Hello
After about 5 leaving do’s including a lovely one at my bosses house we finally left Rwanda! Crossing the border was fairly pain free apart from Simon having a small digestive incident and we made our way to Mwanza on the shore of lake Victoria where we took a couple of days to recover before our safari.
On Simon’s birthday we got up early and headed for the Ndabaka gate of the Serengeti, where we met our guide and vehicle for the safari. We then begain our safari, driving through the western corrdior seeing lots of animals pretty much form the start, zebra, Elephants Giraffes snakes lots of fancy birds and wilderbeasts. That evening we got our first glimpse of lions and leopards so were very lucky! We camped in the serengetti that night which was cool, lots of weeing outside of the tent so as not to get savaged by lions. We then spent the next day or so exploring the sergengeti going south and then north seeing lots of lions, hippos, hyena, jackles and a reappreance of the leopard cubs.
After camping for two night we went to stay in a lodge and were pleasantly surprised to find that as it was low season and the lodges had cropped their prices so much not only were we pretty much the only guests but were staying in $400 a night lodges! The serengetti was amazing you could see for hundreds of miles on the plains and it was bigger than the whole of Rwanda!
After the Serengetti we headed to Ngorogoro crater, seeing over a million wilderbeast on the way prepapring for the migration. Ngorogoro was pretty amazing, it was like a whole world inside of the crater with a lake, forest plains and more wiildlife than the serengetti just in the one crater. We spent a morning there and saw lots of lions, the rhino, hyenas and the flamingos on the lake which was cool. In the afternoon we drove to lake Manyara and chilled out at the pool before the next days game drive (it’s a hard life!) Manyara was cool, we saw more flamingos and lost of primates, Vervet monkeys, baboons and the black monkey and also elephants, giraffe and hippos. In the afternoon we did a short walking safari and saw the wilderbeast and thankfully no lions…eeek! That night we camped again and did wonder why we had decided to camp when a $400 lodge was actually the same price, but back to nature and all that!
Lake Tarangire was the last destination for our safari which was a bit different and full of Elephants, giant Baobab trees and swarming birds!! Our time on safari was amazing but who knew standing in a truck all day could be so tiring, on arrival to arusha I think we weerre probably aleep by 8.30!!
We were hoping to put loads of pics on here of our adventure but the usb port appears to not be working so we will add those in the next couple of days.
We have been in Arusha for a couple of days which is pretty much minging and are off on a 10 hr bus journey to Dar es Sallam tomorrow then we hope to get the train down south and visit lake Tangainka!
I hope all is well at home
Lots of love
Helen XX
Hi all,
I will only write a short message today. Safari was awesome as Helen has descibed, especially the Ngorogoro which was like something from ‘The Land that Time Forgot’, will hopefullly show some pics soon. Birthday was great though a bit surreal while camping in the middle of the Serengeti, surrounded by elephants, lions and with hyena and mongoose living in the kitchen!
We are off now to the South of the country and will hopefully be getting the train from Dar down to Mbeya on the Zambia border, then a few days on Lake Tanganyika for a canoe safari and maybe visit the chimps in Gombe.
Hope all is well with you
Lots of love
Si
