We didn't spend much time in Nairobi, but we did visit a giraffe sanctuary. This is where I thought I'd kiss a giraffe...apparently their tongues are antiseptic, so you can't get any diseases from them. You put a piece of giraffe food in your mouth and they remove it during the kiss. I thought it would be disgusting and really weird, but surprisingly not! I really enjoyed the visit though, but we did spend the rest of the day just chilling. We lost 4 people in Nairobi - two we were happy about (though one had amazing stories!).

From Nairobi, we crossed into Tanzania to visit Snake Park in Arusha. This was the base for our Serengeti trip, but before we went there, we went on a Maasai village walk which was really interesting, and also saw snake feeding i.e. Live chicks being fed to the snakes which again was pretty interesting!

From there, we went on our 3 day safari trip. The most important fact of this trip...our safari guide was actually called Simba - how amazing is that?! Anyway, on the first day we visited Lake Manuri National Park which was ok, but quite a similar experience to Lake Nakuru in Kenya. We did see a big family of elephants close up though which was pretty cool. On our second day, we visited Ngorogoro Crater which was amazing. The crater is a massive volcano crater that sunk back down (as it was too big) and now there is loads of wildlife there. The setting was stunning and the animals we saw were amazing - I had a lioness eyeballing me from 2m away and I actually held my breath, I just couldn't breathe and my heart was pounding (I was obviously in a car, but the killer eyes were amazing). We also saw lion cubs practicing stalking zebra and wildebeest which was really amusing too. From Ngorogoro, we went onto the Serengeti and did an afternoon drive, in addition to a morning drive the next day. It was just amazing - it was exactly how I imagined a safari to be, with the big plains and so many animals. We saw more lions, a leopard climbing down a tree (which apparently is really rare), cheetahs, loads of zebra, wildebeest, buffalos, hyenas etc, all really close to the side of the road. We also saw the back end of the wildebeest migration which was just an amazing site - both zebras and wildebeest make the migration from Kenya (so they end in the Serengeti to give birth), and the site of hundreds and thousands of these animals is just brilliant, again just awe inspiring. Apparently the Lion King is based on the Serengeti and you can definitely see the similarities in landscape. I was so looking forward to the Serengeti, and it definitely lived up to its reputation.

From Arusha, we then drove on through Tanzania to Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar which will form my final blog (for now!).