Tim and I got married in October, so it's high time we got to our honeymoon. Three weeks in Tanzania. Week 1 - safari. Week 2 - climb Kilimanjaro. Week 3 - relax in Zanzibar. We have just completed phase 1, the safari. We went with Northern Circuit Adventures out of Arusha.
Day 1 took us to Tarangire National Park, the “garden of
elephants”. Tagline confirmed – a troop
of elephants passed within feet of our car, which was our first close up
wildlife encounter. We took too many pictures of very common animals (I just
sorted through all 4000 of them) because we were newbies. Either way, Tarangire
was cool. Also spotted some cheetahs up close after an off road adventure, and
lots of hoofed prey. Tim became an amateur birder and stayed that way for the
whole week. (He gets to sort through all the bird pictures.) We spent the night
at a semi-permanent tented campsite called Haven Nature. They had hot water and
beds inside the tents – roughing it!
Day 2 we went to Lake Maranyara National Park, the home of
the baboon. Tagline confirmed – there were lots of monkeys. Also some
elephants, hippos, flamingos (from afar), buffalo,
giraffe, and a pair of African fish eagles (Tim’s contribution). Really we saw just about all of the animals
everywhere, so I’ll stop naming particular ones. We ran into a group of
elephants in the forest who were using the road (and clearly had right of way).
They were scuffling and knocking down trees and generally in not a good mood.
One of them came so close it scared our guide into throwing the car in reverse.
Apparently he’d had run ins with elephants before and is now cautious. Back to
Haven Nature for the evening.
Day 3 we headed into Serengeti National Park, the “endless
plain”. You guessed it, it’s a really big plain. Our favorite animal spotting
was in the Serengeti, where the grasses were tall from the “short rains”. It
was the classic image of safari. We stayed in one of the public campsites in and
had no hot water (though there was a washroom…that you couldn’t go to at night
in case you get eaten). Heard a few hyena getting into the garbage at night,
but as far as we know we had no close encounters with any predators. We spent 3
nights there. On the way there we passed through the wildebeest migration. 2.5
million animals, including wildebeest, zebra, and gazelles…stretching for miles
and miles. On the way out we passed by a pride of lions hanging out right next
to the road. So cool. One male lion and a group of females, all within about 5
feet of the car. 
Our last night we headed to the Ngorongoro Crater, one of
the world’s premier wildlife preserves. The crater was formed several millions
of years ago when a volcano as tall as Kilimanjaro collapsed. The rim is 600m
tall and the crater floor is about 25km across. It’s a serene place of short grass
and lots of hoofed prey just hanging out…and a few lions amongst them. Circle of life. We saw 4 rhinos there, which we
were told was very lucky. The rhino completed our Big 5: elephant, lion,
leopard, rhino, buffalo. We shot them all…with our camera. More pictures to
come, but here are the obligatory big 5 images:
Now we’re hanging in Moshi, starting our Kilimanjaro climb tomorrow. I’m nervous. I broke my arm a little over a week before leaving (sheared off my greater tuberosity on the humeral head) and have been sleeping a lot while on the mend. It’s gotten a lot better, I’m learning new tricks with it nearly every day (I can now lift it to 90 degrees – pretty good!). The pain isn’t too bad (at all, really), but I’m nervous that I’m not at peak physical condition to tackle the mountain. Ah well, we shall see!
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