Novotel Arusha Mount Meru

... now on as raining season starting. Is about time as much needed the road down to the town is soo dusty that my feet are permanately brown but not from the sun. Power outages happen on a daily basis as well so have to get a shower in always asap as I already had a lucky escape when I was just about to shampoo my hair when the power went off (which also turns off the water). One of the others not soo lucky so she had a funny hairdo the next day. Some ...

... driving past the Ngorongoro Crater. It took around 6 hours to get to the entrance before we started a 3hr game drive. Our driver/guide was Kopa (we were in one of 3 vehicles) and he took us to a point in the park suitable for finding leopards. We saw a gazelle sitting in a bush 5m away from a couple of lions who were lazying around. I saw my first leopard hiding in a tree, completing my BIG 5 list. 20 mins further down the road we spotted another leopard in full ...

... and we did see zebras in camp too, it was so cold and my 1 season sleeping bag not so good for the icy cold conditions!! i wore everything on me (we packed a 3 dayer day bag and also no shower whilst on safari!!) so just layered up still had the worst sleep cos i was so cold, coldest part will be in tho, so not too worried about bag, fingers crossed more worried about elephants trampling on tent good night though early start again and went into the nurguro crater and saw flocks ...

... Crater, but not before a short visit to one of the local Masai camps in the area. They greeted us with a welcome dance and allowed us to look around their village, at a cost of coarse.

Ngorogore Crater national park is basically a huge volcanic crater that is literally full of wildlife. Upon entering the park the first thing I saw was a fresh Lion kill complete with several Hyenas ...

Naa har vi altsaa vaert paa ein forektige safari, hele fem dager og fire netter ute i den skikkelige bushen. Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater og Lake Manyara - dyreprogram live med tilhorende fasiliteter som stovete humpete veier og skikkelig basic overnatting i telt. Det begynne aa ligne skikkelige greier naar Ole maa paa do om natten paa Serengeti og guiden ligger i teltet og folger med. Ole gikk ...

... time watching the cars passing by. Border crossing was very fast. But as soon as we arrived to Arusha we learned that we were not the most important guests. Mr. GW Bush decided to visit Arusha today as well. So, we had literally 10 minutes to repack our luggage from the shuttle to our safari 4x4, pick up our airplane tix to Zanzibar and head out of town... though we didn't manage on time, the road was closed, but only for 10 minutes! As soon as the ...

... only is partially dulled by the recollection that I am racing not to tourniquet a bleeding artery or push an old lady with a basket of kittens out of the way of oncoming traffic, but to deliver some vigorously spell-checked papers into proper hands.... Yep, me and Indiana Jones.

Two weekends ago I went with two friends from the ICTR and two guides, Moses and Nelson, on a big fat 7-hour hike up a big hill and down the other side and then up a river bed to a waterfall. It was beautiful and glorious ...

... one of those occasions where pictures would tell 1000 words and describing everything we saw would both take hours and most likely bore you all to death. To summarise, we saw the BIG FIVE!!! As I'm sure you all know, the BIG FIVE are African Elephants, Leopards, Lions, Buffalo and Rhinos, not necessarily in that order. They were spread fairly well over the areas we safari-ed and we saw plenty else ...