Animals Gone Wild

When I last left off, we were having issues with our car. After a 4-hour delay in some town, the guide came back with an even worse car. Since we are not yet at the point where we can laugh about everything that went wrong after that, I am just going to say that the "new'"car also broke down and our guide royally screwed up in almost every way imaginable. It was also just painful to listen to him since he rambled constantly, trying to pass the blame onto other people.

Needless to say, we never made it to the Serengeti, but we did manage to salvage the safari and get in two solid days of animal watching. We also stayed at a great (albeit freezing cold--40 degrees in the rooms at night!) lodge above the Ngorogoro Crater. This crater is known to have one of the largest concentrations of animals in all of east Africa. After shelling out money for a different driver and arguing with numerous authorities, we finally got clearance and spent all day yesterday in the crater and today in another national park. We came up with the following awards for the animals we saw:

• Best body: Cheetah
• Most likely to get caught with its pants down: Baboon
• Most playful/entertaining: Baby Elephant
• Floppiest ears: Daddy Elephant
• Strike a pose: Lions (they also win the "sleepiest" award)
• Scrawniest legs: Wildebeest
• Best synchronized swimmers: Hippos
• Most likely to get in the way while driving: Tie between the thousands of zebras and wildebeests in the crater
• Elle Woods of the watering hole: Flamingos
• Closest resemblance to Bambi: Impala
• Ugliest animal: Warthog (with wildebeest a close second)
• Most likely to be mistaken for a rock: Hippo
• Most likely to be on drugs: Hyenas
• Missing in action: Rhino and Leopard
• Weirdest noises: Our driver, Frederick. He sounded like a cross between Kermit the Frog and Jar Jar Binks (first Star Wars movie). Jacks, remember our Money and Banking prof at school? This guy was worse, and louder.
• Most likely to win a staring contest: Giraffe (ok, we saw 15 of them next to each other and none of them moved)

And finally,

• Best in show: Lion. To quote Sam, "She really strutted her stuff by the car quite nicely."

The safari is over... Let the water sports (and, hopefully, warm weather) begin!!! Sam and I are optimistic about trying kite boarding.

Off to Zanzibar tomorrow.