First day back at work today. While it was a nice day (i.e. kids were great, it was nice to see friends again), I still am missing our time in Tanzania. Oh well...I get to recap!
In Arusha after our first night of aimless wandering, we were able to check out the Cultural Center and a great little store called Shanga, which was located on a coffee plantation. There, they took empty wine bottles and recycled them to create glass beads for jewelry. All of the glass workers and weavers were deaf and/or mute in an effort to provide them with more opportunities to earn money.
Our first stop after leaving Arusha was Lake Manyara. We checked into our lodge and immediately began appreciating the view from our little hut.
But the real fun began the next morning when we took our Land Cruiser into the park. Immediately upon leaving the lodge we bumped into a small herd of elephants munching on foliage right alongside our truck.
It was a pretty great start to our safari. Lake Manyara was a truly beautiful park. It was a paradise for monkeys -- we saw a ridiculous number of baboons and vervet monkeys there. The vervet monkeys are identifiable by their bright blue and red, um, "male parts".
We saw plenty of other types of wildlife at Lake Manyara as well -- hippos, giraffes, wildebeest, warthogs, so many different types of birds. While I'm not going to upload all those pictures here...you can get the idea.
A hippo print in the mud.
And, of course, the landscape was just breathtaking.
That same day, we started our trip to the Serengeti. I'll that for the next post, though. Time to turn in...
