:( The last day..

We interrupt the stream of historical updates with the present:

The others have left! (li, su, qihui, ty) and that's very sad :(

We tried to stay up all night last night to blog, edit photos, pack, settle funds, hang out etc etc, but in the end, we all collapsed by 4am (but i have to say 4 am is pretty impressive!) this morning, Li's desire to see starfish had us trooping out to the low-tide beach to search for starfish! and luckily rebec brought her nick! coz he found a beautiful big one for us! yay! li ling's mission is complete. and li will post that photo haha coz i don't have it on me.

Some final pictures we took..
aka we took polariod pictures.. and then took pictures of the polaroids..

Happy to be together!

Sad that the adventure is over.. :(

Our presents to Rebec and Nick! (ok hopefully photo other than the polariods will grace the frame :P heehee!) They were (are, for me) such amazing hosts! We realized once the car left, that we didn't have a photo with Nick! We wanted to call the car back.. 

But sad as we are, we know that its just a see you later for now :D There will be a next adventure!



Now back to the historical updates! (but not before entertaining you with more goofy photos!)

Ngorongoro Crater to Tarangire National Park

(FYI, there's been some updates to these posts since we first created them... :D maybe you'll detect which are the new pictures!)

(Update, Qihui sent out a link about wildlife photography.. WHICH WE ALL AGREE WITH!!!! ie that nature photography takes A LONG TIME. but WE REALLY DID SEE A ZEBRA CARCASS.. WE REALLY DID....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/21/AR2010092105782_pf.html)

The next day was cold and cloudy and we set off bright and early :) Li Ling was very pleased because she declared sadly on the first day that she had never been in a cloud before and when we stepped out of our rooms at Rhino Lodge we were IN A CLOUD!

(this photo does not really reflect the sleepy/cold state of the rest of us - which looked more like this)

After 2hrs of singing/sleeping in the safari vehicle, we reached our 2nd park: Tarangire National Park.

All the animals are bigger and seem more active in this part of Tanzania.. One of the first things we saw upon entering the safari was.. a herd of 11 adult elephants crossing the road in front of us..!

(this one is staring at us)

Other active animals we saw:

Look closely, the leopard's on this tree... this was the distance we had to see it at :( But thanks to the W's ultra super lenses, we were able to get the close-up on the leopard.

The park was also littered with baobab trees - beautiful upside down trees!

Sunset as we drove back to Tarangire Sopa Lodge for dinner and SLEEP!!

Sopa Lodge was really posh, but it didn't have the coziness and character of Rhino Crater Lodge! (but I realise that this collage (which rebec made!) actually makes the Sopa Lodge look quite nice lor. well it was lar.)

The Lodge was set amongst the foliage and animals were wondering in and out of the lodge the whole time. We had to be escorted by the night guard whenever we left our rooms! Wanlin and Li Ling ran into an elephant on the way to their room, and while Rebec was showering and I was standing alone near the balcony of our room, there was suddenly a loud snort right outside which scared me out of my wits!! I drew the curtains and ran back into the room screaming for Rebec, who was like, "Aiyo relak lah, they can't come in! Take picture of it!" And when she came out of the bathroom she valiantly went to peer outside the balcony in an attempt to spot the creature which scared me so. [please note, currently, rebec is editing TY's post. aka she is writing as first person TY.. aka this part of the blog is probably rather biased.-WL

Tarangire National Park! Highest density of elephants (no/sq mtr) in the world.

Arusha to Ngorogoro Crater Conservation Area

So after a good night's rest and wonderful hospitality from Willie, we set off bright and early the next morning at 7am (this pretty much was the time we woke up for the next 10 days or so) for our SAFARI ADVENTURE!

First stop: Ngorogoro Crater Conservation Area.

After a 2hr-drive which included sleeping and last-minute mugging on the various animals we might possibly spot (and R proclaimed, "I bet you guys won't be able to tell the difference between a Thomson's Gazelle and an Impala!" - which was true, at first.)

We stopped over at a viewpoint for pix with Lake Manyara;

After another hour of climbing the crater rim, we finally entered the Ngorongoro Conservation Area... and we saw...

COWS.

Yes, you saw right, the first animals we saw at the entrance of the Crater were cows. We were all so hyped up to see our animals that we were whipping out our cameras and what-nots when our guide (Karim) shouted to us, "No, no, those are just cows!" and hence not very photo-worthy.

Once we got into the park proper, we saw the REAL animals and here we go.

Presenting......

\

Zebra crossing!

Black Rhinos which are supposed to be really really really really rare and terribly hard to spot. You think this picture is far? This is abt as close as all our lenses combined. Better than the binoculars Karim had. But it still took Liling half an hr to actually spot the rhinos through the lenses!

Everyone (meaning around 20 safari cars) gathered around this lake for lunch and there were eagles circling the sky for any chance to swop down and grab our lunch. Not that there was much of a lunch to say the least:

W's eating the samosa which is the only tasty thing in the box. We had almost the same lunchbox for the next three days :( "Almost" becos the only thing missing is the samosa!!!!!! :( :( :(

After lunch, Karim got wind from his radio there was lion spotting! We raced to the spot, weaving in and out of the 10+ safari vehicles that reached before us, jostled for a spot and we saw the lion

's feet.

That bugger of a lion was lying with all fours up, snoozing like nobody's business!!!!!!!!!!!! Argh! We waited for a good 20min for it to wake up but it never did - despite R's attempts to wake it up by clapping and whistling and making clucking noises.

And the animals continued after lunch：

Partially submerged Hippos (in case you didn't realise)

All in all, we were rather happy with our first day's findings :)

Thereafter, we headed to Rhino Lodge - highly recommended for anyone intending to visit Ngorogoro.

They have a very nice dining area where people can sit around a fireplace and drink hot chocolate! (it was very cold - Africa is a much colder place than any of us imagined) Yummy~!

We had the chance to eat with our guide as well and learnt much Swahili from him - which we promptly forgot after dinner.

Lastly, the lodge provided us with hot water bottles that were extremely comforting in the cold of the night!!!!

And off to bed we go!

Crew Introduction..Dar and Lushoto

First things first, the crew that were the key participants in The Great Tanzanian Adventure!

Starting from the girl who is standing in the white top and blue denim skirt..
Rebecca! Our host (aka Rebec, aka R in these posts)

(Going clockwise, and adding some anecdotes)
Li Ling (aka Li, who hates/is afraid of birds and ketchup) ,
Qihui (aka Kiwi, who is accident prone and can break anything. One time nickname was Goddess of Destruction),
Wanlin/Win (aka W in these posts, who sacrifices herself by being the one who gets BITTEN BY ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING hence saving others from malaria and other sad things.),
Tian Yun (aka TY, who is the shortest. we always make fun of her about her height ;P), and
Su-Anne (aka Su, who hates fruits.. and got a fruit platter and fruit juice as the first dishes for her birthday morning breakfast).

Oh! no anecdote for Rebec! she's the one who loves "sour sour" aka preserved fruits like orange peel and sour plums, and is our "mama" for the trip! --> mama, apart from the biological sense, she was literally our mama, aka she drove us around, gave us "allowance" (aka Tanzanian shillings that are not easy to get), helped us bargain (she knows swahili) and handled all the administrative stuff, was in charge of the "common fund" from which most things are paid from, planned and executed a lot of our itinerary, and even was our tour guide for a lot of the places we went to! (THANK YOU!!!)

One other thing you should know about us-- we are car sleepers. aka, once the engine gets crankin, and the trip takes more than 5 mins, all of us fall asleep. almost without exception. So.. you're probably going to get lucky and see some unglam photos of us asleep in the car.

1st destination! 5 hours drive to Lushoto, on the way, the gods decided that we clearly needed some spice in our adventure (to make it Great)... so the car broke down--overheated! apparently at the Exact spot that Rebec's same car overheated on the same journey to Lushoto, and our car ended up being parked next to the Same meat bbq store as last time!

This was beside our car for the next 45 mins..

Lushoto high up in the mountains, beautiful, and true to its name, lush green trees all around (although its pronounced "loo-sho-toh"). Very much the antithesis of what we'd expect to see in Africa in the dry season.

-->This was us during our 3.5 hour trek around Lushoto. We'd started trekking at 3 ish PM, on a quest to see a waterfall--which turned out to be quite disappointingly non-watery, since it was the dry season. On the way back, our 75 year old guide asked us if we wanted to take the longer route, and we said why not? This started out very nicely.. we saw agriculture fields, the routes were very manageable. However, it soon turned into trekking in jungle-like terrain along paths that sometimes didn't even really seem to be there, and we weren't 100% sure that the guide knew where he was going, and it was rapidly turning dark... But clearly our fears were for naught! we arrived back in the village before it was COMPLETELY dark YAY! But oh yes, the photo is to show you how lush Lushoto can be.

The waterfall... do you see it behind us? Do you get what i mean by it is non-watery?????!!!

Our 75 year old guide (who was probably the most fit of all of us.. and gave us sticks to walk with, and whacked thorny plants out of our pathway..) (Thorny plant = REALLY THORNY PLANTS, poor liling and qihui were wearing sandals.. and got a lot of scratches :( ) and 2 boys who gave us picked wild Calla Lilies) 

Waiting for dinner to start.. its zi4 pai1 (aka self-phototaking) time! --> TY looks a little.. squished.

The Viewpoint of Lushoto--> A steep drop!!!!! (I basically army-crawled to the edge.. we were too scared to stand up!)

At the top of the world!


A chameleon that came to hang out with Li and Qihui..