Backdate: East Africa trip Aug 2015 Day 12 - 21st Aug - Lake Manyara + Zebra hotel

21/8/15: Time to depart for Lake Manyara near 9am in the morning. Prior to leaving, we had a sumptuous breakfast, and then even got to choose our own packed lunch at Tloma Lodge (like finally~) for that afternoon! 
Even though I didn't hav much slp cos of star gazing and late night talks ysn, but it was still the best stay yet we had during our Safari trip. So off Peace drove us to Lake Manyara. Otw, we saw many village kids running about outside. We gathered all the leftover food we had from the past few days (apples, bananas, sweets and drinks etc) and put them into boxes, and gave out to the kids along the way. *The grin on their faces omg~ but some older ones still tried to sell things to us la lol.*

I guess it was part of the package, so we were brought to this tourists' shop first. The rest of them grabbed the chance to ask for Big 5 stamps, and began bargaining cos they bought quite a number haha. 

We saw African Hornbill and Pelicans before reaching the Hippo Pool inside Lake Manyara area.

While other tourists and us were taking the time to admire the nature, a sch bus of kids came over, and some got down, eager to take photos with us lol! I took turn taking solo shots with 2 or 3 kids and teacher haha~ *Now I know how "superstars" feel LOL~* Peace was rushing us to go off alrdy, and the others were laughing at me~ maybe cos the African kids dun see ppl of other races that often la uh?

The kids were super high haha. We moved on and saw troops of baboon again, before it was time for lunch stop.

Peace said it was low tide season, so the waterline was very far away from us. There are many pink flamingoes lined up in one straight line along the lake, but we were too far from them to see them clearly. 

Eating out in the wild again! Well again, we had to be watchful in case baboons or other animals come snatching our food, or mistaking us as food... LOL. After a gd lunch, we moved on and saw Klipsringer too. We saw lots of new plant species that we dun get to see in sunny SG too.

Land tornadoes seem to be pretty common ard that area, and we took snapshots of them on and off. 
Soon, it was time to call it a day and off for a 2hrs' drive to Arusha, and another 3hrs' ride to Moshi's Zebra Hotel for our last night of slp there. Passed by Kilimanjaro otw, and then bought this yummy and cheap sweet wine at Arusha supermarket (which I cannot find in SG nor anywhr esle~)

I think we had instant noodle (weird taste to it~ like washing powder's) at Zebra hotel's kitchen and ordered some western and Chi food from them for dinner. Alex, John and SS's Kilimanjaro guides were there to brief them on their mountain climbing trip the nex day as well. 7 of us gatherered in Alex's room after showering and began HTHT-ing till like 3am in the morning the nex day!

On and on about how the trip had been so far, how we'd been through it together and the start of other stuffs in life etc... it has been a gd "get-to-know-each-other" session hehe~