Blogs from Tanzania, Africa - page 14

A cheetah chewed my hair!! I felt his teeth on my skull and there's cheetah slobber in my hair - I'll never wash it again! I also hand-fed a lion, bottle-fed a baby vervet monkey and been in an enclosure wth a young white lion. This wasn't some tourist trap wth drugged and mistreated animals (before you worry), this was Cheetah Rock in Zanzibar, for rescued and injured wild animals. Full of awful stories about each animal's past and near extinction, but with some hope plus the chance to get near wild animals, just use your common sense (that was a problem for most) and our tourist money pays to keep it going. * please note that as we could only take one camera into the cat enclosures, I took my Nikon and left my phone, ... read more

Arusha airport is bigger than Kegoma, but not a lot, just the one scanner but a few desks plus some market stalls selling local trinkets and souvenirs. We were taken there by my new Instagram buddy, who I will be helping to improve his Hekima House Safari website, as they have a lot of competition from travel companies abroad. We'd been worried about paying extra fees at the airport due to a lack of communication from various people regarding bookings. It wasn't our fault as Glyn had done everything required but we'd been told via email we had to pay an extra $130, which we didn't have in cash and they don't take cards. However, bad communication worked in our favour at the airport as no one knew what we were talking about and we checked ... read more

Tanzania day 10 Making our own coffee at a cultural tourism project in Arusha, Tanzania, Africa Coffee!!! Today was about coffee!! The world’s finest drink and we were going to learn all about it. I had found a company through Lonely Planet and then through the internet that does coffee tours and so we dicided to stay in Arusha an extra day. I wasn’t exactly sure what a coffee and villages tour entailed but I knew I’d be getting some coffee, meeting local people and giving something back to the community. There are many cultural tourism programmes in Tanzania so Tengeru is just one of them. Each of them have to give at least 65% of their income to the local community so having tourists come is important. We were told today that Tengeru has set ... read more

Tanzania day 9 Ngorongoro completes the Big Five with a live sex show If the Ngorongoro crater was in Stoke they would have filled it in by now and then run out of money and left it as waste ground. Thankfully councils are more forward thinking in Tanzania and this jaw-dropping spectacle is there still. This collapsed volcano should surely be one of the natural wonders of the world just for the amount of animals and species it holds. Most animals here don’t leave because they don’t need to. The cat food has grass and water and the cats have, well, plenty of cat food. We rose at 5am not having had another elephant in the camp...or had our tent flattened by one... Coffee was ready and then breakfast ready for our 6am departure....at 6:11. Not ... read more

Seeing the Big 5 all in one trip is a challenge and that is the reason why they are the Big 5. Rhino was the last to tick off the list and Bori had said not to get our hopes up as they're very shy. So even Bori can't believe that we saw a couple of rhino making a new addition to the family as baby looked on, not so shy are they? And in front of the children! Later on, passing rangers thought Bori was winding them up about this sighting - it's so unusual no one believes it! We photographed the sun rising over the Ngorongoro Crater because we'd gone very early again. Two reason for this: the predators are up and active, and the Hungarians are flying home tonight so we needed to ... read more