African Safari Day 1 - Lake Manyara

After conquering the great summit of Mount Kilimanjaro it was time for a little R&R like those monkeys. A lot of people who choose to do the hike head down to Zanzibar island and blow off steam tropically. My friends and I decided to take our R&R to the great African wilderness and take in the beautiful African nature. We left Moshi and our Mount Kilimanjaro team behind and ended up in Arusha for the night before went to the Safari. Arusha is a bigger city than Moshi for sure but our lodge was kind of far away from the main happening spots. We ended up eating Chinese food (I'm an ABC, American Born Chinese) in Arusha out of all places in the world! There's a surprising number of Chinese people who live in Africa, their food was surprisingly okay!

Last day of rest in Arusha and we started off towards our 3 day "African Massage" aka bumpy ass roads in an awesome Land Cruiser! There are 3 National Parks on our tour: Lake Manyara, The Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater. We chose a quicker safari due to our flight schedules, usually people stay at each national park for a couple of days rather than our 1 day and move on to the next. We first get to the lodge and drop off all of our gear (this is the more relaxing portion of my trip) and take a short break before doing an afternoon game drive in Lake Manyara.

After passing through the gates of Lake Manyara I felt like we were entering Jurassic Park. The movie must been inspired by the way these safari's operate. As we are driving through the forest area we see lots of monkeys and baboons. The baboons are pretty fearless of humans at this point and actually hang out on the roads. The forest areas are filled with groups of monkeys and baboons, we actually got to see a family of Velvet Monkeys within the first few minutes! Being so close to these animals from our car was surreal, it felt completely different than going to any zoo.

Fun fact the birds below are called Hamerkop and actually make various nests all year round to trick predators into not knowing which nest has the babies. Sneaky and brilliant.

The time of year we went was the end of the great wildebeest migration. It was great to see all these monkeys and birds but I was starting to get worried that's all we were going to see. Were all the animals gone? Have they left right when we got here? After we got from the clearing of the trees, it was like a scene from The Lion King (when the pride is plentiful and all the animals are out and about!). All the animals hanging around the watering hole was insane! This is what we came to see! Zebras, Hogs, Wildebeests, Storks, birds, hippos, buffaloes, all living in harmony!

At this point it was sensory overload with all these animals. Anything else would have been bonus that we haven't seen it. I already claimed victory in my head for the first day. Then out of the tree lines come out Giraffes and Elephants, a family of elephants. DAMN!

It was a great first day of the safari and I couldn't wait for our last 2 days in Africa and spending it with some amazing animals. The sunsets aren't bad either! Until next time :)