Crazy Baboons

Today I discovered how truly wild the animals are in Lake Manyara National Park. We went into the park with a four hour time window, two of which we were supposed to use to observe baboons. We saw probably hundreds of baboons yesterday so it should have been easy to find some; however, the baboons had a different idea. It took us two and a half hours just to find a troop of baboons and we only observed them for an hour before we had to head back to camp. The baboons were pretty entertaining and had a lot of fights. Syphilis has recently been transmitted to the baboons in the park and it was really sad to see all the terrible effects in can have on them. We were too busy looking out the sides of vehicle and didn’t notice that a baboon had jumped on the front of our car until another vehicle radioed us! After lunch, we had a long break before our lecture so I read for a while and then took a quick nap. Lecture was all about different ways to count animals in the park in preparation for our visit to Tarangire National Park next week. It was a pretty leisurely afternoon and evening because we’re all too tired to start on our research papers. We finally get a non-program day tomorrow and everyone’s pretty excited to have a day off. We’re taking a hike to some elephant caves and then going into town and having dinner at a pub created by a British couple.