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House of Snakes

This is worth a pause, since the new tour operators we were with pulled in at two stops en route to our campsite de jour. The first was a "Museum of Cultural Heritage". Yeah, right. It was a shop filled with very expensive carvings, all for sale and for shipment to anywhere if one was willing to pay. As well, there was another, more obvious shop with smaller trinkets for sale where I saw many items very like the ones I had purchased earlier that day in Arusha on my one big shopping spree there. The difference was that I had paid much much less for them.

This Masai was very annoyed with me for snapping this picture. I figured out later that he wanted money.

Luckily, I am not afraid of snakes, since we got to get up close and personal with a few of them, mostly sand and grass snakes of the non-poisonous variety! We also had the chance to see iguana and monitor lizards if memory serves (ran out of film--rest in truck). It amazed me how many people chose to stay in the truck. You'd think if one was willing to camp out in Africa, one would be willing to *look* at some snakes, even if some are quite large. They had a newspaper photo of a python who had swallowed a tourist and had arrows marking the placement of the head, chest and feet bulges within the snake. Apparently, it was instantly killed and cut open, but the tourist had been crushed to death of course!

Another photo showed a python and crocodile in a death struggle which the python eventually won!

Here was an Eastern Rufie snake having its dinner. I great photo for those who don't like mice. There was a bunny rabbit in this enclosure; it was a future snack for the python living in a tall tree.

Here's me in a snake tie of a Sand Snake. Harmless, but very cool!

Forward to "Ngorongoro Conservation Area"