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Published: October 7th 2012
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From our quiet time in the Selous, we flew to the other extreme and hit the busiest part of the Northern Circuit. We were booked on a private tour with our one driver to take Caleb and I around the parks in our own car (as a result of my fussiness in the safari-planning stage in wanting to go to particular areas and stay in one place for more than a day). Our initial few days in the North were a shock to the system - driving through busy towns, on horrible roads and staying at lodges with heaps of tourists (in contrast to our boutique camp in the middle of nowhere in the South). We drove through busy Lake Manyara National Park en route to our accommodation near the Ngorongoro Conservation Area - no tree climbing lions spotted (as apparently they only climb the trees at other times of year in order to get away from some nasty ants) but did see some elephants, a dik dik, zebras, baboons and quite a few birds around the lake.
The next day we had a crazy drive through dense fog on the Ngorongoro Crater rim on our way down to the
bottom of the crater (which had good visibility - underneath the fog). The crater itself is interesting with its steep walls but we were a little disappointed in our day on safari there - I think at one point we were in a line of about 30 cars watching a group of 6 lions hunt. The lions were unsuccessful and we couldn't help but wonder whether the buffalo/zebras had become suspicious given the number of vehicles watching them.
The next day was another hideous long drive out of the Ngorongoro conservation area and into the next tourist zone in the Central Serengeti. Because of the poor road conditions, one of the seats in our landcruiser had broken (and would no longer remain upright - meaning sitting there would result in either a good view of the roof or a good core muscle workout) and our guide went to fix it while we had lunch. We were entertained by the hyraxes in the trees and around the picnic tables - they are weird rodents that are apparently related to elephants. Eventually we were picked up and driven onwards up near the Kenyan border to our camp, where the scenery changed
from vast open dry plains to green grasslands and bush.
The Serengeti camp was... rustic - much more rugged than our previous (luxury) accommodations because it was a mobile camp that moves every 4 to 6 months to follow the migration. It still had a flushing toilet and ensuite area but there were no floorboards and it was a lot more open to the outside (where we had massive thunderstorms each day as the rains moved south from the Masai Mara) and the shower operated by way of the camp staff first filling a bucket with warm water (meaning a time limit of about 3 minutes). Yes, OK, I do not deny that I have become a bit of a suburban princess.
Wildlife viewing in the Serengeti was amazing. Other than the African Wild Dogs (which are very rare and which we were lucky to spot in the Selous), we saw every animal there and saw many animals in big numbers. The rains had moved south earlier than usual in the year and so the many herds of hundreds of wildebeest and zebras had started migrating south through the Northern Serengeti. We followed a herd of around 1000
wildebeest moving back and forth along the Mara River for a day but they were too chicken to cross. I felt a little sorry for some of the wildebeest further south that had already survived the river crossing and then faced the next challenge of having to get out of the way of our driver (who admitted to us that sometimes he prays before overtaking).
We also saw lots of giraffes, buffalo, lions, elephants, jackals, impala, bush bucks, water bucks, hartebeest, hippos, crocodiles, baboons, vervet monkeys, mongoose, warthogs, Thomson's gazelles, Kudus, Dik Diks, Topis, Elands, Grant's gazelles and Klipspringers, along with many birds including ostriches, kingfishers, storks, vultures, lilac-breasted rollers, bustards, buzzards, hornbills, guineafowl, spoonbills, fish eagles, superb starlings, kites, oxpeckers (eating the mites off some of the animals), bee-eaters and weavers! And we also saw the elusive rhino - with a mother and young rhino making an appearance near the Mara River - and also a couple of leopards and cheetahs in the Central Serengeti.
We had a few days on safari in the Serengeti before our next hideous long day of driving from the Northern Serengeti down to our camp between Lake Manyara and Tarangire National
Ngorongoro Crater
It is cold on the crater rim Parks. Our driver stopped off along the way at a couple of souvenir shops and also at his family's house to introduce us to the family (I'd like to think that this was just a friendly gesture rather than wanting his family to see in person the nutters he'd been driving around for a week)!
We had a couple of days exploring Tarangire National Park - and true to its reputation, we did see hundreds of elephants and many Baobao trees (which are meant to look like they are upside down). Tarangire was quite a good park - a lot less touristy than Ngorongoro and the Central Serengeti - and we saw four of the 'big five' there (there are no more rhinos left in Tarangire). There were also quite a lot of tsetse flies (that bite you and can infect you with African Sleeping Sickness) and we were surprised that nobody had created souvenir Tanzania fly swats to flog at the tourist shops (we would have bought a couple in substitute of our plastic bags / lunch boxes etc).
The dry season was still in force and the river in the north of Tarangire was dry in
many places. On our second day we went to the Silale Swamp area, where there were heaps of elephants and I was the first to spot a leopard sitting in a tree (before our driver put the word out on the radio and the other vehicles came rushing over)!
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