Kilimanjaro Expedition Dispatch

January 31, 2013 – The Days Get Better and Better

Hi, this is Terri. Well, today we’ve had a fantastic day! We started off at 6am today and we went down to the crater, or the calderas. We started off by seeing tons of zebras, so previously we were seeing tons of elephants now we saw zebras. And what was really fascinating is in the crater, the zebras, and wildebeests, and gazelles, they’re all together! Lions are sleeping right in the middle of them all! It’s really fascinating! Then we set our breakfast time. We had a breakfast picnic and we watched the hippos. We watched them, we listened to them, we took pictures of them and it was so serene. Who knew you could sit and have breakfast with the hippos? Then, it got even better. Hard to imagine after each day goes by, it just gets better and better.

Today at 10 o’clock, a pride of 11 lions, and they were stalking three zebras. First thing of the list, the zebra got away. It was fascinating to watch the way that they maneuvered and they worked as a team. Then we got to see the whole thing, and the zebra got away, which was pretty cool, the lions are a little lazy, they actually run out of frequent steam. They have short bursts of energy.

So, after we watched that, David did a great job, because he positioned our vehicle; he kept moving our vehicle as one of the lions was walking back and a lion walked away from our vehicle, it literally had to go around our vehicle.

All in all, in the first seven hours of the day, we have seen so much and every single day has been like this. At dinner at night, we just keep saying, how much, how do you describe this to someone? It’s just fantastic. So, Asante Sana! David’s doing a marvelous talk for us and were having a wonderful moment, and I did want to say, Hi mom!! Bye!

Listen to Terri's call

Coca Cola - it's everywhere!

Zebras grazing in the hot African sun

Wildebeests are great in number

Hippo watching

Lions work well together

The King of the Jungle