Day 19: Moshi, Kilimanjaro and Arusha
Today was pretty much a driving day too… We were headed for Arusha and along the way we started to finally see acacia trees and Boa bab trees (like rafiki’s tree) so that was cool. We also drove through Moshi which is the town that is the base camp for Kilimanjaro! We were a bit unlucky and only feintly saw the mountain but technically we totally saw it. Haha oh well it was like when i went to Mt Rushmore in the US.. It was completely covered with clouds. Just means ill have to go back one day! :)
We also stopped in Arusha at the art gallery which had some really awesome paintings that i’m hoping Steph will try and copy for me since he can paint haha… Hint…
We also went to a Tanzanite shop which turned out to be very depressing because of how expensive it was! It’s the most beautiful stone ever!! My new favourite - it’s this blue purple colour and it’s all shimmery and amazing. I definitely want it as my wedding ring one day haha.
The Arusha campsite we stayed at was also a snake park but Steph and i missed out on seeing the snakes because we were taking cold showers… Super cold. It was crap. The campsite was pretty gross too but they had a really cool bar with memorabilia from all over the world from all the overlanders that had stayed there. It was awesome!!
Day 20-21: Ngorogoro and Serengeti
Today we got in our little safari trucks and said goodbye to the overland truck again! SAFARI TIME YEEEAH. So exciting. We drove for a few hour and finally got our first glimpse of the Ngorogoro crater!(which actually isnt a crater, but an old volcano…) It is the most beautiful sight…! Sunlight peaking through clouds and water reflecting the edge of the crater and it just looks like a big backdrop from a movie or something.. Absolutely gorgeous. I was so excited we were going to be down there in a few days seeing the animals! We went to Serengeti first then did Ngorogoro on the way back.
I spotted the first animal of the trip! It was a water buck, just chilling in the forest/jungle. Looked like a big deer to me.. Then we saw some buffalo… Heaps of zebra… We stopped for lunch and saw this giant stalk which was awesome and some eagles who would swoop you and steal your food if you ate outside the truck… I wouldnt have minded that though as they served us peanut butter and jelly and carrot and bean sandwiches… Ew. With a side of cold fries, boiled egg and a bit of chicken wing. Blergh.
Just after we pulled into the official Serengeti National park, we saw the most amaaaazing sight. Apparently some animals were still migrating and for as far as the eye could see there were animals; zebra, buffalo, wildabeast, impala, elephants… All just scattered across huge grassy plains. We were lucky enough to have a toilet stop that had a super high lookout point so we could see just how far the animals went for.. Which was forever. Seriously we couldnt see the end of it. So awesome.
As we continued to the campsite we did a bit of a game drive and saw our first lion! I dont know how Alister spotted it, it was hiding in the bushes stalking some zebra and we sat there for about 20 minutes hoping it would get them, but the zebras slowly wandered off and it didnt make a move. It was getting dark so we were trying to get to the campsite as soon as possible, because you arent allowed to drive at night or they will think you are poachers. Then we got a radio saying that there was a tree full of lions so we pulled off this dirt road to go see and it was soo cool, there was like 3 lions just hanging out (literally hanging) in this big tree! Soo cool! Apparently its pretty rare for lions to be in the trees so we were really lucky!
We raced to the camp in the dark
And also spotted some hippo along the way before finally getting there.
It was full service camping here so they cooked for us and put up our tents already.
Dinner was petrifying…! It actually was really yummy but we were in this cement shelter with a bright fluro light and there were sooo many flyey bugs and moths around the light and i was freaking out hardcore. I ended up running out with my food and finished it in the tent. Ickkkk.
I went back eventually with Stephs hoodie on tightly pulled around my face and we all sat and looked at the stars. They were soo bright out there in the middle of nowhere. I even saw a shooting star! It was awesome.
Something not so awesome…
Day 22:
3am: Steph woke me up because she thought she could hear elephants outside the tent area… Turned out they were actually hyena’s after we heard them laugh and make weird sounds…! Shit. And I needed to pee. We were trying to be so quiet because Steph saw it walk right past our tent… Oh god I was sooo scared. Wide awake listening to their weird noises, calling another that was far away… Scariest thing ever. So we were pretty much sitting there trying not to pee our pants until the sun came up so we could actually see them if they were still there. We could hear some other people opening their tents and we were thinking OMG ARE YOU CRAZYY AHHH but they were fine.
5.30am: Sunrise. Finally. Too bad all we had was one squat toilet betweeen like 20 girls.. Everyone had to pee and had been like us, freaking out in the tent too scared to leave! Haha it was a pretty cool experience though :)
We had breakky and then set out on an early morning game drive in Serengeti!! Wooooo! Almost straight away we started seeing animals - olive baboons, HEAPS of hippos chilling in the water… Hyenas, Weird little mini deer things… Hylexes… Bat eared foxes… We saw our first male lion from a distance and a female potentially stalking zebras… But i think one of the other safari trucks scared the zebra so we moved on…
Then we hit a bit of a dry spell until we got to this big boulder thing an there were about 4 lions all chilling on it! Big maned ones and a cub and females! Then we got a call that there was a leopard in a tree nearby! So we left the lions and went to see the leopard… It was sooo hard to see because it was in a big tree and the sun way behind it so it was silohetted. But when we zoomed in on our cameras you could see it. Very cool. After that we headed back for brunch for about an hour and then headed back out for another game drive on our way to the ngorogoro campsite. So then we went and found like 20 lions in a tree again and we were soo close and they eventually all climbed out of the tree and past our trucks!! Very cool. We saw more hippos and elephants and heaps of zebra… And we saw more lions living in boulders, about 5 of them chilling in the shade… So many lions!! Soo awesome!!! After the last big number of lions we had to start heading back to our Ngorogoro crater campsite. We saw another leopard in a tree which was cool, you could see it a little better thatthe first one but still not that well… But apparently thats how you usually see them.
The campsite was beautiful and overlooking the glorious crater. We were actually on the rim on the crater so it was kind of cold because we were up so high. We had a lovely dinner and some drinks by the campfire which was fun. It was technically one of our last nights together as a group so we hung out and had lots of laughs. :)
