Tanzania

TANZANIA

Most people get to Tanzania by driving from Nairobi, and crossing the border at Namaga and on to Arusha. You can now, if you wish, fly directly into Tanzania.
We left Nairobi for the long drive into Tanzania. As we left Nairobi our driver/guide said as we approached a large roundabout, "This is called Holy Corner". I thought he was going on to tell us about traffic accidents, but no, " there are five churches on this roundabout". We have a driver with a sense of humour!
The road to the border is pretty rough in places with large pot holes that the driver drives round with gay abandon.
About three hours after leaving Nairobi we arrived at Namaga, the border between Kenya and Tanzania. The formalities and the form filling at both sides of the border are soon completed. After saying goodby to your Kenyan driver/guide you are met by your new Tanzanian driver/guide and change vehicles. Around the border area are a lot of Maasai women hounding you to buy their wares. They will soon be shooed away by your guide.
You now have about a three hour drive to Arusha. As we approached Arusha it was dark. We passed lots of people who had lit fires outside their houses and who were cooking their evening meal, it looked very cosy seeing all the fires and people outside cooking and talking, the smell of woodsmoke filled our nostrils as we approached the town.
Arusha is situated beneath Mount Meru and the town has a half-neglected look. It is a base camp for most safaris in Tanzania's northern game reserves.
The next morning we left Arusha for Tarangire on a good fast tarmac road. Tarangire lies across the Ardai Plains west of Arusha. Named after the shallow but important river which passes through it. We had a good game drive here. Tarangire is meant to be famous for lots of elephant but we only saw one. We rounded a corner and obviously startled this elephant, he squealed in annoyance at us but we were already past him by then.

We left Tarangire and the ride to Ngorongoro Wildlife Lodge was very rough indeed. We were just having lunch here, although we would return later on to stay for two nights. and we then drove on and entered the Serengeti National Park. Once we were in the park we were game viewing. Driving through the Serengeti we saw hyena, lion, hartebeest, zebra, giraffe, wildebeest.
The Serengeti is, I think, one of the best places in Africa for game viewing. If you go in February you have a good chance of seeing the incredible mirgration of wildebeest
We were making for the Seronera Wildlife Lodge. Seronera is located in the middle of the Serengeti National Park. The name Seronera is taken from the Maasai word "seroney" - the name of a Maasai boy killed here by lions. The rocks around which the lodge is built are granite in a formation know as a kopje. The Lodge was opened in 1971. Seronera was selected as a site because of the prime location at the edge of the grasslands. When the architects and the Chief Park Warden first visited the site, they were chased off the kopje by a pride of lions feeding on a kill in what is now the lounge area.
We stayed here for two nights. You get two game drives daily on safari, one early in the morning and one in the afternoon. The amount of game seen on the two days we stayed at Seronera was superb. We saw; giraffe, monkeys, impala, wildebeest, topi, hartebeest, zebra, Thomson's gazelle, lots of wonderful birds, lion, cheetah, hyena, golden mongoose, baboon, buffalo, rabbits, some owls, bat-eared foxes, these are very rare and not normally seen in daylight. We found a pair of mating lions as we returned to the lodge in the evening, the last animals before we got back to the lodge was two young hyena pups looking all fluffy and sweet.
The following days game drive we saw most of the same plus some dik dik which are the smallest antelope, only the size of hare.

Dik dik
We watched a family of lions who had two cubs. One of the cubs was a real little tearaway. He first tried to annoy mum and got told off; he wandered over to dad and tried to get him to play by chewing dads tail, he was given very short shift from dad. So he looked around to see what other mischief he could do. He decided he would climb a tree. He picked a very spiky thorn tree and up he went, once he got up, he didn't know how to get down, and it was obviously very uncomfortable up there too. He got himself down eventaully by half climbing and half falling down. It was a delightful time watching the cubs playing. And learning.

Getting down's the problem!

Around the lodge there are a lot of rock hyraxes and some very colourful lizards. There are monkeys everywhere and we were woken up in the early morning by the monkeys running over the roof.

Rock hyrax
The first time we stayed at this lodge we went for a snooze after lunch to our room. We had been advised to keep our windows closed as the baboons had been known to get into a room. One of our party went to sleep without heeding this advice and woke up to find a baboon in her room, she screamed and the baboon grabbed her make-up bag and made off. The boys saw the baboon up on the roof and threw sticks up at it and it dropped the make-up bag. There were lots of jokes that night about baboons wearing make-up. What she didn't tell us until a couple of days later was that she also kept her spare false teeth in the make-up bag, these were missing when she got the bag back. We wondered what the insurance company would say when they found out how the false teeth got lost and the thoughts of this baboon wearing false teeth and make up kept us giggling for quite a while.
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