AMICK’S AFRICAN ADVENTURES
Hello again, everyone,
So much has happened since I last wrote. I’ve had some especially interesting cultural experiences over the past few weeks. Here’s what I’ve been up to….
I changed my plans while in Zanzibar. It was very rainy on a couple of the days I’d planned to go to the beach, so I cancelled those plans. Instead, I kept exploring Stone Town, the nearby waterfront, and the local markets. The rain made it really fun and challenging to navigate the small, twisting alleys of Stone Town while they were flooded with rushing water! I thoroughly enjoyed myself and got to know some of the locals. About 80-90% of the Zanzibar residents are Muslim, so the sounds of the calls to prayer rang out from the mosques on a regular basis (including at 5am). I was there during the week before and on the first day of Ramadan, and a lot of people were preparing for it. I wondered if anyone would react negatively to finding out that I’m an American, but I received very warm welcomes everywhere (as has been the case for all the countries I’ve visited).
The English couple that I’d been traveling with since Zambia (Amy and Spencer) made plans to fly to Arusha, Tanzania, and go on a 4-day safari, and I decided to join them. So, we flew from Zanzibar on October 27th, we were picked up at the airport by our guide, and immediately left on safari. We spent the next 4 days camping and traveling through Tarangire National Park, Serengeti National Park, and the Ngorongoro Crater. What an amazing area! Even the drive from
Arusha was interesting, since we went through areas in which Maasai men and boys were taking their herds of goats and cattle from the villages to get water. It was really interesting to me to see the Maasai people living in their traditional way, while cars were speeding by them on the road.
Visiting the Serengeti was one of my major goals for the Africa trip, and it definitely met my expectations. We saw tons of wildlife over the course of 3 days. In particular, we were lucky with seeing the big cats. We saw over 20 lions, 6 cheetahs, a leopard, and a several (which was a real treat, since they’re usually nocturnal animals and it’s very rare to see them during the
day). We also saw lots of zebras, Maasai giraffes (which have beautiful maple leaf-like patterns), hyenas, jackals, warthogs, hippos, baboons, wildebeest, gazelles, and buffaloes. The Ngorongoro Crater was also impressive.
Much to my surprise, there are several types of environments there – forested areas, a lake with flamingos, another lake with lots of hippos, highlands along the sides of the crater, and large areas of grasslands. Some highlights of the visit to the crater were seeing the forest elephants that have really long, beautiful tusks, seeing another black rhino, and watching male zebras, monkeys, and wildebeest fighting for dominance.
At the end of the safari, we drove back to Arusha and I stayed there for a couple of days. The inn was just across the street from a mosque, so the 5am prayers were my wakeup call once again. From Arusha, I arranged to go to a couple of villages near the base of Mt Kilimanjaro for a cultural tour.
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