Bake's Bumbling Blog

Me and the guys made it to Ireland and we are already having a blast.  We figured our first day was best spent at the Guinnes Brewery i.e. Min's heaven, and it was a really cool place to see.  At night we went out to the Temple Bar area which was PACKED.  Already met a lot of cool people and watching brits and irish trash talk each other is hilarious.  Going to Dublin Castle and St. Patrick's Cathedral today and who knows where else.

Min, Shaf, I are in the NYC airport getting ready for the trip to Dublin! Published with Blogger-droid v1.5.9

The morning of our 8th day we got to take a tour of the mobile tenting camps inner-workings, seeing the kitchen, pantry, and even where they sleep.  The funny part is after a week without TV and being in the middle of the Serengeti we saw that the staff actually did have a small TV with satellite programming and even a dell computer to translate it!  We then drove to the Ngorogoro crater which was smaller but had sooooo many people there.  While we were eating lunch we saw some flying black kites which look like eagles kinda swoop down to steal peoples food right out of there hands.  The animals in Ngorogoro seemed much less frightened of people and so we were able to get to within a few feet of most of them including 2 lions!  The next day we left the crater and on our travels we stopped by a real Iraqw village.  We got to see two different former Iraqw houses as well as some traditional garb and what people would wear to a wedding summary.  We then t...

Once in the Serengeti, we stayed at the mobile tenting camps, which reminded me a lot of summer camps, except here we had flush toilets!  So even the roughing it wasn't exactly roughing it.  They had a campfire at the camps too and I even got to try Serengeti beer which was surprisingly very good.  On the 6th we woke up at 4 AM to go on a hot air balloon ride over the Serengeti and it was worth it.  Not only did we get a mini night game drive, but the actually ride was spectacular!  We even got a champagne brunch afterwards which was delicious and got me ready for the day.  During our afternoon game drive we saw some 100 year old paintings done by Maasai warriors on some cave walls and then we went back to camp after a 14 hour day out!  The next day we took a long drive north to try and see some of the actual migration and we were not disappointed.  We saw thousands of wildabeest crossing a river and the sheer number of them was insane.  We f...

On our 4th day in Africa we went to Lake Manyara part which was much different and more jungle like then the rest of the parks.  This park was pretty much overrun by baboons and we also found a hippo pool and watched as 8 of them came out onto land.  On the 5th day we drove to the Serengeti and stopped to look into the huge Ngorogoro crater.  We got to watch a lion stalk a group of gazelles and then saw a cheetah too!  Lastly we saw some lion cubs.  TBC tomorrow...

We arrived in Africa Tuesday night at stayed in Serena Mountain Lodge which was really nice and even had a TV, the last one I would see for 2 weeks.  We met our African safari guide Milinga, who was quite possibly the coolest guide ever.  He knew so much about Africa and the game and even carried a machete under his seat.  We proceeded to Tarangire National Park where we saw elephants, wildabeest, waterbuck, warthogs, zebras, giraffes, impala, baboons, and a pack of lions.  Friday morning we even saw some elephants right inside our lodge eating some trees and spotted a leopard as we left the park and the 2 dik-dik carcasses it had eaten.  We then visited the Mto Wum Bo village and took a tour of a banana plantation, tasted banana beer, and watched as some guys created Makanda carvings.  We then traveled to the permanent tents in Kirurumu where we rested for the night.