Tina F.
Semester At Sea
Journal #9

Jambo!

Well, Tanzania, just like the rest of the countries, was awesome! The first day I went on the city orientation with Semester at Sea. We went to the national museum, a village museum which has a bunch of authentic houses of different ethnic groups. Next was the House of Crafts where we got to see how different crafts are made. On the drive back to the ship we passed the college and the house of the President. That night we met friends for dinner then went back to the ship because Dar es Salaam is very dangerous at night. The next day was our market day. We just shopped and walked around the city.

On the third day I left on my safari. We had a 4 1/2 hour bus ride to Mikumi game reserve. Once we arrived we got settled in our cabins. I was lucky and somehow got my own room with a double bed, desk, shelves, and a porch. The other four girls in my cabin were all in one room with twin beds.
At about 3:00 we left for our first game drive. We rode around in buses, and saw lions, wildebeest, zebras, baboons, antelope and impalas. The lions were awesome, they had just killed a zebra and we eating it while we were there. We arrived back at the cabins by about 6:00 and had some dinner and drinks. As we ate in the open restaurant we watched a family of elephants play in the watering hole about 50 ft. away from us.

At 10:00 the electricity is turned off, so we went to our cabins for the night. Everyone went to bed, and I read for a little while by candlelight.

The next morning we received a wake up knock on the door at 5:30 to be ready for coffee and sunrise at 6:00. We went on another 3 hour game drive and saw just about the same animals except we saw giraffes and warthogs also. We came back to the camp with a breakfast buffet ready for us. We had free time until 3:00 when we went on another game drive. During this time we went swimming in the pool, I went for a short run and ate lunch. This game drive was pretty much the same, we didn't see any new animals. This night we had dinner and watched a performance by a cultural troupe, which was really cool. We went to bed early again, and got up for one last game drive the next morning. We had some lunch before we started on our drive back to Dar es Salaam. We arrived back at the ship that evening and took off for South Africa.

During this stretch we had Neptune day. We didn't have any classes to celebrate crossing the equator. I had fish guts (pancake mix) dumped on me and I had to kiss a fish and King Neptune's foot. It was pretty gross! We had basketball and Volleyball tournaments all day, and just hung out. It was a lot of fun! Well, next stop is Cape Town!

Tina...

Pick A Journal:

#1
#2
#3
#4
#5
#6
#7
#8
#9
#10
#11