If you only go on one safari, make sure its Tanzania! I wasn't really prepared for how much I was going to enjoy this, yes, sure, Helen was into her animals and she had always wanted to go on Safari but I never fancied it somehow. I knew Helen would love it though and I'd even bought a camera especially for the photos we would take, my Canon DSLR! This would become the mainstay of my travel photos.
The group split up into 2 landrovers for our safari - we had gone with world expeditions (
http://www.worldexpeditions.com/) which I can highly recommend for this sort of trip - small, personalised groups. On our way to the Ngorongoro Crater, we stopped at a viewing point (outside the crater) to see a few elephant and one giraffe half a mile away with binoculars, we were all in awe of what we seeing - our guides were grinning quietly to themselves. We arrived at the crater rim some 30 minutes later and we were worried of being disappointed in what lay ahead – the view into crater was spectacular in itself but from the rim it looked void of wildlife, apart from a few dark blobs scattered around. Once we descended into the crater however, disappointed we most certainly were not!
It didn't matter were you looked, there was wildlife all around, elephant at 10 o'clock, lions at 3 o'clock, zebras at 6 o'clock, wildebeest at 8 o'clock etc. It was like jurassic park but for real! You didn't have to work at spotting the wildlife, it was amazing. We spent the afternoon in the crater. I would never have believed the diversity of animals and how well they share the area. wildebeest, buffalo, zebra, Thompson and Grant Gazelles, warthogs, hyenas were all abundant. We got close to African elephants and 2 young lioness snoozing on a mound. Later a small group of lions dozed 10 metres from the truck. We left the crater via “Windy Gap road” – an experience in itself!
I loved taking photos here, trying to capture the sense of what we were seeing on film (albeit digital). It was a privilege to be here, it was a truly awe inspiring place, unforgetable and the animals just seemed to take it all in their stride.
At first The Serengeti seemed deserted compared to the crater, here you really had to work at spotting the wildlife but our world expeditions guides were absolutely fabulous at helping us out here. This kind of made it so much more rewarding when you did spot something. The Tanzanian highlight for many – a large herd of elephant, 2 bulls fighting and a close encounter! Our driver got himself between a bull elephant and a baby and the bull elephant didn't take too kindly to this - landrovers can really shift in reverse! Before reaching the Serengeti a herd of wildebeest ran across the road in front of us – single file with thundering hooves – amazing.
The day was topped off (after an hour watching dead grass or was that a leopard!) as we met a group of giraffe on the road nearing our camp for the night (see picture at top of this blog). They are such majestic animals and look even more graceful when running somehow - they are Helen's favourite!
The next day’s highlight would be spotting a cheetah a top a termite mound and having breakfast with the hippos and crocs (see photo above).
A safari in Tanzania is unbelieveable, we thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone, even if they don't think they'll like a safari. We were only there for a week ahead of another adventure in Tanzania b ut we'll be going back!
