picture safari time!

Our safari was awesome. We did a three day safari to Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro Crater, and Tangerine National Park. My favorite was Ngorongoro...we saw tons of animals (lions, ostriches, water buffalos, hippos, rhinos, wildebeests, zebras, gazelles, flamingos, elephants, baboons, serval cats, impalas, giraffes and more) and they were all just hanging out in the same crater. The landscape was awesome. There was a forest, ponds, grassland, and all surrounded by beautiful green crater walls. It was all amazing and I was super excited to see many new animal friends. The only thing that I didn't see that I would have liked to was a cheetah and leopard but they are hard to see, apparently. We saw black rhinos, though, which is very rare since they are endangered. When our guide, Deko, got the word that a rhino was active (they are tagged and always tracked by park officials), the chase was on and we traveled crazy fast across the bottom of the crater to get to them before they were out of sight again. It was totally like what you would see on the Discovery channel (or some show where they chase animals). When we got there and watched them (which was cool but not that interesting) there were 20-30 other safari vehicles there to join us. Otherwise, we saw more animals than I can remember. Keith wanted to see a crocodile eat a wildebeest and that didn't happen, go figure. All in all we were happy with our trip. This little monkey guy ended up stealing my sandwich after scouting us out for a while.

me and a TERMITE hill!

a bird helping out a water buffalo with personal hygeine

apparently these dudes littered in the park

tons of elephants everywhere

zebras and wildebeests EVERYWHERE....it almost got a bit old...but not really :)

a pumba (or warthog) with a great spiky mohawk

not the most active beasts but cool to see, nonetheless

more zebras

A BABY ELEPHANT!!!!!!

a piggy-backing baboon

why hello, there

*Author's note: Some pictures have been generously donated by my safari partner, Keith. The ones that are really good, those are his. :)