Day 3: Serengeti Day Two

Day two in the Serengeti started (after swapping stories of hearing lion in the night – some other group got a little over-excited and claimed that the lion were walking in between our tents!!!) with an early morning game drive – we left about 6.30 so any notion of this being a relaxing holiday soon got abandoned.

It wasn’t looking like being a terribly successful morning – we saw a herd of elephant in the distance, a water buck and some interesting birds (as well as the ever present impala and a few buffalo).

And then we got stuck in the mud…. It had been raining pretty hard the previous evening and the mud roads were fairly treacherous. This was quite amusing at first until we realised quite how remote we were (admittedly the driver did have radio but I think he was too proud to call for help until absolutely necessary) when we got out of the truck. We asked Beerman if we could do anything to help and he suggested we look for some stones to place under the wheels for traction… “but don’t go too far!”

Luckily somebody saw us and came to our rescue:

On our way back to the campsite for lunch things definitely picked up ) First of all we cam across a whole family group of giraffe right next to the road – some even doing their funny bendy leg thing when they are eating off the ground.

(We have loads more phots of these giraffe on flickr)

And then we caught sight of a leopard (by which I mean that I saw the tail and arse of a cat through my binoculars that I was told was a leopard).

However, after lunch and some more hippo:

was possibly the highlight of our tour so far; going back through the main plains of the serengeti we spotted a cheetah in the distance. There were three about two hundred metres to our left and we watched them walking for about 10 minutes. Then, when we thought they were just going to wander off, they suddenly changed direction and headed towards the road. It turns out that they had spotted an Impala standing on a termite mound 300 metres to the right of our road. We watched them, a mother and two young, cross the road right in front of us and then slowly approach and stalk the impala right up until the final chase. The kill happened just over the brow of the hill so we did not see that (and neither impala or cheetah were seen again so we new they had made the kill) but that didn’t stop it being an amazing site!!!

We also saw a lioness sitting on a rock, but by that point it didn’t seem so exciting.

That night we camped on the crater rim, which was alot colder than we had been used to. Also the campsite (another bush camp) was also occupied by an old (and grumpy) buffalo who grazed the site during the night and chased anybody who dared to go to the loo. I might also add at this point that, in our haste to pack for the safari (and having not camped in africa yet or been advised otherwise) we had not packed a torch – we had bought some lovely head-torches too, so were stumbling around in the dark, much to Gemma’s annoyance. Grrrr!

Day 2: Serengeti and Ngorongo Crater

Day one of our trek proper (13th Feb, feels so long ago) and we were picked up early by our guide (Beerman), who was going to be our driver and tracker for the next three days. We also had our first experience with “African Time” – tell the chef you need breakfast early because you are leaving at 7.30 – “no problems, we will be ready at 7″, only for it to arrive at 8.15 (it was only fruit and muesli!!!)

Anyway, we still didn’t really know what to expect – by this time we had been joined by Steph and Maria who had both started the trip at Nairobi (Arusha). So we met with our guide for the three day safari (Beerman) and rode off towards the Serengeti National Park. The drive up took about 5 hours and we first had to go through the Ngorongoro Crater Conservation area (Ngorongoro means “cowbell” in Masai because apparently that is what the word sounds like.) We didn’t go into the crater on the first day, instead we drove around the rim and down into the plains of the Serengeti. First of all we were so excited to see anything we stopped to take pictures of whatever we saw, no matter how far away they were. But once we got down onto the vast plain, there were no shortage of things to look at – especially wildebeest, impala and zebra, which are in total abundance.

The first morning we didn’t see all that much else., but later on we did get to see, some antelope, Zebra, warthog, a herd (?!) of giraffe and last thing before we stopped a family of Hippo, which we were all very excited about (even if the light wasn’t great for photos).

Approaching dusk, we pulled into our campsite for the night – not exactly completely in the bush (there was at least a toilet (long drop, not very pleasant) but there was no fences and nothing to stop the animals coming in…

Beerman and some others from the safari company cooked us dinner and we were a little disconcerted that they slept in the caged off area that served as the kitchen while we were out in the open!! We managed not to get eaten alive although everyone (apart from me) heard a pride of Lion killing a buffalo scarily close to our campsite.

And that was just day one!!!

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Day 1: Africa; the beginning

We may well have been in Africa for about 6 weeks but today is the first time that I have had the time and internet connection to do a proper post so I am going to start from the beginning…

Departure

Our trip didn’t really get off to a great start. We have planned this for ages and have done everything we can to be prepared. House, car, banks, bills etc – we thought we had sorted it all out but then the first thing I do when we get to Heathrow Airport is try and get some cash out (we had arrived early to watch the woeful excuse of a rugby match Eng v Ita) and the cash machine chews up my card. Being a minimalist traveller this was my only cash card. Luckily Gem has a card for the same account and we have all the cash we need for Africa but needless to say, this was not the start we were hoping for.

Kenya

After a sleepless overnight flight we arrived in Jomo Kenyatta airport in Nairobi about 6 in the morning. The foreign office had only recently lifted the travel warning for Nairobi so we were a little apprehensive but it did not take us long to fall in love with Kenya. Everyone was so welcoming and friendly and so grateful that we had come, we both felt guilty that we were only going to stay for one night. As it is this wasn’t much of a change to our original itinerary.

The traffic in Nairobi though is unbelievable…. Our ride from the airport should have taken about 20mins but during rush hour it took over two hours – and they have no concept of lanes – cars, bikes, pedestrians going in all directions; quite entertaining. The only visible sign of the troubles that we say (admittedly we didn’t venture far) was that all the entrances to Uhuru park were blocked by military to stop any rallies.

Tanzania

Because of the whole Kenya situation, all the tours had been re-scheduled, so the one we were joining was no longer coming through Nairobi and we had to go to meet in in Arusha. This was no real drama, Absolute Africa had arranged a pick up for us and we just got on a local bus from the hotel and were taken across the border (with annoying aid worker and various other locals).

This took us about 6 hours and we were met by our tour leader (becs) in Arusha and taken to our first campsite – Masai campsite, Arusha. None of the other passengers, nor the truck were there – they were off visiting some national park as all the itineraries had been messed around. As soon as we had arrived at the campsite we were told to pack up a day bag with a few things as tomorrow morning we were going on a three day trip to the Serengetti and the Ngorongo Crater. We had expected a few days to get into the swing of things and at least some sort of introductory meeting but things were still a bit up in the air so, without a clue of what to expect and not really knowing where we were going, totally unprepared and a little overwhelmed, we packed together a small bag ready to be picked up the following morning…

Still no photos

We were planning to start to upload some photos now we have a reasonable internet connection but this computer did some scary things when i plugged in my flash drive so I do not trust it. You will have to wait a little while longer to see all our lovely wildlife pictures. But be warned, there is about a million of them!!!!

Zimbabwe and the falls

Just another update (from Gemma this time)……we are in Zimbabwe and are having lots of fun.

We left Malawi about 2 weeks ago and made our way to Zambia. I must say crossing the Zambia border was not much fun and it took ages (getting on and off the truck for some reason). Then us brits then had to pay $150 to get into the country (we were not happy as kiwis just had to pay $50 – don’t know what we had done to upset the Zambians)!

We only stayed in Zambia  for 2 days (basically to get all our food for Zimbabwe as we could not rely on getting any there).

1st thing we did in Zim was the houseboats – it was so cool  and we got cooked for (I have never eaten so much). We did safaris on the water (kind of scary when hippos were only 2 meters from you in the water when you are in a poxy boat). We also saw crocs and elephant. The badtaste party on the boat was fun and we made a delicious punch. Also on the boats we got up early to watch the sunrises as they were so fab.

We then visited the Kariba Dam  in the hottest weather ever.

Our next stop was Antelope Park which was a fab place and quite luxurious (despite the camping) and we had free tea and coffee! I walked with lions and went on a horse safari….very exciting!

We then went to Bullawayo and went on a days activity of village visit, cave paintings and walking safari to see Rhino – it was the best day. the guide was so good (he even made me cry when talking about the bushmen of the area). We ate lots of berries from the bush and sugar cane!

Now in Vic Falls and having lots of fun – gonna eat crocodile and warthog tonight!