The Funny Side of the Street

Category Archives: Tanzania

African Safari – The Animals

Posted on by Posted in African Elephants, African Safari, Tanzania, Uncategorized .

I can remember the sense of wonder I felt when we encountered our first group of elephants. All the exhaustion I felt from the multiple flights and lack of sleep just flew out the window, I think we all felt that way. I wanted to pinch myself so I knew I wasn’t dreaming. Going on an African Safari was definitely something on my bucket list and I knew this was also true for my mother-in-law Betty aka BiBi (her African name). I posted this elephant video I made on Facebook but I know some of you are not on my Facebook page so here it is again. I’m really enjoying playing around on that damn YouTube making slide shows and posting videos.

This next slideshow I did on my computer in a program called I-Movie and then uploaded it to YouTube, thats why it looks a bit different. I really enjoyed playing photographer on my vacation, I secretly envisioned I was on assignment with National Geographic. This is just a montage of some of the animals I saw and snapped pictures of. The slide show was twice as long originally but I had to whittle it down so you would not get too bored.

(Don’t forget to just hit the (X) if you see any Ads pop up in my videos)

African Safari – Our Accommodations

Posted on by Posted in African Safari, Sopa Lodges, Tanzania, Uncategorized .

I’m sorry that I have been such a “slacker” with writing and showing more photos of my recent Safari Trip, sometimes that damn thing called “life” just sucks up the hours in a day.

We, my group of six, traveled “forever,” well at times it felt like that. Our flight departed Tampa, Florida to JFK, New York to Istanbul, Turkey to Kilmanjaro, Africa. The total time including layovers was 36 hours, can you even begin to imagine that. My God, we were exhausted. We took a van from Kilmanjaro to a hotel in Arusha, Africa (about an hour and a half drive by car), it was the middle of night and I remember the sky was so dark. I could tell we weren’t in Kansas anymore.

We traveled over 800 miles in our Safari Vehicle, stayed at roughly 4 – 5 different hotels, toured 4 different parks and had some really delicious cuisine. Breakfast at each hotel was buffet style, I really miss those little baby bananas and that fresh squeezed passion fruit juice.

Our main hotels were Sopa Lodges (a chain) which blended so well with the natural surroundings. Most were located in the Parks or very near to them. One of the things that was really fun occurred at dinner each night. The restaurant staff would sing and dance throughout the dining room as we were finishing up dinner. Dale’s Mom Betty was so damn cute clapping her hands with a big grin ear to ear. Bi Bi is a nickname for grandmother and she was called that at every place we stayed. We stayed in a Tented Lodge on our last night in Tanzania. It was very rustic but we actually did have electricity. Our tent made me feel like I was on the set of the old TV show Mash, any moment I kept expecting to see Hawkeye or Klinger.

I tried to add some of the music from the CD I brought home from the Sopa Lodge but YouTube wouldn’t let me add it (that whole damn copyright thing). So this is as close as I could find within YouTube’s library, just try to ignore the ad’s (that’s why it’s free to users). Just click on the (X) when you see an Ad pop up.

This video just shows some of the places we stayed. Enjoy…

African Sunsets

Posted on by Posted in African Safari, Tanzania, Uncategorized .

I’ve finally received all of our combined pictures that we took in Tanzania, so I guess I better get busy blogging.

I’m pretty new at trying to maneuver around on Youtube so bear with me.  Here is my first slide show that I’ve created showing all the beautiful sunsets we saw.  I’m still trying to figure out how to put some of the African Music that I brought home on CD to future slide shows.  What can I say? I’m a work in progress

Enjoy…