Big Africa Update (Part Deux)

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After failing Kilimanjaro Chris felt the need to be able to do something he wouldn't find too taxing. Sitting in the back of a 4x4 for 5 days sounded like a good idea.

Day 1: Lake Manyara

We met our tour guide Arthur who we instantly fell in love with purely due to the fact he was a different person to our head guide on Kilimanjaro. Before talking about safari we feel the need to mention what a great guide he was. He was exceptionally knowledgeable on animals, political matters and anything else for that matter. With the Tanzanian elections taking place at the end of the month he updated Chris and Charlie on the issues that really mattered. He was a funny and charming man who always had a smile on his face and a story to tell. Arthur eloquently told us about the corruption that happens in his country with the government and this aroused Chris and Charlies thirst for knowledge on the matter, by the end of our trip i think we knew more about the elections than the candidates themselves!

Before we hit Lake Manyara we visited the Mosquito Camp next to the Mosquito River (our accomodation for the evening). These names filled us with confidence, we armed ourselves heavily with deet for the night ahead!

To the animals then...

Lake Manyara was a great start to the trip, it had a tropical feel to it dominated by forested areas. We came across a lot of monkeys as soon as we started the trip and were made aware these would enter the vehicles if possible, we didnt quite believe it as we assumed they would be scared of Chris's extremely manly gym toned physique, how wrong we were to prove to be! Some monkeys had large blue balls and were proud to show them off much to Chris's amusement, Chris had laughing fits at the very sight of them, Charlie of course was far above this low level of humour and found nothing funny about it, at all... of course! She instead spent the entire time in the 4x4 stood up out of the roof shouting "Weeeeeeeee!!!!!!" in her very mature manner. Chris's humour extended as far as holding out a safari beer can out in front of any sight or scenary possible, Charlie merely sighed and often found herself pretending to take pictures of Chris with his safari so not to use up all of the cameras battery life on Chris's extremely amusing joke! Chris rewarded himself with multiple man points.

So anyways, animals!

We saw...

Elephants, baboons (apparently one of the highest concentrations in Africa), and birds, lots of birds. Hippos, impalas, wildebeest, buffalo, zebras and warthogs.

Suffice to say, we saw our fair share of animals!

That night, Arthur and Chris found a shared interest in football and at the camp we all managed to cheekily watch Arsenal beat Man City 3-0 with Safari beers in hand!


Day 2: Travel to the Serengeti

Long arse drive.

Numb bums after a very bumpy journey.

Dust, dust and more dust. Dust everywhaaaaaar! Hair, eyes, clothes, lungs, mouth, throat and more. Dust, dust, dust! Yum.

After what appeared to be a week long drive (it certainly felt like it!) we arrived in the Serengeti mid afternoon. The Serengeti is certainly not the smallest national park in the world. Apparently we were lucky to see a African Hunting Dog just outside its burrow on the way into the park on the side of the road. We did not realise at the time how lucky we were as this is a very rare sight, oops (apparently there are just over 5000 left in the world, according to wikipedia!). So yeah, that was cool!

We also saw our first lions, Chris was glad as he did not get a chance to see any in Lake Manyara, Charlie played it off as if she saw them in Swanage highstreet every weekend.

In addition to this we came across an adorable hyena sat in the road, in a puddle chilling out. This was not the character we expected to see due to our pre conceptions from the lion king and it really was rather lovely.

Oh and we also saw a dead impala hanging on a high tree - obviously a leopards dinner, unfortunately no leopard to go with it. But still, this gave us high hopes for our advantures ahead to see many carnivores.

We arrived in our camp in the early evening. This camp was very different to Mosquito camp! Charlie was looking like a fool chasing tropical birds around with a camera, hundreds of failed shots later she joined Chris and Arthur in throwing rocks at army ants and running away when they made scary noises and chased them. A mature time was had by all.

During our failed candle lit, and eventually torch lit dinner Arthur set about scaring Charlie and Chris with stories and warnings about spending time in their campsite. Many stories of lions and near misses put Charlie and Chris on guard! Often the stories revolved around being sat in the caged dinner huts and lions taking a liking to the buffet on offer! Chris and Charlie hardened their bladders to make sure no toilet break was needed that night! During the night we were awakened by a howling jackel outside our tent, less than a metre away. Sleeping in the wild never seemed so real and we saw the footprints in the morning!


Day 3: Big game hunting!

Today was to be spent driving around the vast grounds of the Serengeti looking for all the animals we desired to see. This was largely a bit of a failure, we saw impalas. Lots and lots of impalas. And many zebra crossing jokes were made, obviously each and every one of them more amusing than the last.

In the morning we went to a ranger station to pick up Chris's safari beer for the day to fuel more ridiculously funny photos. During the process of this our guide came with us, once we returned to the vehicle he realised something different. The phrase cheeky monkey has been coined by many people in the world, never more apt has the term seemed. Arthur's stash of sweets had gone and there was a very happy contented looking baboon on the side of the road tucking into some suspious looking multi coloured sweets. Our guide had forgotten to shut his window after lecturing us on the first day about the issues with leaving car windows open! Nevertheless we all laughed and we gave Arthur some sweets that night by purposefully losing to him at cards which had sweets as the stake for the winner!

The best sight of the day was an impala fight in which one male was defending his female pride. We also got to see hippos making ridiculous noises (obviously fans of banter) and the great migration (more zebras and wildebeast than you could shake a stick at).

A slightly disappointing day due to the lack of lions, leopards and no jackal howling at night. Chris got wet due to Charlie leaving the tent windows open hoping to see the animals during the night. She forgot that we were staying in the Serengeti during its wet season and the massive thunderstorm that night left Chris moderately damp. Chris was a happy bunny that morning.


Day 4: A bit of Serengeti and the Ngorogoro Crater

Chris and Charlie resigned themselves to not seeing any lions or leopards in the Serengeti, but we were wrong. That morning we saw lion cubs playing near the road and a leopard catching a snooze in the tree all in the process of leaving the Serengeti! We felt awfully lucky and wondered why we hadnt seen all this the day before!!

We made our way to the Ngorogoro Crater that afternoon. Ngorogoro crater was formed from a volcano crater many many years ago. History lesson over.

We were adament on getting to see the complete "big 5" on safari. We had seen a lion, leopard, elephant and buffalo. We spent the entire last day praying for a glimpse of a black rhino. And thats what we got, a glimpse. Off in the distance in a land far far away there was what couldve been a bush or a black rhino, but we were assured by our guide it was the final piece of our jigsaw.

Other amusing events of the day included chilling with some lions that were using the 4x4s for shade in the middle of the road. The safari beer can banter returned at this point. The illusion of safari was lost however with more than 10 4x4s surrounding the "kings of the jungle". A traffic jam was caused with the lions deciding that sleeping under the wheel arches of jeeps was a termendous idea of where to spend an afternoon nap.

Also the elephant graveyard does exist and was not just an invention of the lion king! This was really sad to understand how the elephants end their lives, but Chris managed to cheer Charlie up as he reminded her that it was "the circle of life" and then broke into song.

That night we once again slept in the wild (i know, how crazy are we?!) and this time we were met by some very thirsty elephants! Elephants decided to walk into the middle of our campsite and put their trunks in the water tanker and devour our water supplies. This was an amazing sight, you suddenly appreciate how much more vulnerable you are outside of the jeep and how small we are in comparison. Many a funny photo was taken at this point of course!

Our night ended on a high with zebras surrounding our tents grazing on the grass outside. Rather cool.

The next day we made our way back to Arusha and our safari experience was over. A great time was had by all involved.

Once back in Arusha Chris finally admitted, the safari was better than the zoo.

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