LAKE MANYARA ,,,,,,,,,,,, An I had my own private safari through Lake Manyara National Park, the park to visit if you wanted to see leopards or lions up in the trees. I was told they did that because of all the underbrush. It was the only way to find their prey. Well, I wanted to see that. Yep, I wanted to see that. Nope, I didn't see it. We drove all around the place and there were no cats to be found anywhere.

What did I see? Of course, there were the normal elephants, zebras, and giraffes. (Could they ever really be seen as normal?) Then, I saw about 30 mongooses? (mongeese?) running in a pack. I also saw at least one hundred olive baboons and most of them were in single file.

Probably the most unforgettable discovery was that tsetse flies could bite through clothing. Yeah, I got a lot of tsetse fly bites. They could cause sleeping sickness (whatever that was, and I sure didn't want to find out first-hand.)

After the very unsuccessful safari, I traded my last 8000 Tanzanian shillings ($10.00) and a dirty shirt for a Maasai necklace. I hadn't bought much in the line of souvenirs throughout the trip so I certainly didn't mind this splurge.