Serengeti, Ngorongo Crater and End of tour

Trip Start Jul 25, 2006

Trip End Sep 30, 2006

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Where I stayed

Slushy Campground

(Arusha hotels)

Flag of Tanzania Arusha, Tanzania
Thursday, August 24, 2006

So the blog is very,very behind so a quick update! The ferry back from Zanzibar was not as bad as expected! This is because i adopted a new tactic-sit up on deck and treat it as a 2and half hour rollercoster, complete with spray effects and some very hairraising/windswept moments. This was much more fun! Although I still felt quite groggy that evening back at the fantastic Slushy campsite in Dar es Salaam (i blame the coconut for the sore head!). Given the option by Bex of bed by 7pm or vodka slushies to numb the pain she helped persuade me to chose the latter and I had a fun evening. Which involved me being barred from the group slushy vodka bucket and a group 'brush off' where we proved that it is very hard but also very fun to brush someone elses teeth! Clearly we had all been spending too much time together by this point to dream up so many ridiculous games! This night of slushies did turn out to be a slight error, the next day was a 13hour drive in the truck across Tanzania. Painful, by the time of arriving we had all gone slightly truck crazy, listening and dancing non-stop to the Lion Kings lion kings, Circle of Life

Chilling with a Giraffe in Serengeti

. That evening was our self declared 'Africa Night', we all dressed up in very brightly coloured and hopefully clashing wraps and headresses and thought we were hilarious. Everyone else in the bar thought we were odd but the masai locals loved us, i was offered to be sold for 40cows, a good price apparently!
The next day we did a masai village walk which was all very interesting but also had a very memorable time at the arusha snake park, which was conviently on the camp site. We went to the snake park at 1pm-feeding time, and if you have seen Road Trip you will have some idea of what happened next. It can only be described as a feeding frenzy of live mice, chicks and even 2fluffy bunnies (which did survive while we were there-the python only eats monthly!). Quite horrific viewing all round but loved by the rest of my bloodythirsy truck members!
Anyway onto even more exciting stuff...the Serengeti was fabulous! But also the dirtiest i have ever been in my life. We went for 3 days in 4x4s and my group re-named ourselves team-extreme not sure why but our guide found us amusing. Our guide was a complete cowboy, went for big-picture animal identification eg'whats that? A bird' excellent or 'is that a cheetah sitting down....yes its standing' 'Is that a spotted-hyena ...yes jon you did spiot the hyena1' hmmm... some confusion although we did spot him studying our book of Africa animals with great interest at one point. Never mind he was very tolerant and enjoyed our extreme activities, letting us sing 'hukana matata' and any other song that entered our heads across the radio to all cars in the Serengeti and we saw 2more leopards, a rare black rhino (completing the big 5 for me!)and a lion and cheetah kill. The cheetah kill was the best, it killed a gazelle along with a lot of cheering and whooping from the watching tourists. Spectacular, Africa as it is meant to be. In the campsite just before we left, 2bull elephants were on the rampage and charging the idiot tourists getting photos too close up but not surprising in an un-fenced campsite! Only downside to Serengeti were the lack of running water and toilets that you'd want to use! Even lonely planet described them as 'only for the brave (or desperate)' Combined with the worst roads ever and red dust we were so filthy afterwards-ideal way to arrive at the boyfriends parents house!