hikin' up the rift valley!

yesterday was our nice but very short day off.

I still woke up at the usual 7:00am for breakfast and headed out at 8:00am for the bottom of the Rift Valley. Our campsite is at the top of the valley so it only took about 10 minutes to get to the bottom/starting point of our hike. The hike started out pretty steady and flat. & we passed by a huge clan of baboons before we started ascending. Oh and one of my contacts fell out during the car ride there..

THe hike was amazing. The first 20 minutes were pretty gruesome but after a while my body got used to the strain. We stopped every once in a while to look at and identify animal tracks and different bugs. There was this one bug called the ant lion that digs little inverted cones in the dirt to trap ants in it. We dropped a few ants in and watched the ant lions snap out of the dirt and drag them under. Back at camp Nixon, the camp managers son, caught a few and put them in a bowl of dirt to play with.

The rest of the hike was great and at the top we got a beautiful view of Lake Manyara. Oh and before we reached the very top a giant herd of goats stampeded into us. Two stopped on the side of the trail and started to go at it.. kinda gross.

After getting to the top of the valley, we had about an hour and a half of walking to get back to camp. On the way we stopped by a beautiful lodge that Yuda, our swahili teacher and guide for the day, used to work at. He led us to the outdoor bar that had a patio that looked over the side of the mountain and out onto Lake Manyara.

After a refreshing soda we walked the last 45 minutes back to camp. Back at camp we had lunch and then headed out to Karatu Town for another lunch at Happy Days. I got the mac n cheese which was deliciousz.

Ater lunch some people headed into town to explore, but me and a group stayed back because almost everything was closed because it was Sunday afternoon. We stayed back and had some drinks then went back to camp at around 6:00.

Overall it was a great day off, but way too short. Now back to classes for another week until our next day off. But Wednesday were going to Tarangire National Park! Our teacher, Dr Kissui, is taking us into the park. He's been doing lion research there for years now so hopefully he'll be able to find us a pride!

I'll update after our trip to Tarangire!