June 22, 2009

Today was our last night, which is very sad. We went into the crater. In order to get there we had to drive up and then down into the crater. The entrance into the park looked like we were entering Jurassic Park..kind of freaky. It was soo cloudy and foggy driving up. You could hardly see straight in front of you. But once we started driving down, it was really interesting to see how the clouds were at eye level with us. The crater is literally flat. We saw a clan of lions and some cheetah. The cheetah were a little far off from the road, but they were so pretty. We also saw a rhino, which was sooo amazing. Elisa said there were only 22 in the entire crater and we saw one, so we were all very excited. We ate lunch at the hippo pool, but they were staying mostly under water like the ones we canoed with. But later, we went to the real hippo pool and saw tons of them. They were so cool. They kept playing with each other and rolling over and flipping their tails in the water. It was interesting to watch them. We also saw a hyena lying in some grass right on the road, he was so cute!
It was a nice last day, but it was really sad to be ending the trip. We all kind of didn't realize what we were leaving behind. We stood there with our heads out of the tops of the Land Cruiser just watching it all pass us by. In order to get out of the crater we had to climb back upwards quite a ways. The views were spectacular. This is when it all really hit me that we were leaving. It was all very surreal.