The next four days were just my mom and myself and our safari guide in a landrover out to see some more landscapes and all the wildlife that Africa had to offer. We started with Ngorongoro Crater. It is hard to imagine how this giant crater actually formed as a large volcano erupted and then caved in on itself millions of years ago. The crater is home to so much wildlife!
It was on our second day, that my mom found out just how much she loved giraffes. I have never seen someone get so excited about seeing an animal; she squealed so loud. We saw way more animals than I care to list, but some highlights would be the giraffes (because of my mom’s excitement), lions mating (one female and one male branch off and mate every 15 minutes or so for a week straight!), three cheetahs make a run at a gazelle (they missed), countless hippos just being hippos and the zebra migration. It was literally hundreds of thousands of zebras just doing a slow jaunt in the opposite direction we were driving. They were cool individually, but seeing so many in every direction as far as we could see was so impressive! We also saw a jaguar in a tree with another one shredded on the ground nearby marking the edge of his territory where it tried to cross over. Or at least the face and various parts of the defeated jaguar. The size of an African elephant is also something to behold. They are massive creatures.
We stayed in various semi-permanent tent structures throughout the Serengeti. We went on a walk with some locals one morning and happened to run into a small herd of giraffes. I am glad we ran into my mom’s favorite if we were going to run into some wildlife. I think the only things we did not see were rhinoceros and African wild dogs. There was one rhinoceros way off in the distance, but I didn’t get a good look at it to really call it a sighting.
We were also welcomed into a Maasai village. It was interesting to see, but felt a little staged / touristy. The kids counted to ten on command in the school and the adults sang songs upon our arrival. The school had a donation box. Our guide translated as we asked questions about how they lived. The woman fabricated crafts that were available for purchase. The kids raised goats. Polygamy was standard as there were many tasks like slaughtering that were considered a man’s responsibility so women were eager to share a man to have a source of food. They lived in modest clay huts with straw roofs. I would have loved to spend more time with them to actually get to know what their lives were like and see it first hand.
If I had to guess, my mom would do the safari part over again. We departed from the airport in the Serengeti on a Cessna 208. No security, no fences, just a little airplane in the middle of nowhere. I did worry about hitting an animal as we took off but luckily didn’t have to experience it.
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