Update from Tanzania - Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater & Kilimanjaro Base

This update comes as we sit in our campsite, poor as church mice, at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa at 5800m. Well, this is according to the book. We can't see much of the mountain because of the thick cloud cover which has been here since we drove past a week ago. We were hoping it would have cleared by now so that we could see the peak but apparently it is covered with clouds more often than not. Oh well, we tried...

Since leaving the white beaches of Zanzibar almost a week ago we have driven through mountain forests, through a volcano crater and along endless DUSTY roads of the Serengeti.The drive to the Ngorongoro Crater was very scenic as you climb up to around 2500m and we spent our first afternoon looking over the crater from the campsite on the rim. The entrance to the crater is very expensive and is charged on a 24hour basis. For the two of us to camp on the rim and drive onto the crater floor for 4 hours the next morning cost us $400. (For this, both of us could spend 50 nights in a nice beach resort on Lake Malawi!) Although steep in price it is something quite spectacular and very different to the usual game park. Our day got off to a rough start when the Masai guard at the gate would not let us down onto the crater floor because we did not have a local guide even though we did not have space for one in our car. He insisted that we drive back to the crater HQ and get permission from them to enter the crater without a guide. This resulted in us losing 2 hours of our time on the crater floor, all for a simple stamp on our entrance papers. Ridiculous and very frustrating. Sadly this added to our growing list of bad experiences with the Tanzanian people.

We then drove through the Ngorongoro conservation area to the entrance of the Serengeti NP which is about 100km on a very dusty bumpy road. Even if you are just driving to the Serengeti you have to pay the crater entrance fee which works out to the most expensive toll fees ever at just over R1000... Along the way to the Serengeti gate we snapped a photo of some local Masai as we drove past which they did not appreciate and they threw a spear at us. Luckily they are not used to aiming at things moving at 80km/h and they missed the car. So we turned the flash off and used the zoom lens for sneaky Masai from that point on.

We were hoping to do a hot air balloon trip while in the park but unfortunately they did not have space for us. Bit of a disappointment as it is apparently very good.

The camp sites are very basic in the park and very overpriced for what you get. At $200/day for the two of us, there were no showers or hot water and pretty bad bathrooms.

We had a bit of a malaria scare after the first night in the park. I (Rhett) woke up completely disorientated and dizzy. Realising after an hour that it wasn't getting any better, Johan eagerly decided that it was time to use one of the malaria test kits and was grinning from ear to ear as I had to draw blood for the test. The good news is the test was negative, the bad news is three days later we still don't know why I am constantly dizzy and keep stumbling around like I've had a bottle of tequila. Johan, in his expert medical opinion, is now convinced I have a brain tumour. I am starting to think he may be right. If anyone has time to Google dizziness and potential spider/insect/snake bites which may cause this, please sms me and let me know what it might be! I've started on the antibiotics that we brought with in to see if that helps and it seems to be getting better slowly so no need to worry (mom!) J

Our second day in the park was eventful. After a good mornings drive with lion and elephant sightings, we headed north towards an area called the Grumeti Game Reserve in search of the migration. This was under the advice of the local guides. We managed to find part of the migration and estimate the number of wildebeest that we saw between 2000 and 3000. We managed to get some pictures which unfortunately don't do justice to the sheer number of animals. Shortly after seeing this we were stopped by a vehicle with 6 rangers, 4 of which had semi automatic rifles. In broken translated English they asked us if we had taken pictures which we said we had and were then told that it was a private game reserve and we were trespassing. After pleading with them and claiming ignorance we were told that the trespassing was not a problem but the fact that we had taken pictures of the migration was (makes perfect sense huh?). We were told that we would need to pay a fine at their local compound - not really being in a situation to argue with 4 armed men we followed them to the compound and found out the fine was $100! We managed to negotiate it down to $40 and were tempted to tell the ranger that his name was actually an Argentinian girls name but considering the circumstances we kept our comments to ourselves… We then headed back to the safety of the Serengeti with our tails between our legs, where we found an awesome hippo pool (Seani, yawning photos just for you), a good afternoon of lion sightings and then an awesome sunset with elephants about 200m from our car.

We've now started our trip back home and due to our unfortunate financial situation might be home earlier than we planned! We've decided to head back via Malawi instead of Zambia as we really enjoyed the lake on our way up and would like to spend a few more days exploring it. The fact that fuel is almost half the price in Malawi compared to Zambia is an added bonus.

The next three days or so will be pretty solid driving as we have almost 2000km to cover before we get back to Lake Malawi. We'll update again as soon as we can.

Please keep the messages and news coming about what's going on as it's always good to hear from you.

Cheers

Rhett & Johan