Safari:)

In a word, the safari was amazing! It's Mom and I so of course we took a million pictures:)  I've only posted a few of the good ones below, and everyone will have to wait until we are home to see the rest and hear all of our stories!

The safari was 3 nights and 4 days.  The safari took place in 3 different national parks; Lake Manyara, Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater.The food was delicious, the animals were amazing, the organization was perfect and our driver was incredibly knowledgable, and the weather even held off.  It only really rained a little bit one morning and one night, and didn't interrupt our trip at all.

If you are traveling to Tanzania the safari is definitely a must.  There are some new volunteers that have just arrived and only staying for two weeks.  They were a little unsure if they should do the safari because they are only here for a short time, but we encouraged them to go, it is well worth the 4 days.

Elephants were the first animal we saw on the way, before we even got to any of the parks where you see most of the other animals.  At this point I was already content, and we could have turned around and I would have been happy (although I'm glad we didn't).  I have 100's of more elephant pictures but I post a couple of my favourites:)

Is this not the cutest elephant bum you've ever seen!?

Monkeys were the second animal we saw, the Black Faced Monkey, Blue Monkey and Blue Balled Monkey (all for obvious reasons).  Apparently they lack a little creativity in naming their monkeys.

Mama and her baby

You will be able to guess which monkey is below.

There were more Baboons then you can imagine. They were on the roads, the trails, in the bushes, right beside our jeeps, blocking where we needed to go, EVERYWHERE! We have some good videos that give you a better idea of how many there were.  They seemed to travel in groups of about 50 or more.  Our driver also told us that occasionally they jump into the safari vehicles, steal your food and leave.  I was completely terrified! Some of the adult males were the size of 6 or 7 year old children, with huge, strong shoulders. 

When they were "playing" or wrestling, they would make this terrible shrieking noise that scared me and I would sit back down in the truck and close my window (the roof was open though so closing my window was useless).  I was happy when we make it through the safari without any Baboons in our truck!

Mom's been working on her jumping pictures ;)

These are a few pictures from the Masai Village we visited.  It was really neat to see.  It is a very male dominant culture, the women do everything while the males "guard" the camp. They performed a welcome dance for us (which we video taped) and then a couple of the women put their necklaces on Mom and I and had us jump with them.

One of the men (who spoke very good English) took us on a tour of their village (the entire "village" would fit on a city plot of land at home), showing us their mud and wood huts and explaining some of their customs.  They are very nomadic so they are constantly moving and creating new village areas.

 The Sunrise was at Maoi Boma and Sunset at Ngoronogor on the safari were beautiful:)