Lake Manyara and Ngorongoro Crater

This weekend we began our safari to Lake Manyara and Ngorongoro Crater. Our first stop on the three hour drive outside of Arusha was Lake Manyara National Park. The drive to the lake was through a pretty rural stretch of land. As we were driving, we passes Maasai villagers herding their cattle. We also passed a group of Maasai men dressed in complete black with white face painting. We asked our driver why their faces were painted white and they were dressed in black. It turns out that Maasai young men are circumcised close to puberty and it is seen as an entrance to manhood, so they wear the black to signify that they had been circumcised.

Lake Manyara was beautiful. It was quoted by Ernest Hemingway as "the loveliest [lake] in Africa." As soon as we entered the park, we were met by a herd of elephants in the trees. It was so cool to see the elephants about five feet from our truck. During the trip we also saw hippos in the distance, zebra, and a ton of baboons.

That night we drove to Karatu to stay in a hotel until the following morning when we would go to the Ngorongoro Crater. The hotel itself was OK. We all shared rooms so it was pretty inexpensive (about $7 U.S. each for our room since we had three people) but it was right across the street from a bar so it was pretty loud all night. Needless to say I didn't get much sleep that night, especially since we were waking up at 5:45 am the next morning.

When we arrived at the gate, we were all pumped to see the crater and all of the animals that lived there. But when our driver went to go pay the entrance fee that we had originally paid in our program fee, the people at the gate said there was an error with his card. They said the only solution was for each of us to pay the fee again in U.S. dollars, but none of us had any money. So the only solution at the time was to go home. We were all upset because of all of the other problems we were having with our program. But fortunately our driver was able to get money sent to him to cover the fees. After two hours of driving back to Karatu and to various ATM's, we were finally ready to enter the crater.

Our driver left us to go back to the gate to pay the entrance fee, so a couple girls decided to go to the bathroom while we were waiting. I stayed in the car with six of the other girls and we were listening to our music and relaxing in the cool weather. I was listening to my iPod when I heard a loud thump towards the front of the car. I looked up and saw a HUGE male baboon coming through the open window of our car into the front seat! We all sat still for about ten seconds then screamed and piled out of the car. We sat outside the car and watched as the baboon went through our stuff, smelling wrappers and looking for food. Thankfully one of the guys chased the first baboon out of the car, only to let another huge male baboon come in the window again. He chased that one out too, but the baboon was able to run off with Whitney's toothpaste from her bag. I couldn't stop laughing at that moment, seeing the baboon with a big bottle of Colgate in his mouth hissing at the worker who helped us out. I even think a driver from another truck pulled out a machete from under his driver seat when the baboons came towards their car. We all finally go out of the car (which then smelled like a monkey) and were able to go into the crater. When our driver returned we told him what happened and because he could see we were fine, all he asked about were our lunches for the day.

The crater was gorgeous and there were so many animals there. We saw wildebeest, zebra, gazelle, rhinos, and lions relaxing in the sun. For awhile we watched a female lion laying in a ditch watching prey go by, waiting for her kill. But she had been there for at least an hour and a half and we waited, but eventually moved on.We spent six hours driving in the crater and seeing all of the animals. We were all pretty wiped out by the end of the day but had a very fun time.