After a bit of time in Dar es Salaam doing not much of anything at another beach we headed off to Arusha to start our 7 day safari which we had both been looking forward to alot.
We arrived in Arusha via Kilimanjaro airport and managed to see the top of the mountain from the plane; much easier than going up it.
We met the chap that organised our safari (Achmed) who is actually originally from Birmingham and has the coolest moustache. Our safari was with Base Camp Tanzania and we would def recommend them to anyone who is thinking about going to Tanzania.
Anyway we left with our driver Richard and our cook Zacharia and headed to Lake Manyara National Park, it didnt take too long to get there so we headed straight out into the park for our first game drive. Even though it was far too hot we had a great time and saw lots of elephants, monkeys, giraffes, zebras and hippos. We spent that night back in a dome tent which we havent been missing. The next day we had quite a long drive into the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and had a fab view into the crater as we drove around the rim and headed to the most SW corner of NCA to an area called Ndutu. We were here for two nights as this is currently where the migration is. We were glad we made the quite out of the way detour to here as we were rewarded with the best game viewing. Oh and we also stayed in a tented camp where the tents have amazingly comfortable double beds, hot showers attached the lot; camping as it should be. The camp was the Wild Frontiers Camp and is only in Ndutu for the part of the year that the migration is there. The staff and food were amazing considering you are in the middle of the wild. We saw quite a few lions (Marks favourite) including three cubs, one of the lions decided to sleep right behind our jeep to get some shade, we heard a very loud lion roar (pretty scary) and Jane also got really scared when she turned around in the jeep and saw a lioness running straight for her luckily it was going to chase some vultures from its kill and didnt stop to munch Jane. We also saw a few cheetahs (Janes favourite) again with some cubs, lots of wilderbeast and zebra (well it is the migration), Mr Jackal and some friends were around at his for dinner, elephants, a hyena missing half its leg (we called it stumpy and decided hyenas get a bad press we have decided to like them), giraffes, warthogs (amazing), buffaloes with a baby and lots of other things.
After Ndutu we headed into the world famous Serengeti National Park where unfortunately we were back to basic camping surrounded by lions (well ants that bite anyway). We went for a few game drives in the Serengeti but found that it wasnt quite as good as Ndutu, the lions just seemed to sleep and there was lots more cars around. We were lucky though as we were able to see a Leopard again with a baby cub (so cute) but it was nearly killed by hyenas so we were ready to chase the hyenas away. We saw lions mating which gave us a laugh, a dead hippo and the usual elephants, giraffes, buffaloes etc.
After the Serengeti we stopped at Olduvai gorge where there is an interesint museum about the archeological digs that are carried out in the area. It is an important prehistoric site and is called "the cradle of mankind". Look it up on wiki.
We carried on to the Ngorongoro Crater and stayed at a lodge on the crater rim; it was good to have a hot shower! However the staff although friendly were crazy.
Our last morning of safari we drove into the crater and before we even reached the bottom we saw two cheetah, we realised at this point it was going to be a good day. After being in the crater less than an hour we saw lions, elephants, flamingoes and Rhinos!! which completed the "big 5" however more exciting was that there was a baby rhino and so also completed the "baby big 5". We saw more lions being teased by Jackals, and also a cheetah getting chased by wildebeest which is a little bit backwards but amusing. We ended up only spending a little time in the crater because we were so lucky seeing everything so quickly and so we headed back to Arusha for a night before catching our flight to Zanzibar to see the Zanzibarbarians and the last bit of our trip.
All in all our safari was fab, Richard was agreat guide and Zacharia was an amazing cook, it was incredible what he could cook on a gas camping stove; we even asked him to move to Scotland to be our chef. We would def recommend the nice tented camps but the lodges are just a bit too busy and hotel like so you dont really feel you are in the wilds of the bush.