Thursday, 7-23-09 Day 37

5 in the morning! I woke up at 5 in the morning! That’s just not okay! I have no coffee, and it’s still dark outside! The team decided to do a very early morning safari, so we have a better chance of seeing animals. It ended up paying off nicely. We saw more zebra and gazelle, as usual. We also saw waterbuck and wildebeest, and some kind of dog-like thing running around. The real treasure of the morning was in the savannah grass- we stopped the van less than 10 feet away from 2 lions (1 male, 1 female) feeding on a zebra! No one else was out on safari yet, so we got to watch and listen for at least ten minutes by ourselves. (Trust me, it was a big deal! Lions are one of the “top 5” so vans are always crowded around them!) To hear a lion purr and growl while chewing on a zebra carcass is just amazing! National Geographic has NOTHING on this! After vans started showing up, we moved on. The cool thing was that we moved on to see two more lions enjoying the African morning in the savannah grass! We hung out there for a little longer before vans started showing up there, too. We went back to the tent site for breakfast- scrambled eggs, toast, beans, and coffee. (The coffee part was my favorite.) Today we go start our journey back to Kimikungi. I’d like to add as a side note that I’m very excited about the shirts I got- The one for Titus says “Tuko Pamoja” or “We’re Together” and the one I got for myself and Brad says “Mzungu” which means “white person”. I plan on wearing my Mzungu shirt on Sunday!
So, Mike got sick in the car on the way back to the hotel. I hope he feels better because it’s really not fun to be sick on a trip of any sort. We ended up stopping at another gas station where we had Chapati that was good, samosas that were terrible, and coke that was also good. I slept the whole rest of the way to the hotel!
Our rooms here are nice. The boys are on one side of the property, and Jan and I share a very nice room (right next to the pool) on the other side of the property. We have to walk to the internet café, but that’s alright. We went to dinner at the hotel, where I had a margarita pizza and vanilla icecream!
Jan and I left shortly after dinner, it’s time to get some sleep before we finish our journey home tomorrow.