Post Serengeti- pre Uganda

greetings from mwanza, a town in NW Tanzania, along the lovely lake Victoria.

last few days were spent soaking in the beauty of serengeti plains, ngorongoro crater, and lake manyara park. just as wonderful as everyone rambles about so that should suffice.

highlights
- watching giraffes play fight in a courting ritual,
-seeing hundred thousand wildebeest spread out over plains(I imagine a lot like looking at Woodstock festival- hairy, dirty, things everywhere) ,
-feeling complete sense of awe/glory at expanse of plains of serengeti "endless plains"
-getting a good hitchhike in middle of serengeti national park in a Honda civic.
-learning a bit of Spanish from the Spanish couple I traveled with, such as elephante(elephant for those unlearned)

ramblings
*a zebra is a donkey in drag
*no matter who I talked with (animal or person) I could not find any proof of large numbers of animals gathering and singing/dancing in a choreographed fashioned, let alone sing
*the tribal masai people (Tanzania and Kenya) must be related somehow to Scottish people as they both wear kilts.
*giraffes should be in the big five, I mean come on.
*i kept thinking how great it would be to go off road motorcycling in the serengeti if it werent for those stupid animals.
*once an enginerd, always. while on game drive i caught myself trying to figure out how roof mechanism works

note on safaris- there are two sides, the animal side, which most are similar; and the behind the scenes side, ie transport, food, guide, cook. for the second part just try to imagine what you want out of it and get them to put it in writing. a lot of the services are extremely close but the cost differs quite a bit. The basic safari is just that but was plenty for me.