Goat races in Dar es Salaam

Yesterday, we spent an interesting afternoon at the 2011 Annual Dar es Salaam Charity Goat races.

Yes, they race goats here in Tanzania...

Serengeti - Day 5



Serengeti landscape

 We were up at the usual time of 5.30am for coffee, but we had to pack up for the drive out.  After checking for hyenas (there had been at least one hanging around one of the tents the night before) we packed up and both us, Ali and Chris were all ready to go by 6.30 – quite impressive since hardly anyone else had left for the morning drive yet. 

Serengeti - Day 4



Green-winged pytilia

Again up early in the morning, but the morning drive was unsuccessful, hardly seeing anything around.  Ali needed to put petrol in the car, so he dropped us off at the visitor’s centre to have breakfast.  We were still photographing the birds and rock hyraxes by the time he got back, entertained by the boldness of the hyraxes looking for scraps.

Serengeti - Day 3



After a quiet night at a much less crowded campsite, it was up early again and we were first out of camp while it was still dark. We headed up the road to Mwanza, before turning towards the river, spotting a couple of hippos still grazing out on land before heading back to the river.  But as we headed round a bend, we spotted a great sight – 22 lions!

Serengeti - Day 2

Sunrise in the Serengeti

It was an eventful first night at camp.  Hyenas were running around the campsite, doing their whooping call, while lions were roaring close by.  Poor Dru, still struggling with the recovery of malaria, hardly slept at all and was able to tell me in the morning that the lions had killed in the night and had attracted the hyenas coming to grab the kill.  I slept through all of it ;) 

Serengeti - Day1

 

Tawny eagle

 After a good night’s sleep for me, and a bad one for Dru thanks to him still recovering from malaria, we met up with Ali and Chris at 6am before leaving Moshi for the 8 hour trip to the Serengeti gate.  The drive is a tough one – a 4 hour drive on tar until we get to the Ngorongoro Crater gate.

Serengeti NP - Intro

Serengeti NP
26-30 August 2011

Every time we come from the Serengeti, we say that it couldn’t get any better… And again on this trip it was no exception.  Even though the migration is around Kenya right now, we still saw fabulous wildlife and some great action by the predators.  And to think it was touch and go to actually get there…

Waiting...

We've been planning to go to the Serengeti again and we're supposed to be flying out tomorrow afternoon to Arusha and driving into the Serengeti on Friday for 4 nights - coming back on Tuesday.  We've been planning for a while, so all excitement at finally being able to get back into the bush for a while.

But unfortunately Dru fell ill with malaria last night.  He's on the treatment and hopefully we've caught it in time so that it isn't too serious.  He's got another appointment with the clinic tomorrow to see if he's okay to travel and of course all depends if he's up to traveling, so for now we just wait and hope that the malaria doesn't get worse.  Fingers crossed!

Beach weekend

White sands and warm water...

We haven't been away over the weekend for a while, and since it was my birthday on Saturday, we decided to try to head out somewhere.  Of course, without having a car (our search for a new 4x4 continues extremely slowly!) our options were limited.  So we decided to head down to Kigomboni, or South Beach as it's known. 

RIP Kruger

Kruger on the Ngorongoro Crater rim

Kruger, our old but reliable car, has finally let out his last breath.

He drove us around Botswana for 5 years in the bush, and then took us on a memorable 6000km trip from Gaborone to Dar es Salaam, through some of the most awesome wildlife parks, and some of the worst roads, all with no problems.

With over 350,000km on the clock of this petrol 4x4, with no modifications to the engine, he's broken down suprisingly few times.  But the mechanics of Dar es Salaam have finally got the better of him.  And after 3 major breakdowns in 6 months, he is now well beyond repair. 

RIP Kruger, you have served us well!

Zanzibar

Fishing dhows on the Zanzibari beach

We had a lovely trip to Zanzibar over the long Easter weekend.  This was the first time we’d stayed over in Zanzibar since arriving in Tanzania 8 months previously, and it was well worth it – even if it did rain for a lot of the time!

We had actually planned to go to Mikumi NP for the long weekend, but with the car breakdown a couple of weeks ago, and having spent a lot of money  the month before going to the Serengeti, we decided at the last moment to go to Zanzibar.

Missing Mikumi... Another abandoned trip

Kruger in better days in Chobe NP, Botswana

Mikumi continues to elude us...
The easiest park to get to from Dar, and we've now missed the chance twice...  thanks to Kruger, our willing but unable car.

When we drove to Dar from Botswana, we took in the majority of the accessible national parks, and deliberately left out Mikumi, since we figured that being only 300km from Dar, it would be our weekend getaway. 

However, once we got to Dar, we had to hand our car over to one of the local fundis and he'd managed to stuff it up while servicing it.  Granted, the car is old and we'd just put it through a 6000km journey, but it was still going when we gave it to him - it wasn't when we got it back.

Serengeti trip March 2011

For the first time, instead of self-driving, we opted for going on a paid safari.  Couple of factors influenced us - 1st:  our car had recently broken down 200km from Dar and we'd had to spend New Year's day at a dodgy mechanic who took out half the engine to fix it...  although the car was driving, we weren't confident enough to drive it 600km to Arusha and then into the parks and back again.  And we were right, it broke a month later when we were again 200km outside of Dar! (Read all about our dramas here).  The 2nd thing was the time - we only had 5 days and it would take about 1 1/2 days to get to the Serengeti - that's 3 days of traveling and 2 days of game park...  So we chose to fly to Arusha the night before and head out first thing in the morning and spend 4 nights in the Serengeti...