Advertisement
The last time we blogged we were just heading back to Nairobi to drop off some people and then head south to Tanzania.
We arrived into Nairobi and went straight to a shopping centre to stock up with supplies for the next leg of the trip and to catch up on some serious coffee drinking as we haven’t had coffee since Kampala...and it was good!!
The next morning we said goodbye to about half of the people who had been with us for the previous weeks and said hello to the new comers who were joining us for the Tanzania/Zanzibar journey.
We headed south to the border with Tanzania and crossed without incident. The border crossings in Africa are something else...you can tell when you are getting closer as suddenly the road is blocked with trucks of all shapes and sizes and our truck driver, Alouis, always manages to negotiate his way through them to the front of the line. At this point we all disembark and walk to the immigration hut of the country we are leaving from and join the queue of other travellers waiting for the bureaucracy to get into gear. Once this is sorted
you then walk the hundred or so metres to the next countries immigration hut and again join a bigger queue to get stamped into the new place. In the meantime our truck driver has to take a slightly longer time to check the truck in and out ...anyway enough about African efficiency??
We arrived into Tanzania and headed t a place called Arusha, which is the safari base for entering the Serengeti and Ngorongoro National Parks, and stopped at our accommodation for the night called Mesani Snake Farm. Now the name says it all as this place is attached to a small hospital which specialises in anti venom for snake bites for the region. Now you really can’t call the place a snake farm unless there are...Yip you guessed it...Snakes!! and there were!!..Right next to our tents were cages containing snakes of all sizes and descriptions. There were pythons, Adders, cobras and all kinds of snakes sitting about 25 metres from the camp sites...luckily the snakes were in cages so all was well unless you happen to be a bit worried about the large collection of crocodiles which are only in fenced areas slightly closer to the tents. It
all makes for an exciting time when you are on water fetching duties and look straight over the fence from where you are turning on the water tap and your eyes are met by a rather large croc!! It certainly makes for a restful nights sleep
The next day we were met by a private safari company who arrived in purpose built Safari Toyota Land cruisers and we headed off towards a small place called Karatu which is the staging post for a place called Ngorongoro crater NP which is where we headed at day break the following morning. This place is the biggest intact extinct volcanic crater in the world and is what i would easily describe as the Garden of Eden for wildlife. Animals live in this crater and never leave because the pickings are so good. It s a lush place with its own water supply and hence attracts a large variety of antelope and an equally large variety of predators. As we drove down into the crater we were first greeted by one of the biggest elephants that we had seen to date. His tusks were so big they almost met in the
middle and when we stopped to see him he passed within a metre of our vehicle I assure you at this stage the fright night in snake park paled into insignificance. We spent about six hours drivng around the crater and it was amazing. We had about 6 separate sightings of lion including one particularly amorous couple were not put off at all by the twenty vehicles looking on while they got about the business of making small lions. We were also treated to a rare viewing of a small cat like creature called a Serval cat who had caught a cobra and spent about ½ an hour eating it infront of the usual onlookers. These cats are usually nocturnal which is why I say we were treated..After about 6 or so hours we headed out of the crater (having not seen any elusive leopards) and started our long trip to the Serengeti where we arrived as the sun was setting. Immediately entering the park we sat and watched a family of Anita’s favourite animals, the Hyenas, playing in the late afternoon sun and even though they are probably the ugliest animal God created it was really cool watching a
whole family interact together and at some stage one of them told a really good joke cause they all laughed in unison!?
We sat at sunset and watched a herd of elephants and as we were heading to our camp site we passed a tree which had a Thompsons gazelle stashed up in the branches which means that the elusive leopard wasn’t too far away and definitely the first stop for us in the morning. We spent a night in a bush camp listening to the night calls of the animals before heading off at dawn to start an all day game drive. Our first stop was the tree bound gazelle which we sat and waited for a ½ Hr for the leopard to come back to his kill but our wait was in vain as we were interrupted by a radio call telling of a leopard sighting not far away. We drove at a fairly quick rate to an area where someone had seen a pride of lions chase a leopard up a tree but that someone had lied slightly as it wasn’t a leopard up a tree...it was three leopards!!! So as you can imagine we were
all quite excited and spent about an hour sitting watching three leopards moving backwards and forwards in the upper regions of two trees while a pride of lions sat about 30 metres away sleeping in the early morning sun only interrupted by a herd of elephants who passed both the lions and stopped to scratch themselves on the tree containing the leopards..It was an amazing morning!!
Late in the afternoon we headed out of the Serengeti having had a fantastic two days, and headed back to the snake farm for one night before continuing our journey towards Zanzibar.
As I write this blog we have just arrived on the out skirts of Dar es Salaam at a beach camp and have just enjoyed a quick dip in the Indian Ocean before getting ready for dinner. So until Zanzibar I will sign off...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.217s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 22; qc: 93; dbt: 0.0814s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
Mike & Sandy
non-member comment
Long odds...
Just awesome. Very envious. Some of those sightings are rare opportunities. Very, very cool!.