SO MANY ELEPHANTS.

But that's skipping a bit.

We ate pumpkin soup, french fries, rice, chicken, a hot salad, a cold salad, and probably a few other things. Had a class. There was another group staying at the campsite and by sheer weird coincidence, a kid Swaffy knew from school was with that group, they were doing wildlife conservation work. So after I talked to David for a bit about my essay and whatnot, I joined a group talking to this friend of Swaffy's, Evan. From Montana originally, decent enough guy, we exchanged e-mails and all that business at the end. I was up until after 11 trying to get my batteries fully charged, but they didn't finish, so meh.

Woke up, had breakfast, and headed out for Tangirie National Park. It was a more typical savannah than our last two sites. The first had this constant alternation business going on, Ngorongoro was more of a grassland than a savannah due to the lack of the trees in the middle, though there were more trees along the edges. Tangirie DEFINITELY had trees, but still not a forest, so definitely a savannah. Huge baobabs were just everywhere. The wildlife was slow at first, though we got a great view of a warthog and a few birds, including the absolutely beautiful superb starling, but it was by no means a slow day. We saw giraffes eating, antelopes (impalas?) locking horns and wrestling, baboons, more and more warthogs including a mother with two babies, lots of birds including a gorgeous lilac-chested roller and a hornbill (both of which we saw eating, by the way), and a freakish number of elephants. At first we saw elephants far away in a herd, they were absolutely enormous, and we saw some eating, some dust bathing. Later on though, on the way back, we saw one that was close. I mean, when it sprayed mud and water on itself, we could hear it, it was that close. It only had one tusk, interestingly. Honestly, it was so close it was almost intimidating. We watched it bathe for a long time, watched it sit under a tree, scratching itself maybe? Not sure, and eventually it walked off and we left it alone. It was a truly awesome experience though, to be that close to such a large animal.

And we saw some more elephants besides that, too.

We drove out, I slept most of the ride back to Center House, and here we are now. Dinner at's 6:30, and we'll see what happens from there.

Thursday, February 25th, roughly 5:30 PM local time