Tanzania February 2010
We have planned the safari for about two years and finally the day had come for us to leave for 18 days in Tanzania. First we would do 10 full days of safari and then 7 days in Zanzibar, one day got lost in travelling. We went on a private safari, just LO and me. We fixed the international flights ourselves, but Basecamp Tanzania fixed all the national bookings for us.
The 10 days of safari was spent with our great guide/driver Joseph and we went to these parks: Arusha, Tarangire, Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro-crater, Ndutu in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and finally Serengeti. I will give a report for each park.
Arusha National Park
Our first day was spent in this park, not far away for the town Arusha where most of the Tanzanian safari companys are located. During breakfast LO and I had talked about which animal we thought would be the first one to greet us, and we both agreed about the giraff. So giraff it was 
. We saw lots of sebras, buffalos, warthogs, blue monkeys, a hippo, birds incl an owl and a flamingo. But the highlight of the day were the baboons playing and fighting just around our car. Arusha NP is also famous for the colobus monkeys which we also had the pleasure to see. We also had a walking safari where we came quite close to a buffalo herd and also giraffes. We liked this park very much, it is mostly forest land and it was nice to start with this park on our safari.
Tarangire National Park
This park has it low season in February, but I really wanted to visit anyway to see the baobab trees which this park is famous for and hopefully see some elephants too. I got quite surprised that there were so many resident animals here, many of them we saw also in Arusha. But we saw lots of elephants even some baby elephants the youngest only about 3 weeks. We also saw baboons all sitting in some trees making alarming noises, but we never saw what all the fuss was about. Our biggest surprise when coming to seeing wild animals was the ostrich. We never thought of it to be resident in Africa, only in Australia. We really wanted to see lions, but it was until the end of our game drive we found a male lion under a bush. He was searching the plains for something and suddenly a lioness showed up. They started mating, and then they lied under the bush again. This park is very different from Arusha NP, since it has open plains and the river Tarangire has given this park its name.
Lake Manyara National Park
This park reminded us about Arusha except that through the park the big lake Manyara is situated. Actually this park is quite little, but the lake takes up more space than the land. The park is popular with bird watchers, especially all the flamingoes. It’s also famous for lots of hippos and the tree climbing lions. The last quite rare to experience. The day started with watching black-faced velvet monkeys, we also saw lots of flamingoes but very far away. On the shore we saw lots of giraffes resting. We saw our first wildebeest just standing by itself on the plains. We also visited the hippo pool, but couldn’t get very close to get the best pictures. We searched and searched for the tree climbing lions, and when we finally gave up and were headed out of the park, we heard that they were observed further down from where we had driven. Joseph drove very fast to the site, and we had the pleasure to experience three lions in the tree. On the ground in the bushes we also saw four other lions. To our big surprise, a hippo crossed the road close to us heading for the forest.
Ngorongoro Crater
This park is really famous for beeing not only a huge caldera, but also for its rhinos. The rhinos are supposed to be seldom to see, although they’re about 23 of them. We hit a real jackpot though, seeing eight in our first day. Six were far away close to the forest, but two; a mother and son/daughter were quite close to us. We saw many resident animals like Thomson gazelles, sebras, buffalos and wildebeest. We also got lucky to se a lion pride in some bushes and also three lions just relaxing on the ground.
We spent two half days down in the crater, and on the second day one of the highlights was seeing a cheetah in the grass. At the most we were about 20 cars watching although it was quite far away. The most interesting experience was when we saw two lions were chased away by a buffalo herd, and they got really close to us. We also saw a wildebeest trying to give birth, but the poor calf tried to get the head and foot out in the same time and died. In the crater there is also a elephant with really long tusks and a hippo pool that we came close upon to the animals. In the crater there aren’t any giraffes or leopards, but outside the park on our way to the next park we saw maybe 50 giraffes on a hill.
Ndutu area in Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA)
Ndutu is south of Serengeti and in February this is the usual location for the wildebeest migration. We saw lots of wildebeest and sebras on the border between Ndutu and Serengeti National Park, but it didn’t impress me as much as I thougt due to all the space they had on the plains. We drove to a mobile camp where we stayed for 3 nights, and here we could drive off-road, which you’re not allowed in the other parks. The area consists of two lakes: Ndutu and Masek, marsh area, forest and rivers. The highlights of our sitings in this area were the big lion pride eating a sebra and its newborn baby, three male cheetahs before and after eating, Tawny eagles, mongoose and also the part of the wildebeest migration were they were walking/running/tanding in one line. We were unfortunate to not see the leopard, since there were sightings of it in the area. We were also unfortunate to experience that the long rains started early this year. Usually the rain season starts in mid march, but this year about a month too early. From our first day i n Ndutu and throughout our safari we had rain every afternoon. We even got really stuck in the marsh due to the rain. Thank God for 4 wheel drive .
Serengeti National Park
We came to the park since the central area which is called Seronera and has all year resident animals including leopards, cheetah and lions. The grass was quite high since the migration had not come to the park yet. On our way up to the area we drove around the area called Simba kopjes (directly translated to Lion Rock formations). We met another car driving around without seeing other than 2 new birds, but we were very lucky to stumble across two cheetahs that had just killed a Reedbuck. We also came very close to a group of hippos lying in the river, before we drove to Masaai Kopjes were we saw two lions sleeping under a tree. Then it was time to head a bit north for Seronera were we stayed for 3 nights. There were few animals in our area, but in the Masaai Kopjes area we experienced finally our first and last leopard sleeping in a tree. It never once opened its eyes, but who cares? We had finally seen the Big Five: buffalo, elephant, rhino, lion and leopard. We also saw a lioness sleeping in a tree with her two cubs on the other side of the road sleeping in the high grass. In the short plains area we met several cheetahs lying on top of termites???? and also a lion. On our last day of game drive I wanted to see small babies of all kind of animals, and my wish was granted. We saw giraffes, elephants, warthogs, hippos, hyrax, mongoose, thomson gazelles, but the highlight was three lioness with three young cubs eating a warthog. Too bad it started raining, but any how we did get some real cool pictures of the lions trying to shake themselves dry from the rain.
All in all we had a great safari, too bad the rain season started earlier than usual, but who can predict the weather?
We then went to Zanzibar, where there isn’t any rain in February . We stayed 6 nights at the North coast in a nice, quiet place called Nungwi. Here everything was very pole-pole or what we would call on African time. No hurrys and hakuna schida/matata. Our hotel Langi-Langi was gorgeous, but service was below average. Although the owner was very attentive, the maids were more or less bad, half of the waiters were hopeless. But the chefs made excellent food and we were on vacation so hakuna schida. The ocean was perfect and our room’s A/C made our nights perfect trip. On our whole trip we mostly went to bed around 21.30 – 22, and woke up at sunrise around 6.30, so not your usual R&R.
PS: Lars Olav will be adding images at his flickr account.
But could happily go there again. After all I got my favorite dessert, chocolate fondant!