Holy Hyena!

Hello all from the singing city of Cairo! It's hot. And noisy. Car horns beeping. Mosque's singing. And it's crowded. And almost everyone here is trying to rip us off. But we just ate this awesome dinner for $2 each and we have an awesome view of the Nile River and the Cairo Tower from our hostel window, and all for under $10 a night!
Since Zanzibar - We drove to Arusha, Tanzania and from there safaried off into the Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti. I don't even know where to begin to tell you how awesome that safari was! It was just awesome! We had an afternoon game drive into the Ngorongoro Crater on the first day. Does anyone know where Ngorongoro gets it's name from? Anyone? Well, I'll tell you. The Ngorongoro Crater sits in the middle of the Maasai people's territory, and the Maasai people are nomadic cattle herders. They put bells around their cows necks, and before theTanzanian government prohibited them from living there, the crater was full of the Maasai and their cows, and you could just hear the sound of the cow bells throughout the crater: ngoro ngoro ngoro. That's what a cow bell sounds like. Say it out loud, you'll hear it.
OK, so we were in a safari truck with 4 others and our guide, Simba (his name is lion in Swahili!) The crater is not very big, but a ton of animals live there - all the cool ones, except for giraffe, it's too steep for them - so you're pretty much guaranteed to see a lot. Here's a quick run down of all the awesome stuff we saw: A rhino which is really rare there. 7 lions and a couple of cubs. A female ostrich doing a mating dance and then a male ostrich chasing her at full speed around and around in circles. A cheetah!!!! One of only 3 that live in the crater! A hippo humping another hippo. And - are you ready for it? - The best thing we've seen yet! A hyena chase and take down a full grown wildebeest on it's own!!! Do you know how rare it is to see that?? Our guide has been doing this for 6 years and he's only seen 12 kills. And to see a hyena, alone, take down a full grown wildebeest! Just crazy! I'll spare you the details since it was pretty gory, but we did get some pretty good shots and we do have a video of it (whenever I get around to uploading those photos).
OK, so we camped on the ridge of the crater that night and all night long we could here wild bush pigs sniffing around our tents and zebra wandering through our camp. Next day we drove to the Olduvai Gorge and looked into the valley where they found some of the oldest fossils, and the oldest foot prints of man. It was neat, and the museum was interesting, but you can't see the footprints anymore since they covered them back up to protect them.
Then we drove into the Serengeti! The Serengeti! Speaking of Serengeti, does anyone want to take a guess at how that got it's name? No? I'll tell you. The Maasai called it the Siringet - meaning endless plain - but when the mzungus (white men) came they couldn't say Siringet, so they called it Serengeti.
It really was so beautiful and seemingly endless. One of the first things we saw when we got there was a huge male lion lying atop a giant rock, like he was posing for us. At the bottom of the rock was another male lion, sleeping, and just across from them on another rock were 2 female lions. We were so close to them!
What else did we see? Well, baboons and monkeys and zebra and ostrich and gazelles and hartebeast, well tons of different antelope, and elephants and the only one of the big 5 that we hadn't seen yet: the leopard! We saw a female leopard and her 2 cubs hanging out on a rock! That was great. And we saw more lions after that. And the next day we saw 5 cheetahs - one with her cub stalking gazelle. And a lioness nursing her baby cub right on the side of the road! So awesome!
OK, after all that we drove back to Arusha where we went for a village walk through a Maasai village. They are the most photographed tribe in the world, and they really are beautiful and wear wonderful colors. And well, that's pretty much it.
After Arusha we drove to Nairobi, Kenya, which has been the cleanest, friendliest city we have been to so far. We didn't spend enough time there. And then we flew into Cairo late late late last night. And we had a bit of a fright with our cab driver, but all is OK. Our hostel is on the 7th floor of this really dilapidated apartment building, but it is really so wonderful and (amazingly) clean. I uploaded some photos on our flickr page today (I'm trying to catchup!) www.flickr.com/photos/chasetherisingsun The rest of Paris and some of our time volunteering at Enkosini. Enjoy them!

Zanzibar is a magical place

We are sitting in an internet cafe in Stonetown, the capital of Zanzibar, a tiny little dot of an island in the Indian Ocean. It's as beautiful as you think it is. Since we last updated you all we left Zambia after spending way too much time in expensive Livingstone, and drove to Malawi. The scenery is getting more and more beautiful as we drive further away from flat, arid Botswana. Malawi is pretty small, but they say over-populated and impoverished. Statistically somewhere between 30 and 35% of the population has HIV/AIDS, and more than half the population is under 15 years old. The population of children was very noticeable. We spent 4 days camping on the beaches of Lake Malawi which is this huge fresh water lake that sits between Malawi, Tanzania and Mozambique. When I say we camped on the beach, I mean we were right onthe sand, and if there was a tide our tent would have been swept away.The sand was coarse, but white, and the water was crystal clear, blue. There was a pretty decent surf. It was like the perfect beach: just as beautiful as being on the ocean, but with out the salt. One day, Michael and I rented a canoe and snorkle masks and we canoed out to this tiny, rocky island in the lake. The canoes weren't like our N. American canoes. They weren't very stable and we had to keep stopping to bale out water (we were using our snorkle masks). Some ofour friends capsized a couple of times, but that was OK, because there are no sharks in Lake Malawi. We snorkled around the island for a couple of hours. It was like swimming in a fish tank; it was crazy clear. And the fish were the brightest, most colorful fresh water fish I've ever seen! Neon blues and purples. Then we climbed on the island for a little bit. The rocks were black and hot on our feet. A giant fish eagle swooped down and came within a couple of feet from knocking Michael in the head. The view from the top of the island was ridiculous. There are mountains that just poor into the beach.The next day we went on a village walk just outside our campground. We went with a pretty big group. There was one main guide, Jon, and about a dozen and a half other "guides" who walked with us, ultimately trying to sell us stuff. We walked through the village and Jon showed us one of their water pumps and explained how they build their homes.

All the little kids came running out to us and I walked with 3 little ones. At one point I got distracted, giving them each a turn at being picked up, and when I looked up again my group was gone; I was left behind. It was OK though because my friend, Seone was left behind too and a "guide", Dan, stayed behind with us. Well, Dan ended up giving Seone and me our own personal tour and it was great. We met his pregnant sister, and we met a grandmother bringing her grandson back from the clinic with a sore on his leg. And Dan showed us how they grow cassava (one of their main staples) and he dug the root of one up for us so we could try it. It was great! (Dan was ultimately trying to sell us stuff too, so Michael and I bought a small painting from himfor like $4).The next day after that we went to another village, Chimtuba, and we bought this awesome teak carved chair of giraffs and a baobab tree for$15 and a coke. That was fun. And then we hung out on the beach withsome of the local boys and Michael showed them his sketch book and gave one of them his bracelet. They were really cool. At first they tried to sell us stuff, too, but when we showed them we had no money, they just hung out with us. I got the camera and they were all fighting with each other to get their picture taken. They loved to pose and then see the picture on the digital camera. So now we're in Zanzibar, Tanzania. Tanzania is more picturesque and more colorful than the other African countries we've seen so far. Well, maybe not more picturesque, just different. It's more Eastern influenced (squat toilets). Zanzibar is ridiculously beautiful. Wespent 2 days on the beach. The sand is like flour - soft and powdery.The water is like neon blue and warm. We tried to go snorkling oneday, but all of the sudden we found ourselves swimming in a swarm of jellyfish. We freaked out a bit and got out of there. We didn't really get stung, just little pin pricks, but it was crazy scarey. That night we went for a walk on the beach. We sat just looking at the stars, andt his Massai guy came and sat with us. His name was Yacob. He's from the Massai tribe on the main land and I guess owners of shops bring the tribal guys out to the island to help them sell stuff. Yacob was awesome. He didn't speak much English, but we taught him some more words, and he tried to teach us some Swahili. We hung out with him for like 2 hours.Yesterday we took a tour of the island. We went to the old slave market, and palace ruins, and an old Arab fort, and then we took a tour of a spice plantation. Zanzibar is the spice capital of theworld. For lunch they served us fresh fruit from the farm: oranges, passion fruit, custard melon, mango, mangostein, rambutan, bananas, pineapple, and teas: lemon grass, marsala, and ginger. It was great.Then they showed us how all the spices are grown, and this guy climbed up like a 30 foot coconut tree (I don't really know how tall it was -I'm really bad at estimating, but it was freakin' tall) and he dropped down a bunch of conocnuts, so we had coconut milk and meat for desert. Last night we had dinner at a vegetarian restaurant! and then walked around a night market. We've discovered that if we tell people that we're from America (b/c everyone asks) they want to sell you shit and they try to rip you off. So now we tell people we're from Dry Tortuga. No one knows where or what that is, so they just leave us alone, orthey just chat with us. It's good. Well, we go back to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania today and then to Arusha and then to the Ngorogoro Crater and then the Serengeti and then Nairobi and then Cairo. We are happy and having a wonderful time. We'll upload more pictures when we get some time, and I'll try to update our blog. I know, I've beenslacking.