Africa Part V- WHEN BABOONS ATTACK!

I know it’s wrong to dislike people you don’t know and it’s something I’ll probably struggle to control the rest of my life. At the end of our 4th day we sat down to our first dinner at Mbuzi Mawe which is considered by some to be a luxury tent resort.

Luxury, African Style

Unfortunately some people bring their luxury tent attitudes with them and this resort would be no different- an older caucasian lady who seemed like she was perhaps from the old school mentality of the south or bible belt was sitting with a group of ladies across from us. I inherited my nosey gene from my mom’s side and I could overhear the conversation at the table and could tell they were likely strangers before this trip. She appeared to be part of a group tour where they took random pairs of people and paired them up in a safari jeep to keep their overall cost down. She was definitely belle of the ball as she wore not-so-safari-appropriate leisure suit and a face full of make-up to dinner with her hair in an antiquated yet high-maintenance style. I dubbed her the missing member of the Golden Girls.

Based on her treatment of our most gracious dinner staff I was able to immediately gather that this lady would be on my shit list after hearing her speak for only 2 minutes. You have to realize that we are in Africa and the staff is not only doing its best to be pleasing to their clientele, but they have put an extraordinary amount of effort to learn the english language to be more accommodating. The language barrier only served to annoy and frustrate GG #6 and she spoke so rudely I was embarrassed for Americans everywhere.

“Now I’ve told you with the dessert you always bring me too much! I only want 1 cookie, I DONT NEED 3! Do you understand me?”

You can imagine my glee when we started day 5 when at breakfast the painted lady was describing her horror that an animal was in her tent. I gestured over to her table for Karl, Julie, and Carrie to listen in and we apparently Golden Girl had her tent opened and a baboon proceeded to steal the cake the staff implored her to NOT bring back to her tent and defecate on her open suitcase full of clothes in the process.

Maybe it was his way of saying:

So I googled “Happy Asian Man” and this is what came up. Here’s to you Mr. Pooping Baboon.

We did our best to not make it so obvious that we were enjoying her misfortune. I laughed my ass off. Hey, haters gonna hate!

Trolololololololo

Even our breakfast was impressed, just ask Mr. Fingerling Potato:

When Chriss picked us up for the game drive we told him the baboon story and he said he had heard- I guess the staff wasn’t much of a fan of her either so they were likely high-fiving in the staff lounge.

What a good start to the day, BABOON POOP WIN!

New animal encounters of the day would be the hippos and a crocodile basking in the sun.

Just like in zoos, crocs don’t do much- lazy bastards:

We were fortunate enough to witness a couple of giraffes duking it out for superiority:

And got stuck in the mud but helped out:

The oddly put together Hyrax would make our acquaintance. Julie, Karl, and Carrie weren’t too fond of trying to walk past these guys when they were basking at arm’s length (and face length being high up on rocks). I thought they were ok and got closer.

Carrie stayed up on her photography game:

I decided our pictures were getting boring so I decided to spice things up:

and

“What’s that you say, pics getting boring?” I guess I musta said that too loud because a ready and willing giraffe was ready to change all of that.

The highlight of day 5 (aside from the Baboon story) was by far another close encounter of the wild animal kind. We were enjoying our boxed lunch (as much as one can enjoy a boxed lunch) when we saw a giraffe in the distance about 50 yards away which is pretty close by Safari standards.

Oh that’s just the beginning!

The giraffe took no issue with the picnicking humans and meandered his way towards us, tree by tree until he was snacking on the very tree that was providing us shade.

I think by far the most surprising thing about the safari is the seemingly unfettered up-close-and-personal access we’ve had. First the elephant attack, then the lion right under our jeep, and now the giraffe. So dope.

This dummy got a lil too close:

We spent the rest of the day searching and searching for the Cheetah. I mean REALLY searching!

The cheetahs would elude us this day, but we headed back and winded the day down with beers and cards (crazy 8′s son!) and salty rice crackers over Drake’s new album. Drake’s first album served as my daily soundtrack for Japan last year and it seemed his new one would help me pass the somewhat slow nights on the African Savannah.