Thursday, Safari Ends

As we finished dinner last night, the guide for the Irish group, Edison, addressed the group and asked that we please come to breakfast at 7:30 and be ready to go at 8AM start. Afterwords we agreed to take a collection to give the cook a tip from the group.

Team Irish was much quieter last night. I think they were worn out from the partying of the previous night and the big excitement of Ngorongoro. Shortly after I got into bed a group of people starting singing and playing drums. I didn’t think it was a good idea to get out of bed as I was just starting to feel sleepy, but I was disappointed to have missed it. They played about four or five songs.

Something did wake me at 1AM though and I had a really tough time falling back to sleep for a very long time. I used my iPhone to listen to “Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me” and then “Radiolab” until sometime after 2 I did fall back to sleep. I woke up about 5 minutes before my alarm went off at 6:15.

It was still dark as I got ready to go. I was packed and ready for breakfast by 7:20. Anna showed up around 7:40...Luba about five minutes later. The first Irishman showed up about 7:50. The complete group didn’t arrive to the table until around 8:10. We presented Moses with his tip and I couldn’t take it anymore. I went to the car to finish waiting.

When we got to the entrance of the park I struck up a conversation with a woman from Amsterdam and it turns out we’re on the same flight tomorrow. We were talking about the difficulty of discussing religion in the US and how bizarre the atmosphere is in Salt Lake City.

Lake Manyara was quite different from the other parks as it is very lush and dense. There were a lot of monkeys readily viewable, but it was harder to find other animals. We did end up getting a lovely demonstration by a herd of elephants at the stream.

We stopped for lunch at a lovely park where colorful woodpeckers looked at me hopefully for me to drop something. I may have accidentally obliged.

I met a family from Bethesda. They had been to Serengeti and had seen a lion attack a zebra. It sounded as though it was quite a sight. Their daughter reminded me so much of Talia when she was younger. They also had some experiences with biting ants so they didn’t need me to warn them.

We did one more loop around the park before starting the long bumpy ride home. We lost track of the other group, but apparently it didn’t matter. We stopped at one more gift shop for a “bonus break” and then finished up. Frank met me at the office and we headed back to his place. I had enough time to load my previous blog posts before we went out for dinner.

Frank, Rose and I walked to Kwa Shabinga (where I was supposed to meet Frank to begin with) and we went to the Kill Time Pub where we got Ugali and Barbequed Pork. It was REALLY good. I wanted to keep eating past when my stomach would allow, but alas I could not. Frank’s friend Adam joined us. Adam has been helping Frank get his Tours business off the ground. We enjoyed the music as it changed from 80’s Tanzanian music to current Bongo Flavor music. The whole meal, with drinks for four people, came to 18,000 TShillings – or about  $10. We took a cab home and I bathed one last time, stared at the skyline one last time and sat down to write about my last full day in Tanzania.