Tanzania Safari

Check out our pics: Tanzania Safari

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We flew from Cape Town to Dar (that’s Dar es Salaam for you out-of-towners) in Tanzania. We were eager to do a safari right away so the very next morning we took a taxi from our pad at the YMCA to the bus station for the 7am bus to Arusha. The 8 hour bus journey was one of the best I’ve experienced. Thanks to a little early finagling on Tracy’s part I had leg room, a seatbelt and an unobstructed view of the road. We made only one stop for lunch where we sampled ugali (like mashed potato in texture and colour, but made from maize) and banana beef stew, a local favorite (had to try it), all very tasty and healthy.

The countryside was lush, green and splashed with vibrant colours from village signs, fruit markets, and people’s clothing. Women balanced huge loads on their heads and guys on bicycles teetered with their loads of wood dangerously near our rapidly moving bus. We arrived in Arusha only 45 minutes late (the bus drivers were stopped and questioned by the police, not sure why) and found a hotel for the evening just before sunset.

We had been warned about the touts selling tours in Arusha and woah, it’s as bad as the guide books say. The next day we had a coterie of 6-7 men follow us everywhere as we walked about town, all urging us to visit certain tour operators. Two young English girls whom we met on the bus the day before, showing little interest in developing a long term friendship at the time, suddenly ran across the life-threateningly busy road, fleeing from their own entourage of touts to say hello. We joined forces and soon realized that all the companies did pretty much the same tour. In the end we chose a company, Shidolya Tours that didn’t lie to us about where the migration was (The migration of wildebeest and zebra were already in Kenya). This company also guaranteed there would be no more than 5 tourists in the jeep. As is turned out we were fortunate in having the jeep to ourselves for the majority of the game drives.

The safari was truly incredible. We half expected David Attenborough (or Marlin Perkins for you Americans) to jump out behind the high grass. The first day of the safari we drove to Lake Manyara. We thought we would have to actually earn a viewing, you know, drive for hours attempting authentic mating calls while spraying ourselves with baby gazelle pheromones. But there was no need. Zebras and impalas and wildebeest in the same frame! We’d go from spotted hyena to warthog to lilac-breasted roller in a matter of minutes. We camped the first night at a town that translates from Swahili as Mosquito Creek. The following day (one bottle of mosquito repellent later), we headed to the Serengeti where we would camp for the next two nights. One night we were woken up by loud braying noises, (sounded like a cross between a donkey and Freddie Mercury). We listened as the creatures hurriedly passed through our camp until the sounds were distant. Then Tracy decided to go outside for a pee. I pointed out that the zebras sounded fair distressed to me, which could mean only one thing…..predators of the feline kind. Tracy waited it out.

We had been VERY lucky in the Serengeti to see a leopard and cub only a few feet away from our jeep on a very early morning game drive. We were able to follow them for 20 minutes before they went off along a river. Leopards are apparently one of the most difficult to see since they don’t like people. Even our driver was excited and took every opportunity to show other drivers a picture we took of the pair. Other highlights were watching a group of female lions surround a herd of nervous zebra. While we and the other jeeps were all focused on the distant lions and zebras, Tracy pointed out a lion who had quietly positioned herself just 4 feet away from us. It was really fun to watch the expression of the guys face change in the jeep in front of us (with his lens that was long enough to spot dust on the moon) when Tracy “psssst”-ed him and pointed to the lion next to our jeep.

Our last day took us to the Ngorongoro Crater Nature Reserve, unique in that it is basically a big bowl that contains a wide variety of animals. That night my sleep was disturbed once again. This time by Tracy anxiously shouting, “Is that you???!”. “Is WHAT me?”, I even more anxiously responded, while simultaneously feeling and hearing something violently banging the tent wall next to my head. After I very bravely and instinctively hit back at the object beyond the tent wall, the ‘thing’ moved on. A few minutes later, still hearing an enormous amount of crunching going on, Tracy bravely popped her head out the tent to find that it was just our old pals, the zebras, grazing near us.

Anyhow, we saw lions, leopards, elephants, buffalos, a rhino, cheetahs, all sorts of antelopes, wildebeest, heartbeast, dik diks, rock hyrax, giraffes, baboons, warthogs, monkeys, hyenas, hippos, crocs, all sort of pretty birds and blah, blah. We would recommend this trip to everyone. Unless of course you have fur allergies.