Weekend on Safari!

Soooo, don't ask me how I'm going to catch up on this blog...I am so far behind and I did so much over the weekend....but I'm going to give it a try...so here we go!
Thursday afternoon we left in our 3 Safari Jeeps from the home base! There were four of us to a car and it was farely comfortable for Mackie, Emily, Becca, and myself for our 5 hour bumpy, dirt road drive to Mikumi National Park. We all slept pretty much the whole way there with the help of our iPods and a pit stop to get soft drinks on the side of the road. Mosheet (i guess thats how you spell it), our driver, was about to pull back out on the road from our pitstop when I saw some people selling spears. Remembering that Becca wanted a spear to bring home I called out to the guy who ended up selling 3 of us spears. With spears in hand, we made our way again to Mikumi. Finally arriving, the drive through the park to our hotel was absolutely gorgeous. I have never seen a sunset quite like the one we saw that night...it was breathtaking! We finally got to the "tent hotel" a little after dark and it was awesome! All of the walkways were lit with candlelight and 2 of us shared a luxury tent. Macki and I stayed in Tent #9. The tents were too cool, they had two beds in them and really looked like the inside of a hotel room....warm showers and all...even though they ran "off the sun", so it was only warm if it was a hot day outside! We had a quick, amazing dinner....with CHOCOLATE CAKE for desert (satisfying all of our sweet tooths!) and BREAD WITH BUTTER! I don't think any of us knew just how much we could appreciate these two things! LOL. After dinner we all went to sleep since we knew we had an early call in the morning!
Friday morning we got up at six for our first game drive!!! Sunrise was pretty, but it was pretty cloudy out. That morning was the first time that I think all of us could have said we had actually been cold since we arrived in Africa! It was pretty refreshing actually! We saw all kinds of animals...giraffes, elephants, hippos, antelopes, wildebeests, a few lions...it was pretty awesome! After a 3 hour game drive (with our, come to find out, horrible driver lol) we made our way back for breakfast with EGGS! haha...and then all of us took a nap before lunch and our second game drive. At the very beginning of the second drive, we saw a group of like 30 giraffes all standing together! It was really cool and we took tons of great pictures (thanks to Dads camera!)!!! I was all decked out in the most stereotypical safari gear ever too...hat and all! And dont worry...we got tons of funny pictures of that too! That night we had dinner and went to bed.
Woke up Saturday morning and our last game drive for about 2 hours...didn't see a whole lot that morning...but we saw plenty the day before so Hakuna Matata (and yes they actually say that a lot here : )! We then loaded up the jeeps with our stuff to make our 2 hour drive to Udzungwa National Park! We unpacked our stuff and gave it to the porters....who carry our stuff to the top of the mountain along with all the camping gear and food! We were veryyyy gracious! LOL. We went and checked in at the headquarters about 10km down the road and then started our VERY uphill hike to the top of Sanje Falls ( the tallest waterfall in all of Tanzania)! We got halfway up and then 5 of us decided to jump into the pools at the bottom of the falls! I had all my clothes on...but who could pass up an opportunity to swim in a waterfall in Africa! After swimming, I finished another hour of, now wet, hiking to to top! When we asked the guide how much longer the hike was, he said one hour which ended up being more like 10 minutes! That was a great surprise! By the time we got to the top of the waterfall, where we were camping, all of our tents were already set up and food had already began being cooked! Our tents were literally RIGHT BESIDE the 180 meter waterfall and you could stand on the top of the rocks on the falls and look out over what seemed like all of Africa! It was so pretty! Since it was pretty late when we got there, we all ate Spaghetti for dinner! Dont ask me how they prepared such good spaghetti over a little camping fire, but it was delicioso! After dinner, all of us were asleep in our tents by 7:30 pm! In the middle of the night, I woke up and thought I had pee'd the bed hahaha! but come to find out it was pouring down rain and we practically had a river coming through our tent! haha...but the porters and guides had been nice enough to bag all of our stuff up right when they heard it start raining! So all of our stuff was saved! Another guy on the trip, Dan, also said that in the middle of the night, he stepped outside of his tent to pee and he looked to the right and there was a huge babboon just standing there staring at him! I dont think Dan has ever jumped back into a tent so fast in his life! We woke up at like 5:45 the next morning after an interesting evening of 3 of us to a tent and sat on top of the waterfall to watch the sunrise! After breakfast, we made our way up the mountain some more....to the top of the second 30m waterfall and the third 70m watefall! Once we got to the top, we made our way back down the mountain...which was much faster than coming up...and actually a really cool hike through the rainforest! The coolest part was the MONKEYS! They were EVERYWHERE and would jump from tree to tree right over heads! It was almost impossible to get pictures of them because they were so fast! Once we finally got down, we immediately got in our jeeps and started our 7 hour journey back to Bagamoyo! It was long but once again, we slept the whole way...aside from a random pitstop on the side of the road where all of us 20 white people ate box lunches on the side of the road....im sure we were a sight to see from the locals who only laughed at us! haha. When we all got back to Bagamoyo, we were all thrilled to take showers, eat dinner, and immediately go to bed! It was a long weekend, but an amazing one! And all of us were so thankful for Ashley planning such a great weekend! Everything about it was perfect!