Tanzania, Africa

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Iringa was our first stop in Tanzania. It's up in the mountains so it was a welcome relief from the heat. Here we had a meal prepared for us with Ugali, the local staple food. Most people here eat just one large meal a day. Ugali is very very filling. We stayed in a converted stable which was all the better for being our first bed for a month!

I think Tanzania has more speed bumps than the rest of the world put together. There is no apparent reason for most of them, especially when all the potholes mean it's impossible to drive quickly anyway.

It was a long drive into Dar es Salam. The name means "Haven of Peace" which is wholly inappropriate for this place. It's the capital in most respects except name (that distinction goes to Dodoma). It's the finance and trading centre of the country and has a large deepwater port which serves a large part of Africa. It's a really bustling city and not too friendly towards Mzungu ("white man" in Swahili).

Dar was our departure point for the island of Zanzibar. The mainland of Tanzania is actually called Tanjanica. The name Tanzania actually comes from the Tanjanica Zanzibar Independent Association. Zanzibar is semi-autonomous and has a really different history to most of the mainland. The Omani Arabs used to trade spices and slave through Zanzibar so it has a much more Arabic and cosmopolitan fell to it.

Stonetown is Zanzibar's capital and is a maze if tiny alleyways. It's so easy to get lost here. All the streets look the same and none are at right angles to each other. We went to a local market where you could pretty much watch the whole process of a cow turning into a steak. We also went on a spice tour which was really interesting - for example, I didn't know that cinnamon came from the bark of a tree.

From Stonetown we headed north to North Beach which was idyllic. Our time here was split between eating, swimming in the sea and lying on the beach. After a few days we went back to Stonetown and then returned to the mainland.

Our drive to Arusha took two days. We passed Mount Kilimanjaro which had no cloud on it - apparently quite a rare sight. In Arusha town two guys tried to pickpocket me. One went either side of me and both were pushing my feet as if I was standing on something of theirs. Their idea is that whilst I'm confused about what's going on they stick their hands in my pickets. I'd seen similar scams in various places around the world so realised what they were doing and pushed them away before they got to my wallet.

Our next camp was just outside Arusha and called Snake Park. This campsite had a huge variety of snakes as well as a few crocodiles, tortoises and birds.

The reason for coming to Arusha is that it's the gateway to the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater. We took a three day trip through the Serengeti and the crater. It was anticipated to be the best wildlife spotting on our Africa trip and it didn't disappoint.

During our first game drive through the Serengeti we saw two cheetahs hunting, a pride of lions sleeping, a leopard sitting on the grass, loads of elephants and we also saw a rhino in the crater as we drove along its rim. This means we actually saw the "big five" game (buffalo, lion, leopard, elephant and rhino) in about 6 hours.

Our campsite was just in the middle of the park with no fence around it. There was a giraffe there when we arrived and a bull elephant walked by whilst we were eating dinner. Hyenas stole our rubbish bin in the night.

We saw even more on our second day - we had elephants charging a pride of lions, cheetahs chasing a gazelle, a leopard climbing a tree, lion cubs playing, a couple of huge male lions, hippos fighting and a crocodile eating a fish. A big pride of lions walked right next to our 4x4.

That night we stayed in a campsite on the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater. Another elephant came into our camp and some wild pigs got into someone else’s tent - whilst they were still in it!

The Ngorongoro Crater is a collapsed volcano that was apparently taller than Kilimanjaro. It’s very steep sided so the animals rarely leave. This puts a large population of lions, buffalo, elephants and rhinos in a concentrated area of just 10km across.

Our third day was spent in the crater where we saw a cheetah stalking a gazelle and a big male lion at close range. What we were really looking for, though was a rhino. We did see two, but they were both quite far away.

Our guide, Victor, was a fantastic game spotter, but he unfortunately had a typically African attitude to life. Our cook got very ill on the first night and showed all the signs of having malaria. Malaria basically kills brain cells until you die. Every seven hours the number of cells killed doubles. Therefore, it is vital to go to hospital at the first sign of the virus. Our guide refused to take him, saying he could go in the morning if he was still unwell. We explained to him numerous times the potential consequences, but he seemed uninterested. It's an unfortunately common view across all walks of African life. A common sign we see on cars and busses is "In God we trust" or "In Allah we trust".

This view of "we'll fix it when it breaks" translates to many areas of life. Lorries are fixed by the side of the road when they break down and they never bother with regular maintenance. Roads are only fixed when they are impassable. Most unfortunately of all, people are only taken to hospital when they are past the point of no return. Luckily our cook was ok. It appeared he just had a really bad flu.

We stopped at a Maasai village on the way out of the Serengeti. Many of the Maasai lead a nomadic life, staying in makeshift villages depending on where the grazing is good for their cattle. We watched the traditional singing and Maasai jumping. Some of them can jump 4ft off the ground from a standing jump. Their whole life seems very hard.

Our last drive in Tanzania took us north to the Kenyan border.

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