We got met at the border at Namanga in Tanzania by someone from Mousebird Safaris, a company I had picked because of the high reviews on safaribooking.com. But we still had a fairly long drive to get to Arusha for the night before starting our safari the next day.
Unfortunately, to add to the long journey, about 2 hours into the drive, our car broke down, and we were stranded on the side of the road…. Several guys tried to help, and we even waited for a mechanic to come out.
If you didn’t read my last post on Amboseli, just a reminder that the night before we had both been up all night sick with the start of a Campylobactor infection which lasted weeks, so we both felt utterly miserable, hungry and tired.
We eventually got someone to give us a tow a little further down the road towards a town, and we waited there for someone else to finally come and collect us and take us to our hotel.
Then, we got dropped at the wrong hotel, well… We started driving past and away from the hotel we were supposed to be staying at. We even had the guy from Mousebird (who helped me arrange the whole itinerary from home) with us at the time. I said something, but was just met with a bewildered look. After a long negotiation, and firm instructions (read from Google maps), we finally made it to the hotel we had booked for this first night, about 13 hours after we set off…
We ordered food as soon as we arrived, as we hadn’t stopped anywhere for food, and with all the delays, we hadn’t eaten in 13 hours either. But to top off an already ‘amazing’ day, we had to wait about 1.5 hours (not exaggerating) for our food at the hotel restaurant, and then there was a misunderstanding and we only got one meal (of veg and rice) instead of 2. So we just shared it and went to bed!!
Our safari started the next morning. Again, I’d booked a shared safari, but I had “upgraded” us from budget safari (camping) to a mid-range one, so we were due to be staying in relatively nice lodges along the way.
I picked this company because of it’s reviews, but also because of the itinerary. I had combed through hundreds of Safaris online to pick one which went to all the places I wanted to go. Tanzania is actually quite diverse in terms of the kind of terrains and biomes there are, from the vast plains of Savannah in the Serengeti, to lush jungles, and isolated craters. So this safari was 6 days, taking us to a diverse mix of national parks.
The first stop was Tarangire National Park, which is a swampy wetland forest with a river famous for it’s baobab trees and tree-climbing lions. It is also a haven for tsetse flies, so after a quick outfit change (they are attracted to blue and black) we set off.
It was quite late by the time we got to the park, but we thought it was just because it was the first day and we factored in the travel from Arusha and picking everyone up from different places. However we slowly learned that this would be the case every day… I don’t think we ever entered a park before 10am. And by that time, animals are starting to hide away from the heat of the day. On safari in South Africa a long time ago with my Mum, we were starting at 5am everyday for sunrise and saw most of the animals at dusk or dawn.
Still, we did see animals thankfully, and despite the weather (on/off raining most of the day) we saw lots of things. Including elephants – which even though are exactly the same species as the big tuskers in Amboseli, looked completely different, their skin more orange brown stained by the mud here, and their tusks much smaller). We also saw lots of birds, our first hornbill, lilac breasted rollers everywhere, baboons, giraffes and lots of very cool baobab trees.
After leaving, we were taken to our accommodation, at first we were taken to a campsite with other people in our jeep, and apparently other people from about 10 other jeeps. We appeared to be in a big convoy…
We told our driver we were not staying here and showed him our itinerary, which clearly stated a different lodge down the road. After a long discussion (again), some phone calls and a bit of shouting, we were reluctantly taken to where we were told we would be staying, which was actually very nice.
We were picked up the next day and began the long drive into Serengeti National Park. It was an all day drive really, but the scenery was great, as we had to drive through the Ngorogoro Conservancy area, which gave us an idea of what was to come, and we saw countless animals along the way, including giraffe and zebra very close out of the windows.
As we neared the entrance to Serengeti, we exited the mountains and hills, and all we could see from this point was just endless plains of Savannah. Which is actually what Serengeti means haha, “endless plains”. It really was, just flat and grass for as far as you could see. We started seeing the mega herds of wildebeest and zebra for which this area is famous. It was amazing. wildebeest for as far as you could see… They say the wildebeest has the nose and the zebra the brain, they travel together on this great migration around Kenya and Tanzania. The wildebeest can apparently smell the rains and will follow their nose, so the zebra follow the wildebeest. But they have better memories, so they remember the dangers along the way, like lions and crocodiles etc, and they alert the wildebeest. It really is a good partnership.
We finally entered the park, which was vast, so we continued onward towards our accommodation (which was inside the park) along some of the trails so we got to see wildlife too. Straight away we saw a male lion, clearly quite old and full of life experiences haha (which is just a polite way of saying he looked haggered lol).
We continued on and saw another group of lions, a female with 2 young males, probably her grown up Cubs who haven’t left her yet. You could see their mains starting at their necks.
The “roads” (more like dirt tracks) were very muddy, and several of our convoy got stuck multiple times. We spent more time helping other cars get out of the mud than we did looking for animals, which was frustrating. It was then our time to get stuck! It was mad because we didn’t see any other safari vehicles getting stuck, just our convoy of about 10 jeeps. It made us think they didn’t really know what they were doing. But luckily, we were prepared for it and everyone had a heavy duty rope for towing free!
One of the coolest things about the Serengeti were the Kopjes, which were just seemingly random piles of boulders, some very big, which just seemed to appear out of nowhere in the vast plains. Apparently brought here long ago by glaciers! The boulders create their own mini habitats for trees and offer cover for a lot of animals, such as leopards and cheetahs, lions also like to live here, and as such, this is the inspiration for “pride rock” in the lion king. I didn’t even know they were real! It was amazing.
Just near one of these Kopjes, low and behold, we saw our first cheetah up close. Much better than the far away glimpse we got in Amboseli. It was amazing!
Then we saw more lions just chilling, one of which had a satellite collar on. These were females. After being on the road for a long time without many stops, I really needed the loo, so asked the guy if we could stop. When we saw these lions, he said I could go for a “bush wee”, he reversed away from the lions, I jumped out and squatted behind the jeep, no more than 50m from the lions, then I jumped back in and we moved closer again haha, madness!
It started going dark and we still hadn’t made it to the lodge yet. We seemed to be driving in circles, and when we asked why, we were just ignored, or given an excuse like, oh we were looking for a lion. But everyone in the convoy talked that night and the next day we found out that one of the jeeps had got lost and then stuck in the mud. So for about 1.5 hours the rest of the convoy (including us) were driving around trying to find them… (Apparently they were stranded in the mud until 11pm when the rangers found them!!). We gave up and eventually made it to our accommodation, where we would stay 2 nights, well… Some accommodation… we made it to the main campsite here, where most people in our convoy, in fact, almost everyone, was staying.
Again, we had to explain our itinerary and what we had actually paid for. The driver didn’t know where our lodge was really, and by this point it was pitch black. We eventually got dropped off about 9pm, the last again… Which was a shame because our lodge was really nice.
The next day, I was really looking forward to – waking up in the Serengeti. This would give us the opportunity to start really early and see lots of animals… Surely…
The driver said he would pick us up at 7am… Not that early, but we’d take it. Unfortunately, that morning Dave was in a really bad way and didn’t feel up to a full day in the jeep again. Since this was the only place we had 2 nights, it was actually the only opportunity he had to stay in bed all day and try to recover.. so he did that, and encouraged me to go on my own (well, with the group).
I was picked up at 7:15am and taken to the camp where all the others were staying. To my dismay, i then just sat there waiting for over 2 hours… And we actually only started the safari at about 9:45am!!! We were only on the tracks after 10… Again! And we were already in the park! It also annoyed me, as I was still quite ill and could have definitely done with another couple of hours rest in bed…
I felt a bit bad that Dave was missing a day, but actually we didn’t see much this day. Some antelopes, and then a lioness and her young cub resting on a kopjes. The rest of the time we drove about and didn’t see a thing…
It was also raining a lot today, so we headed back a little earlier than the previous days. We dropped the others off at the camp first, then the driver drove me to the lodge… But…. He drove me to the wrong one…. AGAIN! And it wasn’t even just the next one over, it was probably an hour away from our lodge… By the time we were getting back, it was dusk, so I actually saw a few cool things like a secretary bird in a tree and some more jackals.
Our next destination was back in Ngorogoro Crater, but we still had to drive out of Serengeti, so we started in the morning and had the chance to see animals on the way out of the park. Once again, we got picked up early, only to sit about waiting til 10, as we had to wait for all the jeeps to pack up the tents/camp and load the stuff…
Still, at least this time we had company, as a troop of mongeese, or is it mongooses(?) made their way through the campsite and investigated us!
We went back to the hippo pool, so Dave could see them today, and then got word of a leopard in a tree. We drove there and sat looking out for a long time but saw nothing. Then we got another call and rushed to the location. We JUST saw the leopard climbing down out of a tree, Dave got a couple of photos, and I watched it though the binoculars. But then it was gone…. We waited a little in case it reappeared, but it didn’t. So we continued onwards.
On the way to Ngorogoro, the driver told us that we wouldn’t be staying in the accommodation we initially booked, but instead in a different lodge, which the couple in our jeep were staying at. We were about to kick up a fuss (it was every day now they tried to make us stay somewhere else), but the couple told us it was actually a very nice 5 star lodge, so we kept quiet haha. And yes, it was stunning! We loved it here!! Even if it was just one night.
Ngorogoro is an old volcano caldera with quite steep slopes around it. As such, it’s a bit of a unique habitat. You get all the animals that you see in the Savannah here, except giraffes apparently, as they can’t climb up and down the crater walls! There’s also marshland area good for birds, and it’s one of the best places to see Rhinos – which was the only one of the big 5 ft which we hadn’t seen yet.
We set off from the lodge, went to the nearest campsite to pick up and wait for the rest of our convoy, then entered the park. As soon as we got down into the caldera though… Our jeep broke down. I mean, could anything else go wrong on this safari haha. Fortunately, whilst we were waiting for the jeep to get fixed, we did see some cool birds and elephants too, as well as zebra and gazelles.
The driver finally got the car going after what seemed like he just hit something with a spanner and put some masking tape round a tube… Still we were happy to be moving again. We came across a pride of lions, the biggest we’ve seen, and watched them cross the river, the older females leaping with grace, the younger adolescents mostly didn’t make it clean over and came up wet on the other side haha. It was cute. Then they started stalking a bush, and the next thing we knew a serval cat was flushed out. They gave chase, but the cat was too fast for them. It all happened so fast we didn’t get any footage or photos of course, but it was amazing to see!
Then we saw some rhinos, about 7 in total, but all of them very far away. I could see them through the binoculars, but they were too far for a photo on Dave’s camera, and I only just managed a crap one using my zoom lense and binoculars, it was so hard to keep it steady.
From the wetlands of Ngorogoro, we moved towards the forest, which was dense and green, more like a jungle. And here we saw some tree climbing lions… Well… Just about, they were more like tree sleeping lions haha
We headed out and to the next place. For the rest of our group, this was the last day, as most people only had a 5-day safari booked, so we headed back to the starting point to drop them all off. Then we were dropped at our next place very close to Lake Manyara national park, the next stop.
In the morning, there was some confusion (again) about where we were going, and we nearly got set in a jeep to Tarangire again, but we eventually got the right jeep, which ended up being a private car to Lake Manyara, since nobody else was going there.
We really enjoyed this day, with the jeep to ourselves and just our driver, we could go where we wanted and seek the animals we wanted to see. We saw loads of elephants this day, majestically walking along the roads. And we didn’t see many other safari jeeps at all.
We saw lots of birds here, including the muggings bird, and Dave finally got a good pic haha, lots of kingfishers, LOADS of hornbills – but none still enough for a pic, and the best spot of the day (spotted by Dave) were the Verreaux’s eagle-owls. Which usually are not seen during the day. Even the driver was impressed!
After a great day in the park we headed back to the starting point again and waited for more people so we could go in convoy back to Arusha. That night we were due to fly to Zanzibar for the remainder of the trip, and even this was a stressful event, as once we got back to Arusha we then had to sit around waiting for a car to take us to the airport. 2 other tourists were almost about to miss their flight, we waited so long, they were shouting, and eventually we were bundled into a car and taken to the airport.
Unfortunately, this safari experience was really not what we thought it would be. Not only were we suffering with a Campylobactor infection (and running dangerously low on Immodiums haha), but we really did feel like we spent most of our time waiting… Literally. Just sat around in some dingy campsite, waiting… or driving to and from other accommodation to pick-up or drop-off other people. Yes we did see some incredible animals, but we wished we could have seen more, and just generally had a better experience.
I guess this is what happens when you try to book a budget safari, and I will definitely use a much more reputable company next time. My recommendation is to read every review and invest as much as you can afford to get a higher quality safari.
Travel Alchemist 
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