Safari in Tanzania

One thing I forgot to mention was that after we got back to the hotel, I loaded all of my prints and videos onto my ipad. At the dinner I showed them to our guides, cooks, porters. They just could not get over seeing themselves in the prints and video on the ipad.

To be honest, the main reason that we went on this trip, and the push for our training was to climb to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro. But rather than just rush back, we felt that we needed to experience what most people go to Africa for--to see the animals in the wild.

So after 24 hours of rehab in a hotel with hot water, a bed that was actually 3 ft. or so off the ground rather than 1 1/2 inches of a foam pad off the ground, real sheets and blankets instead of sleeping bags, and a toilet that flushes and a sing that clean water flows, we were off on our Safari adventure. Baba, our Swiss Vet. needed to get back to Kenya where she is working for their government, so it was just four of us and our guide. Our guides name is Godson. A very quiet, but very knowledgeable guide.

Our vehicle is a converted Toyota Land Cruiser. There are thousands of these everywhere on the road in Tanzania and they are designed to seat ten people total, including the driver. There are four rows of seats, and in everywhere but the front seat large holes have been cut out of the roof so you can stand up and view the animals.

Here we are at the top of the Ngorongoro Crater

We first went to visit the Tarangire national park. This is one of 8 that are in Tanzania and protect the animals from hunting. There are no fences to keep the animals in the park, and they do migrate within the park and actually between the parks and accross private land throughout the region.

We were not inside the park entrance for 2 minutes when we ran into our first animals.

With that kind of experience in the first few minutes, we knew we had a great location and a great guide. We only scouted animals for about 2 hours this first day as we had traveled 4-5 hours to get from Moshi where we stayed the night in our hotel to the national park. Along the way, we stopped at first a cattle auction that was mainly used by the Maasai people, who are one of over 200 tribes of people in Tanzania. They are nomads and move throughout the year based on the needs of their cattle and animals.

They are always dressed in these types of colors so very easy to spot.

We also stopped at a local market along the way to experience that

We had no idea what to expect for our hotel. We were told that it was a "tent camp". Out in the middle of nowhere. No electricity, no water. We were pleasantly surprised when we arrived and found it to be all of those things, but also that it did have electricity via solar panels, it did have a slow Internet connection via satellite, and it did have hot water however you needed to let them know when you wanted it because they had to put hot coals in a device to heat your water for you. Very effective.

To say the least, it was very nice.

The next day we spent the entire day out on Safari. We saw everything you can imagine. That night, we went on a walking safari. We had a couple of guards with us to protect us from become food for the animals. The Maasai warrior that was with us really was interested in my binoculars, and after I showed him how to use them, he just spent 30-45 mins staring through them.

As you can see from the pictures, Tanzania is not a brown dust bowl. Lots of shades of green, lush ground cover.

The hotel lit up a fire each night for us to sit around and visit

After three days at that national park, we moved to another national park, the Manyara Lake National park. It was about a 2 hour drive and along the way we stopped and visited a Maasai village. Florence was talked into participating with the woman in singing and dancing.
We saw lots more animals, including Hippos where were not in the last park.
Here is our room at the next tent camp.

And the view was not bad from the patio either.

We then went to the Ngorongoro Crater which was the best for animal watching This is because the animals never leave the crater for migration. So everything is bigger, and boy is it a beautiful location.

After five nights on Safari, we were able to literally see all of the big animals except for one--the leopard. Very hard to find, and we never saw one. As Florence always says, you always need a reason to go back.

Part 3 and 4 in the future of our trip.