Serengeti Last Day

Today has been an incredible last day. Rhonda and I began our day with coffee at our tents while we watched the sun rise. I love it that in some places you can order coffee with your wake up call. Now I'm spoiled!  Sayari Camp has been a great place to spend our last 3 nights in Tanzania.

We decided to just do a morning game drive so that we can get our last glimpse of animals here before we have to say goodbye to Tanzania. We tried for a while to find lions but they just did not want to be seen. It's all about timing as we have discovered on this trip.  One moment you can be surprised by some animal coming out of the bush to driving around looking for animals. 

After not finding any lions we turned back to the Mara river. It was a good thing we did.  I think yesterday's evening rain cleared the sky and all the animals came out.  What a surprise when we found these hippos. Thèy looked like rocks from the distance but a closer looked found them laying in the sun. 

Next we found these giraffes wading in the river where they could get a drink. 

As I mentioned yesterday I only found 4 crocs.  Well today a lot more came out to lay in the sun. We think we saw at least 15 at different sections of the river. It was funny seeing them laying close to the hippos. I guess it's the whole concept of keeping your enemy close. 

And would you believe this?  We found elephants!  Just when I thought none would be seen when Justin yelled out "elephant across the river"!  There were two bulls eating grass along the river. Then we saw a family of at least 10 across the river. Finally the below family was near our camp.  So my record held. Elephants were seen every day but the first day on our trip. 

It's been an amazing journey.  I know it's 4th of July today but this has been a special place to celebrate it. They even made a star spangled banner cake for us today. But getting back to this journey, I couldn't have asked for a better person in Rhonda to share it with. We have been very privileged to experience Tanzania in a way that I have a hard time explaining. If this is Africa, I hope to see more of it one day. The people are friendly and live a more simpler life that we should embrace.  And this is nature that only God could have created for everything is in harmony here.  All to often we allow our lives to be complicated with goals and accomplishments and forget that we should be living in the moment. That to just be in the grace of a moment, we can connect with what is more important which is not the world that the media and tv says we should follow. So I hope I can continue to be inspired in this way to what is more important.