Hunting Big Cats on the Serengeti, Tanzania

Day 26

After Erin and the senior truck left for their hot air ballooning adventure, the rest of us had tea and coffee before starting our pre sunrise game drive. Our camp, Nguchiro, was situated in the middle of Serengeti National Park without any fencing. Overnight, we were all warned about leaving our tents and told to avoid bathroom breaks during quiet times. The tour guides, drivers and chefs were usually up until midnight and get moving around 5am so we were told their noise should keep any animals away. It was the midnight to 5am we should worry about. Neither Will or I had the urge to get up in the middle of the night and we didn’t venture to the bathroom until 6am. During morning tea, we learned that there were buffalo about 50 meters from our path to the bathroom – good thing they were not interested in us! We also learned that some others in our safari group had animals rummaging around next to their tent during the night – now this is real camping! Continue reading

Ballooning over the Serengeti, Tanzania

imageSara’s cousin traveled with us on our African Safari and we convinced her to detail her hot air balloon ride over the Serengeti:


FullSizeRender68While traveling through the Serengeti, there is an abundance of animals to view and observe and it is a true tangible ecosystem that is named as one of the 10 natural travel wonders of the world. There is a large amount of diverse animals and habitats that foster the largest terrestrial mammal migration and a playground for people to witness amazing experiences of animal behavior. I was fortunate enough to be able to not just experience the Serengeti from a car and camping in the middle of the Serengeti, but I was able to experience this lush wildlife from the air. Continue reading

Learning about the Masai Tribe in Tanzania

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Day 24


We had another early morning wake up for a long day of driving. We were still on the Tanzania coast near Zanzibar and needed to travel almost 1000 kilometers to the Serengeti. Nash ensured we were well fed with fried eggs for breakfast. We all made sandwiches for lunch because the long drive would not permit time for a lunch stop. We hit the road before sunrise.

View of Mt Kilimanjaro

The roads were a little smother and we were enjoying the views of sunrise while cool air circled through the bus. Jojo informed us that we would have a view of Mt Kilimanjaro along the drive and that he expected it would be visible after lunch – we all joked that we’d eat our sandwiches early in hopes of seeing it sooner. As promised, we didn’t see it until early afternoon. Unfortunately, the clouds were low and thick over the giant so we were only able to see the base of the mountain. The countryside view made up for it as rows of sunflower farms passed between us and the mountain.

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Robbed in Zanzibar

Day 20

We were finally at a beautiful beachfront campsite after the rough drive through Tanzania. Unfortunately we didn’t have any time to enjoy the location because of our packed itinerary. Jojo scheduled us on a ferry to Zanzibar at 9:00 and he promised that our hotel would be even more beautiful then our current location.

DCIM100GOPROG1223329.I think we were all worried that it would take a long time to get to the ferry because of traffic but our guides had a trick up their sleeve. Just after sunrise, we drove down the road to a local ferry that would take us to city center. We said goodbye to Jojo who would be staying with the truck and headed off with Tobi and Nash. We piled on the ferry with the locals for the short ride to the other side. Our group then got into several waiting tuk-tuks that took us a short distance to the Zanzibar ferry. It felt like we were part of The Amazing Race TV show racing through foreign streets not knowing where we were headed! Continue reading