We had a long drive this morning to get to our lodge for lunch. It’s near the crater. Tomorrow will be a fantastic day!

We were driving like the fast and the furious along the rough roads.

The car bumped as I took this, but I love it!

You’ll have to zoom in to see the wildebeest on the horizon. There were thousands of them from one side of the horizon to the other.

And all of them, including lots of zebras, seemed to be intent on crossing the road in front of us. There a few near misses… zebras are reckless and wildebeest have a devil may care streak.

The roads were dry here. The people on the right side of the jeep had to roll their windows up because the dust was blowing in.
I was on the front left side, so I was golden.

After a while we left the Serengeti National Park and went into a conservation area. The Masai people who were kicked off their ancestral lands when the National Park was established are able to live and farm here.

It was strange to see human silhouettes where we’d been seeing only animals.

We were headed for the crater inside an extinct volcano.
There it was.

When we turned up to the gate, there were some Masai men loading goats onto a truck. The bleating of the goats was pitiful.

But first, we had a visit here. Everyone who has ever paid attention at school would know about Louis Leakey and his wife Mary – the palaeontologists who discovered “Lucy” – the skull that proved that Homo Sapiens had ancestors that we evolved from.
We were here, where it all happened.

I was very excited about this. I remember reading about it as a child.
We were taken to a place that overlooks where all of the digging took place.

I wish that photos did views justice. This view was spectacular.

A guy gave us a talk about how/when and where evolution of humans took place and also how scientists gathered all the data. It was very interesting. I took heaps of notes, but the internet is very slow here, so I’ll just give a few points.

(These are the first footsteps of bipedal humans.)

German colony in 1911. A German doctor was here, looking for things to do with sleeping sickness. He collected a few fossils.

Dr Louis Leakey saw the bones collected by the Germans in 1930, so he came here.

1935 he married, then had 28 years of finding nothing. Then in 1959 Mary Leakey discovered a skull that was 1.75 million years old. She was sick with malaria and was just poking around by herself. Her husband was off looking in the completely wrong spot.

Before then, Asia was thought to be the oldest. This changed everything.

Then they discovered Lucy- who was names after Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. It was the 70’s…

And here she is.

4 million years old…. Lucy’s skeleton. Humans walking by two feet. 1metre tall.

Apologies for the awful photo, but it was impossible to take a picture without reflections. This is the oldest rhino known. She was 57 years old when she died of natural causes in the park. Most rhinos die at least 15 years earlier.
The guide said that she lived so long because she didn’t have babies. “She had no worries!”

I bought a beaded star for my epic Christmas tree from the gift shop. There’s always a gift shop.

We passed by many goat herds with their attendant herders, and many women selling Serengeti honey by the side of the road.

The rain clouds were rolling in.

More honey sellers.

For a while there, it was a wild and woolly ride as the rain poured down. The jeep slipped and slid, while visibility was low. It was exciting…

But soon, we arrived at our lodge, where we had a free afternoon. It’s strange, but sitting in a jolting car all day tends to tire you out. We were all glad of a little downtime.

Though having said that… I’m REALLY looking forward to the crater tomorrow.

Dad Joke of the Day: