All of that safari planning in Arusha finally paid off. We departed from Arusha for our 4 day/3night camping safari adventure on Friday morning. We didn’t end up connecting with any other travelers in Arusha, so our safari team consisted of me, Chris, our guide David, and our cook Bahati.
We spent the first day driving to Serengeti National Park. Which is only ~300 km from Arusha, but the road is really rough (think dirt/gravel track most of the way), so the journey took about 8 hours. Our guide referred to the drive on the roughest stretch of dirt track as an “African free massage”. I don’t know if “massage” is the word that I would use, but it was definitely an experience.
Doing a low-cost safari meant staying in campgrounds rather than lodges, so at the end of our day of driving to the Serengeti, we arrived at the campsite and set up for the night. Camping in the Serengeti was an amazing experience. The savannah doesn’t go to sleep when the sun goes down, and we could hear hyenas howling just outside our campsite. This made the walk from the tent to the bathroom a little frightening at night, though our guide promised that the animal are more afraid of us than we are of them (which is much easier to tell yourself when you are NOT walking to the bathroom by yourself in the middle of the night in the Serengeti). We also ate our meals inside of a contained cage to ward off any curious animals who might be interested in snatching bite of our chicken curry and rice (which is good thing because there were some baboons who were definitely interested in scooping up the human food scraps).
Our two days in the Serengeti were fantastic. We saw giraffes, hippos, zebras, buffalos, ostriches, wildebeest (or “wild beasts”, as our guide would say), hippos, a cheetah, a lion stalking a herd of gazelle, and more species of beautiful African birds than I could ever dream of identifying. We missed the wildebeest migration by about a month (the rangers told us that the weather patterns were off this year and the migration happened much earlier than normal). That said, the park was still filled with animals, and the earlier onset of the dry season meant that the animals were typically congregated around the few remaining water holes. During our drive out of the park on the third day of our safari, we had a herd of grazing elephants surround our safari truck. The herd was pretty benign, but we did have one juvenile bull elephant mock-charge the car, which was simultaneously amazing and terrifying. Our guide, who has probably seen enormous wild animals do much crazier things, told me “Hakuna Matata Julia, no problem with African elephants”. Those sound like some famous last words to me!
For our last day of safari, we headed to Ngorongoro Crater. Unlike the Serengeti, Ngorongoro has a subterranean water spring, which keeps the crater supplied with water year-round. This means that, unlike the Serengeti, the animals don’t need to migrate to find water, so there are large herds of animals in the park all year. We had some amazing animal sightings in the crater. The highlights were: a giant tree filled with baboons (probably more than 100 in a single tree) swinging between the branches and howling at each other, two cheetahs lounging in the grass, a spotting a black rhino, and seeing a lioness and her two newborn cubs basking in the sun just a few feet from our safari truck. AMAZING!
What our safari may have lacked in creature comforts, it definitely made up for in substance. We had an amazing experience and saw so many animals.
-Julia
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| From 07-14-10 Arusha and Serengeti Web |
Chris and the safari wheels
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| From 07-14-10 Arusha and Serengeti Web |
But it turned out ok, and we got a great close-up view of the herd
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| From 07-14-10 Arusha and Serengeti Web |
Maasai warriors returning from their rite-of-passage walkabout
3 comments:
Such cute baby lions! And the campsite decor is awesome... especially the turtle at the top.
How many hippos can you fit into a watering hole? Looks a bit crowded....Amazing!
Love the lilac breasted rollers too:)Great photos! Is it hot? Mosquitos? Mom
Hi Julia,
Very impressive the way you have taken adventure from starting to the end. It seems like a travel of a live time. I have also been a part of such safari in Tanzania with Gosheniadventures which still remains fresh in my heart...
Happy sharing... Thanks
Best wishes.
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