Pablo had removed the roof panels of the LandRover so we could stand up in our seats and take photos over the roof, so we snapped a few photos and then moved on.

We drove for another half an hour past foliage and headed to a picnic place. Our box lunch, one of the items I had tried to negotiate down on and thus expected to be a peanut butter sandwich – if we were lucky – turned out to be an amazing meal including a sandwich, samosas, fruit juice, muffins, cookies, an apple strudel pastry and peanuts. 

We also marveled over the toilets provided at the picnic ground.  They were tiled and clean – cleaner than many of the hotel rooms we had stayed in.

In the distance, Pablo spotted our first elephant.  Majorona’s favorite: check.  It was maybe 3/4ths of a mile away, with his back to us, but we were still amazed.

“We’ll get closer later,” Pablo promised, but we all were excited to just be this close.

When we left, it wasn’t long before we spotted an elephant just 25 feet away from us, grazing on leaves.  When we turned around, we realized there was another one behind us.

Shortly thereafter, I spotted our first giraffes – off in the distance, several miles away, their longs necks stretched out over the horizon line.  Lauren’s favorite: check.

We drove past one area where a couple of other LandRovers were camped out.

“Their guide has spotted a leopard,” Pablo told us.  “She is laying in the grass under that tree.”

The tree was about 40 feet away, but as we peered and peered, we couldn’t see anything.  We eventually gave up, hoping to have a better chance later.

That afternoon, we had many, many close encounters with elephants and giraffes.  As we drove down on road, a large, old elephant stopped in the road before us and refused to move.  We waited for a couple of minutes and then gave up.  He wasn’t going anywhere – we’d have to find another route to see the hippos.

We turned around and headed another direction.  This time, it was two female elephants and their young babies blocking the path.  We stared in awe as one of the female elephants started walking straight towards us. Pablo started backing up. 

“She is charging us because her babies are with her,” he told us.  We were oblivious that she was ‘charging,’ but we were happy to get out of the way. She was moving at a slow but very determined pace, and she looked like she could crush our car with a single step.

On the same road, a couple of giraffes had walked up to munch on a tree, just 15-20 feet away from us. They seemed as interested in staring at us as we were interested in staring at them.

Later, we passed the area with the leopard and finally spotted her. 

“You are very lucky,” Pablo told us. “Not many people get to see leopards.”

The leopard had crawled up in a tree.  With the use of binoculars, you could barely make her out – her spots make her nearly perfectly blend in with the tree.  If we were her prey, we’d never have known she was there. (Lauren: I was amused by the amount of Land Rovers all piled on top of each other, row by row, some parked off the road and into the bush to get a peek at the leapard. Older tourists with a little more cash to burn popped their heads out of the top of sparkling new models (one woman, Marjona and I gleefully observed, was wearing pearls) with some of the largest camera lenses I have ever seen. The guides all sat in their driver’s seats, patiently waiting, smiling and speaking jovially to one another in Swahili, exchanging information on where they had spotted certain animals.)

Eventually, we ran into the “forgotten passenger.”  He was neither the Australian nor the Chinese man that Richard had told us about.  He was from Belgium, and despite telling us his name, none of us could ever pronounce it or remember it.

We also saw zebras, hippos, impalas, storks, buffalo (from a far, far distance), vultures, dik diks, monkeys, and flamingos that day.  By the time it was over at 6pm, we were all exhausted and ready to call it quits.

We headed back to the campsite (which wasn’t really “roughing” it, but more like a summer camp with semi-permanent tents complete with toilets and showers).  After showers, Noel had cooked us up an amazing meal of mushroom soup, stir-fry and rice. We frantically took turns plugging in rechargeable batteries, laptops (to download pictures to make space on our digital cameras), and video cameras before the generators got turned off at 10pm. 

The next morning, we packed up all our gear and headed to our campsite at Ngorongoro crater.  We wouldn’t be seeing the crater today, but we’d be camping there do get an early start the next morning.  

On the way there, Pablo pulled off of the side of the road and to let us get a view of the crater.  It was enormous – the size of a major city, sunken down, surrounded by mountains.  Inside it were miles of lakes, trees and grassland. 

There, we acquired our first injury of the safari.  Lauren reached down to touch a large leaf and it stung her with what felt like a severe electric shock.  She jerked her hand away and discovered two holes punctured in her finger.  It wasn’t poisonous or fatal, Noel told her, but it was going to be painful. (Lauren: And it was. For hours and hours. What was worse than the pain was my hyperactive hypochondriac mind creating several scenarios that ended with me being airlifted out of the Serengeti Plains. I resolved not to touch a single thing for the duration of the safari.)

We dropped off our stuff and Noel at the campsite – less like summer camp and more like real camping this time – and got back in the Land Rover to drive another hour to the Serengeti Plains.

As we drove out to the plains, we immediately spotted more zebras, elephants and giraffes.

We also spotted wildebeests.  Hundreds and hundreds of wildebeests.  Pablo told us that the wildebeest migration was happening right now and that we were very lucky to have found them.  We told him we thought that the wildebeest migration happened in August.  We knew people paid thousands of dollars and reserved safari guides months in advance.

“Partly,” he told us. “People go to see them migrate over the river in Serengeti Park.  But you are lucky – right now, they’re migrating even farther, from the Serengeti Plains to Ngorongoro.  They are having babies right now.”

“They’re so ugly,” the Belgium commented.

We headed up a hill past the wildebeests to have our lunch.  Unlike the day before, there were no toilets.  Marjona and I hiked down past a ridge to use the toilet old-fashioned-style.  While I was squatting, I realized Lauren was taking photos of me from a distance.  In return, I got a few even closer snaps of her when it was her turn.  (These photos will not be posted on our blog.)

On the hike back up the hill, we acquired our second injury: I stepped on a dead thorn tree stem and cut my leg.  Also not fatal, Pablo informed us.  When we got back to camp, though, Lauren made me swab it with an alcohol pad and Neosporin it anyway.

While we were eating, a young Masai boy came up. He didn’t speak English, but we offered him a banana and a sandwich.  He took them and put them in a fold of his clothes.  Pablo told us that the Masai only drink a glass of milk each morning and then don’t eat again until dinner. (Lauren: A custom I think has many merits.)

The boy asked by pantomime if she would take a photo of him.  She did and then showed him the picture on the digital.  But after he quickly glanced at it, we discovered he did know two words of English.

“One dollar,” he insisted, over and over.  We were a bit horrified that tourism had taught him about “dollars” at all, considering his tribe prides itself on rejecting the conveniences of modern civilization.

As we drove around, we spotted hyenas resting in the mud, gazelles sprinting, more zebras and giraffes, and lizards and ostriches.

But one thing that wasn’t in the safari animals section of our Lonely Planet were the shit bugs.  (Sorry parents.)  While we were driving, the Belgian kept saying, “those bugs are rolling shit, those bugs are rolling shit” over and over again.

Lauren, Marjona and I looked at each other.  Surely, something was lost in translation.

Pablo stopped the Land Rover and we looked around.  Soon we spotted them.  In the road were little bugs, like large cockroaches, rolling balls of cow dung. 

Pablo told us that the bugs laid their eggs in the dung and were trying to move them to a safer place.  We were close enough to see the bugs were standing on their hind legs, using their front legs to push the balls of dung.  One poor bug couldn’t quite get his ball out of the ruts of the road.  Another bug came over to help him, but the other bug ended up just hanging on while the bug rolled him and the dung further and further down the road, never making it out of the ruts.

Amused, we continued on.

The roads in the Serengeti Plains were rougher than those at Lake Manyara (though not even close to as bad as what was to come).  (Note to all women taking a safari: necessary items include sunscreen, camera and a sports bra.)  Lauren and I discovered that it was easier to take the bumpy roads if we stood up in our seats, our heads and shoulders popping up out of the top of the Land Rover.  And it made us seem more connected to the landscape – no glass windows between us and the wilderness.

At the end of the day, we headed back to camp, worn out again.  A quick view of the shower and toilet situation made us decide that, despite our coated-in-dust clothes and skin, we would rather stay dirty than venture into the showers.  Noel made us another fabulous dinner, and the Belgian headed off to bed.

Pablo showed up a half hour later with a small bottle of Konyagi, a Tanzanian gin, for his “queens,” as he called us.  ‘It will help you stay warm tonight,’ he promised us.  Marjona tried to beg off, claiming that she had a stomach ache.  ‘It will heal a stomach ache,’ he told us.  Then he told us that it would heal any ailment.  We laughed, but each of us poured a shot into our coffee and drank them down.

That night, we slept in our tent.  Unfortunately, it had rained earlier that day and it was slightly damp inside.  Marjona’s sleeping bag, provided by the safari company, was soaking wet. She improvised by grabbing the table cloth Noel had laid for us for dinner, and layering her clothes and sarongs over that. Luckily, Lauren and my bags were dry, having been in our backpacks all day.  We all tried to settle in as comfortably as possible and went to sleep.