We woke up at 7am today and packed everything up before a nice breakfast from Andy and his wife. I had scrambled eggs served ON the toast along with super fresh watermelon, papaya and oranges. Justin picked us up at 8 and before leaving Arusha, we stopped at a very American supermarket called Shoprite to pick up 8 liters of water and two liters of coke to take on the safari and then we were off. It took about three hours to get to the entrance of the Ngorongoro Crater entrance. We stopped at several places along the way while driving through many little villages like the types we saw on the way to Arusha. There was one that was named after a river that is overloaded with mosquitoes. It was very very lush and there were lots of markets. They had RED bananas which in itself is bananas. There were also stands with Tanzania soccer jerseys. Both items intrigued me so we stopped on two different occasions and both times were mobbed by several towns people hoping we would buy there goods. We didn’t.  
 

Shortly after leaving this town we saw our first baboon. I wondered aloud if baboon moms if Italian descent call their young “baboonschka”. We then began climbing a hill which provided amazing views of Lake Manyara which we will be visiting in the upcoming days. After this we started seeing Masaii villages. These were pretty neat. Most of them are out of the crater because they eat wild meat. The animals in the crater are protected.

First animal sighting!

Once we made it to the crater entrance, we were required to stop so that Justin could pay for our entrance. After this, the roads turned to extreme jungle dirt roads with a medium grade and I consistently thought we were going to flip. We didn’t, I embraced it and ended up just nervously giggling the entire time even though I was sans seatbelt.

The entrance to Ngorongoro Crater.

The road up the side of the crater was super red and super slanty.

Finally we made it to the top ridge of the crater and the view in was absolutely breathtaking, even with it being overcast and hard to see. Shortly after we stopped for lunch and ate with some large birds that had testicular like necks which we learned we storage sacks for food. Teresa fed them after being told several times not to and the birds started to fight. As we were getting ready to leave five zebras came out of nowhere and we got giddy like children.

These birds were gigantic.

 Teresa and some Zebras!

After taking some pics, we continued on. Not too long after this and after some incredible views while descending from the edge of the crater we saw a momma giraffe and two babies. It was awesome. I asked her if geoffrey would be home from Toys R Us anytime soon. She didn’t find this funny.

 The mama giraffe with her babies.

Some intriguing things about driving through Serengeti:

• It really does feel like an endless plain. It’s over 14,000 sq kilometers. You can drive for an hour and not see anything in the horizon. It’s truly incredible.
• You will find random Maasai people on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere under the hot ass sun tending cows or waving to cars trying to get money for a picture. The trick is to take a picture while driving by. Feels wrong, but it’s certainly effective.
• Driving laws feel completely absent here. The roofs of the trucks are removable and you can drive down the bumpiest of bumpy roads standing up, looking out through the roof. There were several times today where I though I was going get seriously injured and that my life was in Justin’s hands because 1. I think his tire alignment is off. 2. His 1980s land cruiser sounded like it was going to fall apart. 3. We would slide on the sand covered roads since we were driving upwards of 50 at some points. Sometimes we were forced to slow down because you couldn’t hear yourself think because of the bumps. BUT as crazy as this sounds, after a while you forgot about that and it was all worth it because, you were in AFRICA, in the friggen Serengeti amongst the lion king animals.