October 8th

An early rise and pack away the tents, then the truck, oh the truck! Our home for the month - a rattling mishmash of metal and camping equipment (see photos), which we would come to love... one day. A 350km drive later, with roughly the same number of pot holes, lunch on the road side and we finally arrived in the Serengeti and the Snake Park Campsite in Aruba. Bryan (the Assistant Commissioner of Police in South Australia) had a 50th birthday party which obviously involved beer but also some punch made by Del with the local tipple 'Konyagi'. More beer later we thought it a good idea to visit the snakes and crocodiles held in the park with just our torches. Ben went missing for a while but was later found him with his zoom lens in a croc's mouth trying to get the perfect picture (these damn vets!)Randomly I got chatting to a bloke at the bar who was from Croydon of all places! It turns out he's on an environment and wildlife conservation project and lived with the Masai for a year to study them. He described the living conditions in a very positive way considering the Masai live on a rotating diet of water on day one, cows blood the next and water the last day to stretch supplies. His big tip was when you drink the cows blood make sure you get in early on the queue when it is warm, as when it cools it curdles and is much harder to drink! Nice. Anyway it turns out he ran the London Marathon this year but even more interestingly he was the team that arranged for those Masai to come over and run in order to raise money for their tribe to drill a water hole. I had the honour of being introduced to one of those Masai (one who actually finished) which made my day! We swapped training tips whereby I explained I did 6 months training and he explained he just turned up. They start drilling tomorrow apparently and only have enough money to drill for water once because the company that promised a free pump withdrew their offer citing the credit crunch as a the reason, so good luck to the drillers and spread the word about those scumbags at Grundfos who completely shafted them (no pun intended).

October 9th

Another early start and another hangover (surprise surprise). We met our next driver James and his old 4x4 with 6 of us squeezed in (our tin can for the next three days). Off we trundled to the Serengeti and what will go down in history as the dustiest road on Earth. This thing was literally the worst dust track ever; everyone came out the other end looking like dirty sand castles! Stopping off at a random rock outpost, we travelled onwards to the game park via a great view of the Ngorongoro Crater (cue more cheesy photos). Past there and in the park we saw more game and our first cheetahs. Finally arriving at camp we attempted to de-dust and got down to drinking some more beer having sent out one of the guides to source some. (this was just brilliant... middle o the Serengeti desert and we still managed to get some cold beer!) That night there were reports of two lions in the camp but I was too busy sweating dust to notice anything!

October 10th

OUR FIRST KILL!!! Cara opened her sleeping bag to find a 2 inch red and orange scorpion nesting in it. Someone thought it a good idea to coax it towards an ant hole where it proceeded to kill an ant and run off with it. Half way to the safety of a rock a bird flew in and snapped up the scorpion into a tree (KILL TWO!) Well, we thought anyway. The scorpion then stung the bird in the tree, which dropped the scorpion only for another bird to catch the scorpion in mid flight and this time finish it off. Enough of this tom foolery we cried... we wanted a bigger kill... off to the Ngorongoro Crater where we would see proper kill number one.We drove back down the road of dust hell but this time we went via Oldupai, the home of oldest footsteps ever found of 'homo erectus' (nothing trips X about that). Of course all we saw was a plaster cast as they had buried the actual footprints for preservation purposes, but they gave us a geography and history lesson all the same... that was fun!We camped that night on the edge of the crater with amazing views of the whole thing, so in true 'Overland' style, we sent our guide out for more beers and lit a fire.

October 11th

An early start but not such big handovers. The crater is essentially a big fish bowl where animals stay all year either because they are lazy and don't want to move away from the year round water and grass supply, or can't climb back up the steep mountain sides... a dream come true for hunters such as lions leopards, cheetahs and hyenas. Anyway, we watched a pair of lions stalk wilder beast for an hour in the hope that our intervention (separating and trapping some of the heard crossing the track to the lake with our vans) would aid this particular stalk. It did not, so onwards we went to another leopard, some buffalo, game, hippos and hyenas... and (as promised) our first kill!... a hyena snacking on a bird (well a kill's a kill!). Another long drive in the 4x4s across dust hell, local villages and what I can only describe as the worst in-balance of wealth I have ever seen, in the suburbs of Arusha (shanty towns backed onto huge elaborate mansions) and we finally got back to the Snake Park. Back there we decided to drink more beer and go and tease the crocs again. Having been told by the Masai guard that the small crocs on the other side of the three foot wall did not jump we proceeded to the next enclosure with similar sized crocs and a similar size wall. Leaning over the croc of course jumped straight up and went for us... scaring the living hell out of most of us. The Masai Warrior came running over and proceeded to inform us that this croc did indeed jump...you would have thought there might be a sign! I asked after the drilling team but no word as yet......and then the night that we will never forget... Cara took us away from the English speaking beautifully thatched bar with great seats and cold beers to go to a local bar across the road that her friend Kilbonge ran. We thought hey why not... then arrived at the worst hole you have ever seen; two white washed rooms with a few bits of plastic furniture, a ripped pool table and a lady standing behind a bar so called not because of the bar you stand on in order to buy drinks but the iron ones that keep robbers from jumping over and robbing the place. Needless to say it was very very local, and the locals were very wary of us. Four beers later we took the place up a gear. The locals were dancing the limbo with us like I've never seen, the landlord, Kilbonge, had his huge belly out in a strut I can only describe as 'flab bashing'and Nick even taught the African men the Ricky Gervaise dance from the Office. I managed to get a few photos which will prove very useful when black mailing the Assistant Commissioner of the South Australian Police, but as yet have not run out of money... maybe later.

October 12th

Early start as that morning we went for a second Masai village walk. This one was more 'modern day' Masai but still not that modern... the village was still made of s*** and comprised of one man, his 15 wives and 80 children! What an absolute legend this man is. This by the way is normal; each Masai village comprises of one leader, his wives who each build their own huts and their children who live with the wives but move out at the age of 14 (we passed one village where James claimed the leader had 30 wives!) The houses were a little more modern, using plastics and metals, with the kids wearing Nike etc but still this was shanty times. The kids loved us and played for ages, they obviously do not get treated like kids by the village and in between school are expected to tend to herds and clean, so when we played with them they couldn't get enough of us. They all want to hold your hand be your friend and practice their English. Having been stripped of anything interesting we had (pens, hair bobbles bottle tops etc) we left back for the next part of the tour... We were then introduced to the local medical/snake bite centre where we found a Masai Warrior who had been bitten by a Black Mambo two days earlier, whilst asleep. He seemed really pleased to have 15 tourists stand around him whilst the nurse grabbed his swollen arm to hold it up for us to see the bite mark! Poor bloke managed a small smile when we communicated via the interpreter "get well soon" but you couldn't but help but sense he was really thinking "why don't you all just f*** off and leave me to tend to my really painful and poison infected arm!" 6 curio shops later we packed away the tents, got back on the truck and headed for Tembo, our halfway house to Dar El Salam (capital of Tanzania).Having crossed the Tanzanian border, we arrived at 6.30pm (sun sets at 6pm)... it was a good job we were so used to putting up and taking down our tents that we could do it blind folded... it was dark! A few beers later we all hit the sack having escorted a chameleon off the premises.