Hi blog. Today has been a good day! I’m feeling better from my mystery illness, but Carina’s starting to feel sick (different illness, not my fault). We didn’t get to shower yesterday or the day before due to water conservation rules (one shower every other day), so we woke up at 4:30 am super dirty and ready for a shower. We figured out the shower situation in the bathroom, which was definitely less than luxurious like the luxury lodges we were so used to. The water was freezing cold, made worse by the cold 4:30 am air, and it was only on right before and right after our full body lather. It definitely was an experience, but we felt so clean afterwards, so we’re content.
We ate breakfast at 6:00 am and departed from Olduvai Gorge around 6:50 am to start heading to Serengeti National Park. It took a few hours to fully get inside the park. Once we were in, however, we saw some crazy cool sights. I would consider today’s apex sighting to be a group of lions devouring a freshly killed buffalo carcass. We pulled up right next to it as the lions ate, and it smelled so disgusting. The lions had eaten through the buffalo’s throat, stomach, and butthole. Some other cool things we saw in the park included baboons eating on a pride rock, topi, a giant lion pride, hippos, hyenas, and an African wild cat. There was an interesting spectacle where an entire herd of zebras were paired in twos and were resting their heads on each other’s necks, facing their bodies towards each other. There were, as always, giraffes everywhere! Although they were mostly outside of the park. There was a herd of giraffes that, on our way back, decided to hover near the road so that we could see them super up-close. If anyone wasn’t able to look those things in the eyes, they must have been blindfolded.
^Tasteless lion eating from the most disgusting parts of the buffalo.
The rest of the day contained a bunch of random, less-biology-related activities. I was finally able to use my French today, which I was sooo happy about! I was originally a little disappointed that there wasn’t much French spoken in Tanzania (the UK colonized Tanzania, English is quite dominant), but I finally spoke to some tourists in French and eavesdropped on some other French conversations. Now I am hungry for more. Carina and I have been learning more Swahili. We learned a couple of phrases/words like “samahani”, “njiolojia”, “huko”, “pale”, and “tafadhali”. Enoch told us that the “dh” in “tafadhali” is pronounced like the “th” in the English word “then”, and we appreciated the help. It’s cool that Enoch’s been studying Swahili for a year! Another thing that happened today is that our car was rendered undrivable twice — once due to a flat tire, another time due to the car dying. Very unfortunate. Those Serengeti roads really did a number on the car. And Carina. Poor Carina.
^Carina with a tamarind drink that she bought from the Serengeti gift shop.
If the giraffe has no fans, I am dead
Kacey
