The First Night
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| This was the lodge where we stayed in Arusha the first night of the safari. | Wendi gave up her lifelong beverage of choice, Diet Coke, and started drinking Sprite or Fanta. |
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| This was the lodge where we stayed in Arusha the first night of the safari. | Wendi gave up her lifelong beverage of choice, Diet Coke, and started drinking Sprite or Fanta. |
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| The candelabra tree looks like it has the trunk of a tree and the branches of a cactus. | Twilight in the northern Serengeti | Ngorongoro Crater, one of the best concentrations of wildlife in the world |
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| Us on the Serengeti | Our dining tent. Our sleeping tents were similar and quite luxurious. |
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| A beautiful sunset on the Serengeti | Zebras grazing on the Serengeti. "Serengeti" means "endless plain," and you can see why. |
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| Animals at a watering hole on the Serengeti | A wildebeest herd | Topies and zebras on the Serengeti |
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| A hyena cub | A mother and baby elephant | Baboons |
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| Three giraffes running across the Serengeti | Three cheetah brothers relaxing in the shade | Hippos (actually more than 3) and flamingos in Ngorongoro Crater |
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| A Catholic Church near Lake Eyasi | Hadzabi with a recently killed impala. One of them shot it with a poisoned arrow, and we tracked it around for about half an hour until it died. They then butchered it with knives, ate some of it raw, cooked and ate some of it, and brought the rest home for their families. | The home (for now) of the bushmen. It consisted of a few straw mats among the bushes and trees and of a single pot for cooking. |
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| A buffalo carcas | We saw a lion chase and kill a mother zebra. The mother had jumped in front of the lion to save its foal. We then watched the lion and two other female lions eat the zebra. | We didn't see the kill, but we watched the cheetah eat the gazelle. |
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| After the cheetah finished with the gazelle, about 25 vultures all moved in at once and devoured the remains. Then a hyena scared them off and carried away the bones. | I don't think the crocodile was really going to eat the bird - the bird could have just flown away - but it did look menacing. | Watching herbivores eat wasn't quite so gory. |
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| A hyena | A zebra |
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| The king | The queen yawns and shows her teeth. | A digital zoom |
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| We saw 2 lions in this tree in Tarangire National Park on our first day. | The flirtatious queen |
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| I like big butts and I cannot lie... | Thomson's Gazelle | Hagai, our guide, couldn't believe this turtle was still alive. |
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| Water buck | Male ostrich | Warthog |
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| Dee, Mike, and Paul on a dirt road in the Serengeti at 50 mph | Jim, Paul, Dee, Steve, Hagai, and Mike (Jim, Paul, and Dee flew back to Arusha) | Our trusty LandRover |
Stone Town combines Arab, Portugese, Indian, and African influences. It is the center of Zanzibar's spice trade (Zanzibar is know as the Spice Island), and it used to be a center for slave trading. It has beautiful architecture and people, an exotic feel, and an interesting as well as dark past.
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| A government building in Stone Town | The House of Wonders, a former residence of the sultans, site of the shortest war in history (a 45 minute shelling by the Portugese), and currently a museum. | Zanzibar Palace, as seen from the House of Wonders. |
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| Traditional wooden boats called dhows are still widely used by the locals for fishing and transport. | ||
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| Suleyman was our guide for our Spice Tour. We were taken to plantations and shown how spices are grown. Here he is demonstrating soap berries which, when rubbed between your hands, produce a soap-like lather that cleans your hands. | An outrigger on the beach | A Portugese couple with whom we had lunch after swimming with the dolphins. We snorkeled off a motorized dhow and saw about 11 dolphins playing - diving, surfing the waves, etc. |
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| This was our dive boat. Our first dive was a wreck dive, and the second one was a reef dive. The diving and snorkeling on Zanzibar were excellent although overfishing has hurt the fish population. | We stopped on a tiny cay between scuba dives to have lunch. | Wendi inspecting some of the African carvings and other crafts sold at stands near the House of Wonders |
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| Wendi couldn't help but notice the cell towers. | ||
The east side of Zanzibar is undeveloped and consists mostly of small fishing villages. It is an idyllic place to relax and enjoy the bahari nzuri (beautiful sea).
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| A dhow on the beach | We took a boat like this to go snorkeling on the east side. The boat is only a couple feet wide and is made only of wood a rope, with a sail made of rice sacks stitched together. | These Zanzibari girls stopped to visit us both days as they walked home from school along the beach. They were very friendly, and taught us some Swahili and some songs. |
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| This was our beachfront hotel. | We woke up for sunrise before heading back to the west side of the island. | |
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| A Muslim man walking the beach at sunrise | ||