Why does the leopard have spots? Why does the elephant have such a long nose? Why are the Dutch such assholes?

Zebras cornered the stripe market, shortage of straws in east africa, and you would be too if your national cuisine peaked with pea soup, boiled everything and the worst licorice on earth.

Last Saturday Neil (pedi-onc fellow from Sloan, Monique ID fellow from Cornell, and myself, superhero) headed out to the Serengeti, we heard they had a few animals and what not. Well, they have like a million of everything, you could go out and just shoot a couple hundred Zebras, Gazelles and Wildebeasts and no one would ever know, there are animals everywhere, we saw Lions, Cheetahs, Impala, Hartbeast, Crocodiles, Hippos and Elephants, and a bunch of other critters.

The Serengeti is just massive, it never ends. The first night, Princess Monique stayed in hotel while Neil and I headed out (in pitch darkness and pouring rain to camp). We put the trip together a little last minute, so we didn't have a cook or any proper clothing. We showed up at a campsite like orphans just wandering in, our driver arranged food from another companies cook and we found the dining tent. We slouch into the dining tent soaking wet and freezing cold, in the tent are maybe 20 fleece and goretex wrapped europeans, eating hot food, drinking wine and sipping scotch, generally having a great time, all conversation stops when we enter the tent, I say "hello, how are you all doing" completely blank stares, "so, you folks all enjoying dinner, guess we are a bit late" not a sound, except the rain dripping off Neil and myself. We creep to the corner, no chairs are offered, no cup of warm tea, we lean against the wall and just look hopeless. Eventually some soup arrives for us and I chairs are found, and we sit down at a table with some Dutch folks, "oh you are dutch," I say "my grandparents are from Friesland," expecting this to be my in, "yah, well, Friesland is not really part of the Netherlands you know" no I didn't know, that's great, what do you want to talk about now. We eat, they make fun of the way Bush says nuke-ular and the Neil and I wolfing down some kind of spaghetti with bean paste. We make fun of them in English, things are going well.

Eventually an Australian teases us for eating the so much spaghetti and we move to his table, which is way better, two Aussies, two Danes and a Swedish blonde with Munch's The Scream tatoored on her arm, badass. We talk, discuss the general distemper and blandness of the Dutch, and have a great time.

We sleep pretty well, being exhausted, to tired to worry about the chorus of animal grunts and rustling outside the tent, or the kid size spiderman spleeping bag, about 5 feet long, that my feet have poked two holes out the bottom of by dawn. The morning is dry with eggs, sausage and coffee, just getting better.

We head to the Ngorongoro crater, stunning, absolutely stunning, second only the Santorini for places I've seen that you couldn't dream up. Packed with life, including close to dozen elephants.

That night we sleep high on the rim, at a campsite overlookng the crater, there is hot water, new sleeping bags, adult size and we meet two new Dutch people (Christian and Merdhta) who are lots of fun (I use my Dutch icebreaker, my grandparents are from Friesland, and they are like, oh, yah, wonderful, we live near there). We teach them hearts and the food is good, we complain about our president, they complain about immigrants.

About halfway through dinner, and after Christian is up about 50 points in hearts, consistently taking the queen of spades, while Merhta chides and lectures him (very funny) another guide comes in and explains that the cook, who we hired the night before and is also the Dutch couples cook, is actually a thief and has been caught red handed and hand-cuffed outside. Great, this is nuts, so dinner is delayed, god knows what happened to the poor cook and my flashlight (which the cook had just borrowed to rumage around with, is lost, making me an acomplice to the crime). Ah well, still, dinner was pretty good.

The next day we head back out through the serengeti, more cheetahs, lions and a million herbivores.

gotta run, more later...