I wake early and head down for coffee. Breakfast starts at 6:30 but I am meeting Clint and Joe at 7:30. I grab a coffee and sit in the common room near the fire to type. Phanuel joins us for breakfast. Joe tells me that if you get a wake up call, they bring you coffee. Tomorrow I am definitely doing that! I got used to having coffee brought to me on the mountain. I have to figure out where to hire a porter in Naples to make me coffee every morning.
For some reason Clint has changed my name to Jeff this morning. So I start calling him Hillary whenever he gets my name wrong. It becomes a running joke for the remainder of the trip. His full name is Clinton if you missed the Hillary reference.
After breakfast, we drive through the highlands. It is a landscape of red clay. There are brickworks on the side of the road and all the buildings we pass are the same red color. We drive for about an hour to reach the gate to the Ngorogoro crater park. We have to register and it takes about a half an hour. There are dozens of other vehicles waiting with us. A baboon harasses some of the tourists while we wait, then runs off into the jungle. Soon enough Phanuel comes back and we drive another hour to get to the crater floor. The entire drive is through clouds and we expect visibility to be low when we arrive.
Once we descend into the crater, the weather clears. We see Zebra and wildebeest by the hundreds. There are ostrich and other large birds roaming about the crater floor. The floor is only about 100 square miles, so it is rather small. We drive around and see many animals. We see the largest bird that can fly, I believe Phanuel called it a buster? We also saw a lot of ostrich.
At one point we come across a male lion sleeping. We are told they typically sleep about 20 hours a day since the females hunt for them. This guy obligingly sat up for a few minutes so we could snap a few shots. He then rolled over and wiggled a bit on the ground (see photo below) then continued his nap
Later we can across a pair of ostrich in a mating ritual. The male was doing an elaborate dance to attract the female. He was rotating this whole body back and forth to entice her. It worked and they mated as we watched. It was over quickly and we moved on to other animals including elephants, hippos, secretary birds, baboons, Cape buffalo, lions, buzzards, gazelles and hyenas.
We had lunch beside a hippo pool. The hippos were not very active and we walked around the area after lunch. Here is a picture of Joe with a hippo in the background. There were black kites there. They are very good at snatching food from hapless humans. We saw one harassing a family until the boy threw his sandwich up in the air. The kite caught it and flew away.
After lunch we drove around some more. We went down to the lake and saw flamingos. There were a lot of cranes in the area and some of them like the Ostrich were doing the mating dance. The zebra, gazelle and wildebeest dominated the landscape. I liked the Thomson Gazelle best. They were small, had nice horns and good coloration.
In late afternoon we headed back towards Gibbs farm. We pass a small cart in one village labeled "Hillary Rodham Clinton Store". Hillary gets a hearty laugh from the reference. Ironically it is parked next to the Barak Obama cart. I feel the republicans are underrepresented in this village.
We stop by a local carver's shack. We are given a tour and see the guys carving animals from ebony. They actually hold the carving with their feet while they chisel, file and sand the sculpture. We all think it is going to be cheesy like the cultural heritage center, but we are wonderfully surprised it is authentic. These are the actual artisans. We get to meet them and barter for the goods. It is a good day and the prices are much more reasonable. It also makes us feel good knowing the proceeds are going directly to the artists. We all end up making purchases.
After the carving studio stop, we head to Gibbs farm for drinks and dinner. Once again the fresh organic meal was superb. We had a final drink outside on the patio by the fire after dinner. I went to bed feeling very content, it was a really good day. I tell myself as I drift off to sleep that I will always appreciate a warm bed and indoor plumbing.
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