After a leisurely breakfast we got ready to drive back. So it was going to be the two-hour track again to the main road. But on the way down, we hadn’t noticed there was a turn on the way (Many parts of Tanzania are so sparsely populated that there is only one little dirt track for hours and nothing else, no crossings, nothing). Well, so went straight without noticing, as it was in the middle of a village and no signs in this direction. But when the track became more and more overgrown, we thought this can’t be right. We could [View Full Entry]

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With the usual 24-hour entry rule we planned for a game drive in the early morning and a second one in the late afternoon. With the camp only 10min from the gate, we didn’t have far to go to get started. But our joyful mood was dented, when we bumped into Katie and Kenny, who were scanning the forest with other people for dead animals - it turned out the monkeys we saw the previous evening weren’t drunk, they had been poisoned! We offered to help them search, but Katie assured us, they had enough people, so we were not needed. [View Full Entry]

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Another Bank Holiday weekend - so we couldn’t really stay in Dar! This time the decision fell on Selous Game Reserve, the biggest game reserve in Africa. It’s about the size of Switzerland! But only the North-Eastern part is open for photo safaris, the South is for game hunting with rich Arabs and Westerners going there. We - that were my housemates Ellen and Sara, Rita and myself - chose Selous for it’s vicinity to Dar, it’s only 250km to the South. The first part is tarmac and even less frequented than the roads to the West and North from Dar, [View Full Entry]

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I have just (2 weeks ago) returned from my first real vacation in Africa, and what a great vacation it was. While the school-sponsored safari and trips around Dar were nice, nothing really compares to getting out and exploring a country for yourself. The set-up... most of my friends here were scattering around on various trips, either to the States for weddings, Zambia for elementary education conferences, or Zanzibar to learn how to SCUBA. As none of these applied to me, I floundered around a bit not really wanting my first Africa vacation to be solo, until kindly my friend Emma [View Full Entry]

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Gruess Gott alle zusammen, jetzt hab ich endlich mal einen Moment um die Bilder von unserer Safari im Februar (ja, so lange ist das schon wieder her....) ins Netz zu stellen. Meine Eltern waren fuer fast 3 Wochen zu Besuch und so hatten wir die Zeit zusammen nach Selous auf Safari zu fahren und auch auf Zanzibar ein bisschen Zeit gemeinsam zu verbringen. Ich habe es doch tatsaechlich geschafft 10 Tage frei zu machen und die meiste Zeit davon sogar ohne auf dem Handy gestoert zu werden....lag wohl daran dass im Busch kein Empfang war :) Wir haben im Selous [View Full Entry]

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Not much to say... just wanted to share a few more pics.... [View Full Entry]

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I have been to some of the great wild life areas of Africa like the Kruger National Park, the Okavango delta and many others. I had even visited the Serengeti plains, the Ngorongoro crater and Lake Manyara but I had never before been to Selous. Selous is a massive park, bigger even than Kruger and 2 years older. It is pronounced ‘se loos’ and was named after an English soldier, Frederick Courtney Selous, who was shot in the park during a skirmish with German soldiers in World War One. Just like many of my destinations of the past few months, I [View Full Entry]

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So where am I going, well the project is based in the Kilombero Valley, which lies between the Selous Game Reserve to the east, the Udzungwa Mountains Natyional Park to the north and the Mahenge Mountains to the South; if you look on a map the middle of no where! The Kilombero River forms part of Africas largest river basin, joining the the Great Ruaha, Rufiji and Luwegu rivers. The southern end of the valley is a Game Controlled Area and contains populations of elephants, buffalo, lion, zebra, antelopes and crocodiles, plenty of opportunity for me to get eaten then! The [View Full Entry]

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So...the last week I spent at the Selous Mbega Camp (www.selous-mbega-camp.com) about 250km south-west of Dar es Salaam. Selous Game Reserve is the largest reserve in Tanzania, and also a World Heritage Site (as decided by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). Being located in the south it is off the beaten path of the tourist track (everybody goes north to the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater) which was a huge part of its appeal to me, and it is also one of the only reserves in which you can do a boat safari on the river. Which was the [View Full Entry]

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With a short dhow ride with Mohammed and Mohammed across the channel to the airport on the next island, we said good bye to Lamu. We flew to Mombassa on November 25, where we spent two nights to ‘do business’ (i.e. shopping, emails, planning). We chose a bus company recommended in the Lonely Planet guide and booked two seats to Tanga, Tanzania for the following day. After several loops around the block, we found our bus to Tanga at 6 am; neither bus nor office were marked with the bus company’s name. The sidewalk next to the bus was packed with [View Full Entry]

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