This will likely be the last entry of my trip, since I fly
out to London tomorrow, and onward to New York on Friday. Don’t be too sad, readers! I’m already plotting my next big adventure
and believe me: it is going to be spectacular.
I just said goodbye to the HBS group as we wrapped up three
days of safari drives through Serengeti National Park and the Ngorogoro crater. They are continuing on for one more day, but
I have a flight to catch since my dear friends Sarah and Paolo are getting
married on Saturday at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens! It was a bit sad to leave everyone, but after
three days of game drives and all-you-can-eat buffets, I’m starting to feel a
bit soft around the waist. I got buff on
Kili, and I don’t want to lose that just yet! Time to get moving again!
After our first shower in a week last Sunday, we piled in
Land Cruisers and drove out into the wild on Monday morning. Monday and Tuesday were spent in the Serengeti,
were we spotted herds of zebras, lazy leopards, migrating wildebeasts, and a
host of other animals. The dirt roads
were bumpy (though better than many I’ve been on during my month in Africa) and
we sometimes drove long periods without sighting any animals, but ultimately we
found four of the big five (which are officially: lions, leopards, buffalos,
elephants, and rhinos) as well as more giraffes than I could have wished for
(my personal favorite). The evenings
were spent in the lodge, enjoying the amenities of the modern era like flush
toilets, suede couches, and Fanta.
Then today we had a full-day drive through the Ngorogoro
crater, often called the cradle of civilization since the oldest fossils
directly linking to humans were found here (the skeleton was called Lucy, though
they also have a stretch of footprints and a cornucopia of other bones, tools,
and fossils dating back over 3 million years).
It’s also a fertile basin of flora and fauna alike, with everything from
the big five (we finally saw a rhino here) to flamingos, ostriches, baboons,
zebras, topis, warthogs, and a whole lot more. They seemed to peacefully coexist,
though clearly things get interesting when certain animals get hungry… It was amazing and I got some spectacular
photos (uploaded soon, I promise!).
All in all, it was a great few days of relaxation and a
chance to see the wildlife of East Africa.
And yet, I can’t believe my adventure has come to a close – it has gone
so fast! I have one more week of
domestic travel in the US and then I’m back to Boston for my final semester of
business school. I can’t believe my HBS
adventure has gone so fast! Four more
months of cases and conferences and sharpened pencils and then… then I graduate
for (possibly) the last time. Whoa. I
can’t think of that right now. Now I need to do laundry, pack my backpack one
last time, and hop into bed. I want to
catch one last sunrise here.
