Gem and Stu’s World Tour

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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