Serengeti!

A huge rock we climbed up before heading into the Serengeti

Hello Mr. Elephant

On safari

More elephants!

To finish off the story from last time, I left the clinic and suffered an hour long drive to Karatu, the last town before you get into the real wilderness that is Africa.  I collapsed on a bed in the guest house not knowing what was really going to happen.  After all, it had been 5 days and my condition hadn’t really improved.  Granted, I didn’t have a fever anymore and wasn’t throwing up, but I still had diarrhea, severe abdominal pain, and nausea.  We decided to call the doctor back and ask him advice, to which he said I should promptly return to the clinic in Arusha (which was over 2 hours away).  Well that wasn’t going to happen.  After consulting my parents (and having them consult their people), we decided to go to the clinic in Karatu first thing in the morning.  The next morning when we drove the clinic, I was greeted by one of the most welcoming sights: an American doctor.  Now don’t get me wrong, I love the people of Tanzania, but sometimes it’s just nice having one of your own treating you.  He welcomed me in, I gave him the list of all of my symptoms, and he said the most beautiful words I have ever heard: “Yep, I know what you have”.  I thought no one would ever tell me that.  The way that medicine works here in Tanzania is called empirical treatment.   Basically, they treat you for one thing, and if that doesn’t work, they treat you for something else, and so on until they finally cure you.  It’s a very long process of elimination.  So anyway, I bet you are dying to here the verdict, right?  I initially had a bacterial infection, which was treated and killed by the cipro that the first doctor prescribed to me.  But I also have giardia (the lovely little parasite you get from drinking contaminated water) and a pretty bad kidney infection.  They gave me two antibiotics to treat the kidney infection and an injection for the giardia, plus meds for pain, nausea, and abdominal cramps.  Needless to say, I was pretty drugged up by the time I walked out of that clinic.  I felt great during the 8 hour drive to the Serengetti and although I had my eyes closed most of the time (the meds cause extreme drowsiness), I managed to snap them open when we spotted animals.  It was pretty cool to see the animals in the wild.  I got to see so many! 

Giraffe

Elephant

Dik Dik

Grants Gazelle

Thompsons Gazelle

Warthog

Guinea Fowl

Zebra

Lion

Hyena

Cheetah

Leopard

Egret

Heron

So anyway, made it to our tent camp here in the Serengeti by nightfall and our crew had already set up our tents for us.  Oh how I love them!  They cook and set up camp for us wherever we go.  It’s fabulous really.    We are at a group campsite and I have to say that this is the largest conglomeration of outdoorsy backpackers that I have ever seen in my life.  Think Woodstock, backpackers style (ok, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, there aren’t that many people).  But anyway, our schedule for the next several days includes safari, safari, safari, everyday, and all day.  We are hoping to see lots of animals!

Giraffe in our camp