We started our 40 day overland Africa adventure on Monday when we met our travel buddies. We have John our Gadventures CEO, he will be our tour guide and cook up until Vic falls along with our driver Patrick. There is 14 of us in our team, majority ending their trip at Vic falls and about 5 of us going all the way to Cape Town, however we are not the only ones away from home for months a couple of people doing similar trips. So here we are...Mary from Canada, Greg & Abby from California, Casey from Australia, Kieran from Ireland, Musashi from Austria, Ling from Singapore, Adrienne from Canada, Sam, Holly, Anu & Arun from London.

We set off from Nairobi 7:30am Tuesday morning and headed back to Tanzania in our giant truck, of course Ben now wants one! Being in the truck was exciting, if any Africans didn't stop to stare at us before they definitely are now! There is just one problem, the roads aren't the best and they seem to love putting speed bumps every kilometre which has you bouncing out your seat, fun at first....soooo annoying now and rather painful, Laura wish she brought a more supportive bra!!!

We travelled for a few hours and stopped a few times for 'bush toilet', we had a smooth ride through the border as we already had our visas and yellow fever certificates, we were taken to a room and told we were being tested for Ebola, Ben concerned they were going to stick a thermometer up his behind, all they did was take a photo of us!?...not really convinced by that however we have been given good advice by a TV advert here...don't eat bats and don't kiss dead people.

We arrived at our camp site around 18:00pm, a Snake Park which had the most biggest anacorndas you will ever see and some very deadly poisonous snakes on show which they happily informed us all live in Africa.

We set off 8:00am Wednesday morning in 4×4 safari Jeeps to head to the National Parks, Seif was our driver and he was lovely! On our way to the parks we drove past loads of Masai villages, their round houses made out of sticks then plastered with mud and stones. We drove past the Ngoragora crater (named after the Masai cow bell) and had an amazing view of the 102 square mile dip as we stood on the 2300m wall around it, then carried on to the Serengeti, on just our drive through the national park to our camp site we saw Baboons, Giraffes, Zebras, Gazelles, Cheetahs which killed a gazelle in front of us, Pumbas (warthog), Lions, Hyenas, Elephants, Wilderbeasts, Buffalos, Hippos, ostriches, mongooses and loads of different birds. Our campsite was nice, the animals were free to roam around so no one was planning on getting up to pee in the night!

Thursday morning we set off at 6:00am for a day of game drives, we saw all the same animals including blacked face monkey which had bright blue testicals and a Leopard which already had a kill but we managed to watch him drag it and attempt to put it up the tree away from hyenas. Later we drove back to the Ngoragora crater to camp and experienced the coldest showers we have ever had in our lives. There is a huge male elephant who lives on his own that roams into the camp and drinks from their water tank, it was amazing...we were stood so close to him. We ended our day with marshmallows by a fire.

On Friday we started at 6:00am for a game drive into the crater, the only animals we had left to see was flamingos, which we saw, Jackals, which we saw and the Black Rhino which unfortunately we didn't see as there are not many. After we headed out of the parks and on to our campsite for the night which was located at Marangu the base of Kilimanjaro, again it was too cloudyhazy to see the mountain so we are left wondering if it even exists!?

Saturday we had to be on the road by 05:00am to start our 14 hour drive to Dar Es Salaam. Sleeping on the truck proved difficult but the view the whole way was the most beautiful yet...miles and miles of plantations, coconut, orange, lemon and banana trees, John picked us some bananas when we stopped for bush toilet - yummy! We got to Dar Es Salaam around 18:00, everyone so excited to be at the beach! We camped at a beach campsite and resumed our travels to Zanzibar this morning, after a 2 hour ferry ride we are at Zanzibar! Its so beautiful, its SO hot! We are at a hotel so feel in luxury after a few days camping and we are right on the beach! We are here for a couple of days _ bliss!