Serengeti NP, Tanzania - Day 1

Our car Kilimanjaro - Kili for short - at the Ngorongoro Crater

After a surprisingly cold night in Arusha, we set off early to try and hit the Serengeti gate by midday.  The tar road from Arusha to the Ngorongoro gate is no problem, but from the gate it’s a bone-crunching corrugated bastard of a road and the car takes a hammering…

Kili with a few problems at the Serengeti's Naabi Hill gate

We didn’t see too much except Maasai kids and some Grant’s gazelles on the way, until we stopped when we spotted an African wild cat (our first in East Africa). Unfortunately, that’s when we heard a strange grating sound from the back wheel, and ended up spending 4 hours at the gate getting it fixed. 

It shouldn’t have taken so long but the old bolts were so rusty that it took a bus conductor from a passing commercial bus an hour to get the bolt half way turned… the passengers weren’t too happy with the delay, but we were grateful – now I know why the buses are always late in Tanzania! 

Lioness silhouette

But finally it had a temporary fix and 4 hours later we were on our way on a still bone-crunching road of 19km to the campsite…  Still, it could have been worse – we discovered a Landrover that had flipped on the main road – passengers okay, but the paint they’d been carrying had coated the whole of the inside of the car and one of the guys!

Eventually, after seeing a couple of lions we found our campsite and set up for the night, excited to see what the Serengeti would bring the following day!

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