For the first time on this entire adventure, I wake to my alarm which is set ten minutes before coffee should arrive. A guy could get used to a warm comfy bed and being on holiday! Coffee arrives with the wake up call as promised. I have a long hot shower and head down to breakfast. No one is there yet, but Joe turns up soon. We sit in the dining room alone enjoying the peace and quiet and a little subdued conversation. Then the waiter comes in and dims the light. Joe and I look at each other and laugh. He says: "I think this guy has the wrong idea about us". He jovially insists the waiter return the lights to their normal luminescence. Joe is from Chicago and is is about as far from gay as you can get, but he takes the whole situation with a smile and a good laugh. Later after telling him this tale, Clint will insist he was always late for breakfast to give us "some private time".
Phanuel is ready promptly at 8:00. He says we are going to be in the car for 7-8 hours today. It will take 4 or more hours to reach the Serengeti and then we will have a short game drive before heading to the Nyumba camp. We drive through the Ngorogoro gate, but stick to the crater rim. As we descend the far side, we drive for another hour and reach Oldupai Gorge museum and gift shop.
You know it as Olduvai Gorge the site where Louis and Mary Leaky found a two and a half million year old hominid fossil and named it Lucy after the Beatles song. It is also known for the ancient bipedal hominid footprints preserved in volcanic ash dated back about 3.5 million years. Apparently the name was mispronounced by a German in the 1800's and it stuck in western reference. The Africans though, correct the error in their presentation on the region. When we were walking in the museum, Hillary managed to find a picture of herself and Chelsea when they last visited the site with President Clinton. I should have snapped a picture, but instead just laughed about the coincidence.
We drive a couple of more hours until we reach the Serengeti Park gate. We then drive about a half hour more to our predetermined lunch location and the registration location. There are maybe 30 other land rovers there too. There are picnic tables and a couple of shops for food, drinks and souvenirs. There is also a hiking trail to the top of this big rock. From the top you can see just how remote we are. The Serengeti stretches on for miles in every direction. The sparse landscape is dotted with the occasional tree and rock outcropping. You really get the feeling you are in deep the wilds of Africa. We hike back down and drive deeper into the Serengeti.
Before long we come across a pride of lions. They are resting in the shade of a tree. then we get the real safari experience. Whenever you stop, 5 to 15 other vehicles see and rush over to see what you are looking at. Then the drivers start to jostle for position to get the best camera angles for their patrons. It is really quite comical and often is a huge cluster where you are stuck in one spot for 30 minutes waiting for everyone to move so you can get your vehicle back on the move looking for other game.
As the game drive progresses we come across a herd of a dozen elephants crossing the road directly in front of us. I got a great shot of the matriarch of the herd with her two babies. One of the babies is eating and it is so adorable.
A little later we find a leopard in a tree. It is sleeping and we really cannont get a good angle for pictures. throughout the afternoon we see zebra, warthogs, elephant, gazelle, giraffe, hippo and ostrich, but no rhino. As we start to head back to camp, we come across two cheetah in the bush. We get some good shots of them and are happy to end the game drive on a high note.
When we arrive at the Nyumba camp, we are greeted with hot towels and juice. There are 4 workers stationed there plus two guards that patrol the grounds at night. We are advised to stay in our tents after 10. The tents are more like houses with canvas and screen walls. It is a bedroom and a bathroom complete with two sinks, a shower and a pump flush toilet. Ahhh, the luxury compared to the mountain. There is no running water, but two pitchers by the sinks. If you want a shower, you have to ask them to fill up your tank. Then when showering, you need to ration the water by getting wet and turning it off. You then lather up and shampoo, only then can you turn the water back on and rinse off. You will run out of water if you do not ration it as suggested.
We opt for drinks by the fire before dinner. We are joined by grandparents and their preteen grandson and granddaughter. They are from California and seem very nice. We trade safari encounter stories for a while then are summoned to dinner. Dinner is held in a permanent structure similar to a chickee hut in Florida. It has open walls and a thatched roof. Phanuel joined us for the reasonably good dinner and gave us a briefing of what to expect the next day: A full day's game drive in the Serengeti. The night was cloudy as I headed for my tent. It is so dark out that I needed my headlamp to find the way. It is also so peaceful that you drift off to sleep almost instantly as your head hits the pillow.
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