Julie's Terrific Tanzania Tour

Today was quite the adventure. Remember back when I first arrived in Arusha on my first day on Tanzania and I mentioned the bumpy road for 1km? Well today we drove for about 8-10 hours on even bumpier roads, at faster speeds and way more dust!! And I loved every minute of it!! Our first stop was the Olduvai Gorge Museum, which outlined all of the work done by Mary and Louis Leakey on finding evidence of human evolution. This is where they found “Lucy” and even their camp is used by universities for continued studies of ongoing excavations today. There is an amazing museum and beautiful outlook into the gorge. We had a picnic lunch there, prepared by the Rift Valley Lodge, and had some mongoose come visit us to see if we had any to spare.  And after lunch it happened! We went to the Serengeti National Park! Words cannot describe how surreal this was…and honestly I’m pretty drained after this amazing day! Animals were everywhere - today we were specifically looking big cats and we fo...

Could I look any more like a tourist on Safari?!? Everyone else in my group just looked normal - but I’m loving my Safari get up!  We said goodbye to Ilboru Safari Lodge, and our first stop was as a supermarket and ATM downtown. This was in case we needed local Tanzania shillings as many places take US dollars, but not all. And our next three nights we’re at accommodations that only take cash - although all of my meals are included, drinks are not, and $3 US glasses of wine are not something I was going to pass on.  Our first stop of the day was a tour of a Mto wa Mbu tribe. We had two local tour guides who took us through the village showing us how they produce rice and bananas, both for food and to sell. We also met with some men who did beautiful wood carvings. Wood carvings of animals, to round out my zebra, giraffe and rhino (thanks Dad!!) are my most desired take home souvenir. But it don’t want to get them until the end as I don’t want to worry about them breaking as we...