Monday, October 23, 2006
11 Oct
Today was the start of the safari. Before leaving, we set up a flight from Arusha to Zanzibar. At 9:30 we met our guide (named Good Luck...this was what we actually called hime) and our cook. We stopped off for a few supplies and hit a craft shop before heading out of Arusha in our Toyota Land Cruiser for Tarangine National Park. It was a two hour drive, so when we got to our campsite, we had lunch. By 1 PM we were in the park in search of animals. It was quite similar to Chobe (Botswana) in that there were a lot of elephants animals by a river. The river was not as big nor as marshy as in Chobe, but the concentration of game was still there. We saw lots of elephants, gazelles, zebras, giraffes etc. We also saw 3 lions and a leopard. Our first big cats of the trip. We saw buffalo as well, so we had 4 of the big 5 covered in the first day. Quite lucky. Good Luck was amazing. How he saw a leopard from a few hundred yards away was crazy. It was laying in a tree and the only way I saw it was with binoculars. It then woke up and climbed down the tree. Pretty amazing...and I am not the biggest animal fan in the world. We left the park by 6 PM and went back to camp for dinner. It was similar to the Good Earth meals on the mountain, but our cook was better this time. There was an African drum show at the camp that night. We didn't watch it, but we fell asleep to the beats.
12 Oct
Today we drove all the way to the Serengeti. It was a long dusty and bumpy ride. The scenery was very dry grass lands. Not the most memorable. It was so dusty the visiblity was not very good, so you could not see very far. It was the dry season, but I didn't know that it equated to the dust season. We didn't see any animals on the transit except for cattle being herded by the Maasi people. They were red and blue cloth as clothes and hold sticks and watch cattle all day. They live in villages of mud and thatch huts with a wall of wood or scrubby bushes to keep the animals they herd away from the predators at night. The work serengeti is maasi for endless plain...and that is what is was. An endless plain. When we got to the national park, it was not spectacular until we go towards the interier. Here there are some rivers that provide water year round. This is where we were to see lots of animals and the landscape was that seen in national geographic. The late afternoon was a game drive and it was good. We saw 5 lions and lots of gazelle giraffes, zebra, hippos and elephants by the water. Back at camp we had dinner and watch the stars come out.
Today was the start of the safari. Before leaving, we set up a flight from Arusha to Zanzibar. At 9:30 we met our guide (named Good Luck...this was what we actually called hime) and our cook. We stopped off for a few supplies and hit a craft shop before heading out of Arusha in our Toyota Land Cruiser for Tarangine National Park. It was a two hour drive, so when we got to our campsite, we had lunch. By 1 PM we were in the park in search of animals. It was quite similar to Chobe (Botswana) in that there were a lot of elephants animals by a river. The river was not as big nor as marshy as in Chobe, but the concentration of game was still there. We saw lots of elephants, gazelles, zebras, giraffes etc. We also saw 3 lions and a leopard. Our first big cats of the trip. We saw buffalo as well, so we had 4 of the big 5 covered in the first day. Quite lucky. Good Luck was amazing. How he saw a leopard from a few hundred yards away was crazy. It was laying in a tree and the only way I saw it was with binoculars. It then woke up and climbed down the tree. Pretty amazing...and I am not the biggest animal fan in the world. We left the park by 6 PM and went back to camp for dinner. It was similar to the Good Earth meals on the mountain, but our cook was better this time. There was an African drum show at the camp that night. We didn't watch it, but we fell asleep to the beats.
12 Oct
Today we drove all the way to the Serengeti. It was a long dusty and bumpy ride. The scenery was very dry grass lands. Not the most memorable. It was so dusty the visiblity was not very good, so you could not see very far. It was the dry season, but I didn't know that it equated to the dust season. We didn't see any animals on the transit except for cattle being herded by the Maasi people. They were red and blue cloth as clothes and hold sticks and watch cattle all day. They live in villages of mud and thatch huts with a wall of wood or scrubby bushes to keep the animals they herd away from the predators at night. The work serengeti is maasi for endless plain...and that is what is was. An endless plain. When we got to the national park, it was not spectacular until we go towards the interier. Here there are some rivers that provide water year round. This is where we were to see lots of animals and the landscape was that seen in national geographic. The late afternoon was a game drive and it was good. We saw 5 lions and lots of gazelle giraffes, zebra, hippos and elephants by the water. Back at camp we had dinner and watch the stars come out.
# posted by Adam @ 6:24 AM 
