Safari In The Serengeti
We finally arrived in Tanzania after more than two months of travel. We had arranged a ten day Safari followed by a week on Zanzibar Island. During our ten day tour we found the people were incredibly friendly, the landscapes of the parks were breathtaking, and the wildlife was abundant and diverse. While we did experience some initial culture shock, and all of us took turns being sick, it was still an amazing once in a life time experience.
We flew into Mount Kilimanjaro airport on an overnight flight from Istanbul on October 9th. We were met by Jafari from Lion King Adventures who would be our guide for the first three days. He first took us to our hotel in Arusha to rest and recover from our flight. On our second day he took us to a local village where we hiked to a waterfall, were given a coffee demonstration, and ate lunch with a local family. See Mia’s post for more info. On the third day Jafari gave us a tour of Arusha, the second largest city in Tanzania and where Natalie bought her beautiful tanzanite ring (a rare stone mined only at the base of Mount Kilimjaro with a blue to violet colour).
On day four we met Frederick who would be our guide for the Safari portion of our trip. He was invaluable as our guide, driver, comedian, porter, and photographer. Our first day was mostly driving but we did spend a few hours at Tarangire National Park that was beautiful but lacking in wildlife.
The next day we made it to the Serengeti where the real show began. We drove eight hours a day for four days through this immense world famous park. We were blown away by all the animals we witnessed. We saw tons of elephants, herds of zebras , pools filled with hippos, and many lions in prides or pairs, mating and stalking their prey. We also saw giraffes, monkeys, baboons, a crocodile, leopards and cheetahs, antelope, wildebeests, warthogs, and many others.
After the Serengeti, we ventured to Ngorongoro Crater, a national park inside an old volcano. The crater is home to the densest concentration of lions in the world and it did not disappoint. We saw lions trying to take down a buffalo and later two lions fighting a small hippo. We also completed our sighting of the “big 5” ( lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant and buffalo) when we spotted a group of Black Rhinos on the open plain.
Our final day we spent in Lake Manyara National park. The park has seen its population of animals greatly reduced since the lake severely flooded a few years back. No lions remain but we did see thousands of baboons that seem to have overrun the park. After the safari we were driven to the airport for our flight to Zanzibar where the second stage of our Tanzanian adventure would begin.