This morning I flew from EDI back to JFK and have quite a layover before I arrive back in Denver tonight. I am so grateful I had this experience and I hope I have the chance to come back to Scotland in the future!
After departing on Wednesday from Denver, we arrived in Tanzania on Friday morning. We were fortunate to have no flight delays, which made everything run smoothly. The hardest part was just making sure we all stayed awake during our 8 hour layover in Frankfurt so that we would sleep on the flight to Kiliminjaro! As we were descending in Tanzania we had the most stunning views on Kiliminjaro (19,341), it felt surreal to being seeing this iconic mountain in person. We landed in Kiliminjaro at 7:30 and the morning and met up with our guide. We drove about an hour to our hotel in Arusha. We are staying at the Grand Melia Hotel and the grounds are beautiful. The hotel has beautiful views of Mt. Meru (14,968), their own coffee plantation, bee hives, and farm. At breakfast I enjoyed a latte and the coffee was so smooth and delicious. Of course it made me think of Karen (my amazing mother-in-law) so I had to go take a picture of these coffee beans! The boys enjoyed all of the pastries at ...
Today we embarked on our journey to Tanzania and Kenya. In celebration of their 40th anniversary, my parents are taking their children and grandchildren on safari in East Africa. Needless to say we are super excited! We finalized our packing and are hoping to travel 100% carry on; however we will see how things pan out as we board the plane. We know to expect the unexpected! Rick and David are especially excited for wildlife watch. We have been talking about all the new people we will meet, food we will eat, and animals that we will see on our adventure. Here's to a (relatively) smooth day of travel. Our first stop will be in Frankfurt, Germany and then it will be off to Tanzania!
Yesterday we arrived at Ngorongoro Crater, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This was one of our most anticipated parks, it has been a dream of Richard's to come here since he was four years old! Since we still had some light left in the day we went onto our balcony to see if we could spot some animals with our binoculars and telephoto lens. We had some great luck! From our room we got pictures of: -Elephants -Black Rhinoceros -Speckled Mousebird The next day we had a full day of safari in the crater. We had a fantastic day with quite a bit of wildlife sightings! Wildlife Count: -Wildebeest -Warthog -Thomson's Gazelle -Grant's Gazelle -Common Zebra -Helmeted Guineafowl -Sacred Ibis -Ostrich -Egrets -Gray-crowned crane -Gray heron -African spoonbill -Flamingo -Hippopotamus -Black Rhiniceros -Lion ...