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I made my own way from Moshi to Arusha on a local bus which cost 2000tsh and took about one and a half hours. Not bad. Dropped me off at the bus station where I was greeted by many touts and grabbed a taxi as quick as I could to take me to the airport. It was only 10am and Mark's flight wasn't due to arrive until 11 or so but I was so excited so I went straight there. He was delayed until about 1pm so I spent a few hours fidgeting with anticipation and gave him an enormous hug when he arrived with great relief.
Our hotel in Arusha was interesting. We had our own cabin/ banda on stilts with a view over the city. It was arranged by Tropical Trails who took us the following morning on safari.
We were a bit gutted when we woke up and found rain but soon realised that rain is what the animals like! Tanganyika is apparently not great when its raining though, so we headed to Lake Manyara for the first day. It took a few hours to get to the campsite where we had a tasty lunch and dropped off Juma the chef before heading into the National park. There we saw elephants, countless baboons, vervet monkeys, amazing birds, antelopes. hippos, zebras, giraffes and lots of other animals. Luckily it didnt rain so we stood up with our heads out of the roof and took lots of photos.
The next day we made our way to the Serengeti where we found ourselves in a most disgusting campsite. Apparently they are all the same but I couldnt believe with the money we'd paid that there could be such gross toilets. We took it in our stride and made the most of the camping experience! The food was great, and we were particularly glad not to be the people who were cooking for themselves when we heard rain falling.... or at least we thought it was rain! As we ducked our heads outside the awning we realised that it was not rain we could hear. The entire tent was covrered with beetles - falling from the sky! Very soon we were covered too, and not just on the outside of our clothes. We didnt want to go back in the tent in case we dropped them all inside so we took shelter under an umbrella and tried not to get too bothered as we removed wandering insects from inside our clothes. YUK! The guide had never seen anything like it - I wonder where they came from!
We'd been slightly disappointed in the first couple of days, not to have seen any big cats, so when we saw a cheeter creeping up on some antelopes, we were very excited. They are such scaredy cats though and after watching her for 2 hours we got a bit anxious to see other animals and never actually saw her run for anything. We managed to see lots of lions lazing around in the sun later so it was worth moving on. It was a great time to visit that part of the Serengeti as migration of the wildebeest was taking place so we saw hundreds of them following each other in lines moving to another part of the National Park.
Next it was on to the beautiful Ngorongoro Crater. We stayed at the rim of the crater in a much more decent campsite, although still not great in anyway shape or form!
We had an early start in the morning as time is limited in the crater to avoid huge numbers of cars. Think they need to put tighter limits on though as it still feels a bit like driving around Woburn safari park with the amount of cars. Still, it was surprisingly difficult to find the animals and for ages we wondered if they'd all gone on holiday! But we eventually got to creep up right next to lions, saw rhinos, some more cheeters, buffaloes, antelopes, hippos etc. Love those lions! I'll put some photos on later.
previous travel blog entry
Hugs says:
MERRY CHRISTMAS! Just read your email. Sorry to hear you've been ill, hope you're well again soon! Enjoy your Christmas on the beach with Mark. I'm up in St. Annes with the family, cats too! Lots of love, Christine.