Safari Adventures

Friday morning was a 3:30am wakeup for our trek to Safari land. We all piled into three Land Cruisers - or what we liked to call them "legit safari cars" - and drove about three hours to a very secluded game park in the eastern province of Rwanda. We really got a taste of true Rwanda driving through the villages to our safari. Children were screaming and running after our cars yelling "muzungu! muzungu!"; it was as if they had never seen white people before - and it really is a rare experience for them. People just don't have cars in these villages, never mind white people sitting on the roofs of them. They acted as if it was the most exciting thing that has happened to them all week (to be honest it very well could be).

Besides getting two flat tires, getting stuck in a pile of dirt, a couple people falling off our cars, and getting our food stolen by a nasty baboon, our safari adventure was amazing. Sitting on top of land cruisers while driving over mountains, watching beautiful animals in their natural habitat on the continent of Africa is such an amazing experience. Apparently elephants live in Akagera (the game park we “safaried” in), but after driving for two days desperately looking, we didn’t find any. We did however, come across dozens of zebras, a huge family of giraffes, water buffalo, baboons, monkeys, impalas, warthogs, hippos, and more. After the first day of safari, our three drivers took us to the highest peak of the tallest mountain, overlooking a lake to camp out for the night. As soon as we took out our food, a huge baboon jumped into our campsite and stole our two bags of cookies and peanuts. With no hesitation every one of us ran away from this baboon because we knew of their very aggressive nature. After this baboon invaded our food, he sat himself down about 10 yards away and decided to feast on our cookies right in front of us. We decided to keep our food in very close quarters after this exciting event. The next morning we woke up at sunrise, ate our oatmeal breakfast and continued on day two of our safari. Although we lathered ourselves with sunscreen, just about every one of us got burnt between the two days – but it was so incredibly worth it. 

                                    

                                                    beauteous safari through the mountains

                                                                spotted some hippos 

                                                          a beautiful family of giraffes