Lake Eyasi

Camp at the Crater

A view of the crater



Zebras!



Hyena eating a hippo

Today we packed up camp and headed off for Lake Eyasi.  It was chilly as usual in the morning, but we drove down into the crater for a game drive and it warmed up once the sun came out.  The crater is pretty incredible.  I love all of the mountains – it’s such a change of scenery from the rest of Africa.  Ngorogoro Crater National Park is a little different from Tarangire and Serengeti in that it has completely visible boundaries.  Whereas in the Serengeti, you could only see flat land, in the crater you can see from one end of the park to another and its boundaries are clearly delineated by the edge of the crater.  We drove around the crater all morning on safari and saw flamingoes, ostrich, wild pigs, wildebeest, zebras, cape buffalo, guinea fowl, snake eagles, and gazelles.  I was kind of game-drived out, and didn’t find the crater super exciting, but it was cool to see the animals again.  We ate our boxed lunches in the park (carrot and cheese sandwich, cucumber sticks, hard-boiled egg, fried chicken, cake, and crackers.  Then, we journeyed around the park a little more and headed off to Lake Eyasi.  It took us about two hours to get to Lake Eyasi, and the drive was quite beautiful.  Every place we go, it just keeps getting greener and greener!  We are camping at the Lake Eyasi Bush Camp and it is by far the most luxurious looking camp we have been at.  It has cute straw hut pavilions everywhere (rather than concrete ones) and is right on the edge of the swamp so there are tons of trees and foliage.  There is a great breeze flowing through camp, so hopefully that will keep away the mosquitoes (apparently they are bad here).  The temperature is much warmer than the crater and I don’t think I’ll need to bundle up in my sleeping bag tonight in order to keep warm.  Overall, this camp is very nice and it reminds me of a campsite in the states-instead of dessert bushland, we actually have trees and grass.  And plus, our tables our set up outside so we get to eat dinner outside as opposed to in a cramped pavilion.  Tomorrow we go out to see an archaeological site and to meet the local people of the village (they are of a different tribe than the Maasai).  I’ll post as soon as I can!

Erin

Swahili Word of the Day: Mwafaka [mwah-fah-kah] = aggrement (Chelsea picked the word today J )