Completing the Big Five in Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania

Day 27

FullSizeRender42Our safari group said goodbye to Serengeti National Park and Godlove retraced our steps back to Ngorongoro Crater. We headed straight to camp which was a beautiful grassy area right on the crater rim. When we arrived, there was a dazzle of zebras grazing in the tall grasses on the edge of the camp! We saw several tourists approach them to take selfies – Sara and Erin couldn’t resist either. After putting our belongings in the pre-pitched tents, we arranged happy hour with the senior truck and our guides. While everybody reminisced about the last 48 hours of epic-ness, I snuck away to climb the tree we were sitting under hoping to find a better sunset view. Instead, I found spider webs and everyone wondering why I was climbing the tree. The short climb was actually the most exercise I’ve had in the last week!

Day 28

Waking up at the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater felt like being on a cloud – more precisely, in a cloud. There could have been lions Continue reading

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

image

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.

Continue reading