WEATHER: Cool this morning but heated up by 10am
HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: Watching a herd of Wildebeast running - twice
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Not seeing a leopard yet
BUYS OF THE DAY: A ‘I Love Tanzania’ sticker for my diary for 1AUD
WORD OF THE DAY: How dusty is it?
ANIMALS SEEN TODAY: Ostrich, baboons, corey bastard (bird), buffaloes, wilerbeast by the hundreds, hyenas, lions, giselles, crown cranes, secretary birds, warthogs aka pumba’s, hippos, pelicans, zebras, donkeys, impala, giraffes, elephants, camels and goats.
CAMP SITE RANKING: Wild camp site, one flushing toilet for the ladies and 2 showers a 3 out of 5 stars.
So with last night the first time for setting up tents, meant that this morning was the first time for taking them down. I haven’t had an issue getting my tent back into it’s bag now. I am a pro roller abd it fits in just fine. We helped Si and Dave with theirs and then headed to the kitchen to get our lunches packed for the day. There is plenty of salad items, bread, cold cut meats, banana’s, and poppers for us to choose from, as there will be no setting up of a kitchen today as we don’t have the truck. So once this was done, breakfast was eaten and we picked and packed a 4x4 that would stay ours for the next 3 days. Freddie was our driver and my road crew for the next 3 days was Sean, Lisa, Jimbob, Dave and myself. George has out 5 to a truck, so that we could all have a window, which is super thoughtful and important when it comes to game viewing and driving to have your own window.
With quick photo stop at a point that had Lake Minyana in the valley we continued for another hour to get us to the entrance of Ngororor National Park and the crater. I was able to cash my USD travellers cheques here for no fee so I was able to pay my next component of local payment of 1175USD to Vic Falls to George. We had to wait there for the paper work and permits to be done which took a little over 45 minutes and then we climbed back into our jeeps to head down into the crater. We started our desent at 10am and the game viewing/spotting begun. Freddie had taken the top off the roof, so we had 3 separate sections where we could stand and have our heads poking out the top. We were allowed to stand on the seats if we had a blanket under them, which is fair enough, as our feet are pretty dirty. It is hard to believe that I am in Tanzania in the Ngorororo crater! This is a wow / pinch me moment with our hair blowing in the wind, standing from the roof of a 4x4 and looking for elephants, giraffes and zebra’s! This is amazing and what Africa is all about. I am a lucky lady.
I expected the crater to have more trees, but it is quite barren. You would expect that seeing animals then would be easy, but the grass can grow quite long, so some effort is still required to look for the animals. We were going to have 4 hours in total in the crater, which mean by the time we finish we would have seen ¾ of the park, which is pretty awesome. We drove around for the first 2 hours looking and spotting a whole bunch of animals including a lion, but she was in the distance, like 150m away, but with a zoom on the camera was able to get some good photos to the highlight of this first portion being a herd of wildebeest running and crossing the road just in frount of us. There would have had to have been 300 of them and they all ran single file to the road, saw us and then they would all freak out with us in our jeeps and would then cross in pairs and 3’s. They certainly are an U-G-L-Y creature, but to see them in mass numbers was amazing and a highlight of the morning. We then stopped for lunch at 12.15 by a large watering hole that had resident hippos. They were down the other end, so there was no issue of them disturbing us. It seemed to be the major stop point for a lot of the tour companies, at one point I rekon there would have had to have been 50 jeeps all parked in there. It was a great spot with grass to be able to sit on and stretch the legs. You had to eat your lunch in the truck though, as the Kite birds have picked up that people are eating food, and they have no issues in swooping and trying to get your sandwich out of your hands. So after eating in the truck it was safe to get out, enjoy some sun by the watering hole and just appreciate just where we were. As we left the watering hole there were zebras drinking from the otherside where we had to drive out and they had to move out of our way for us to get through – they are such a cool looking animal! I am sure Zoe would love them, even if they do have stripes!
It is interesting to see all the jeeps driving around looking for the bsame things as us. Even though there is so many trucks in the crater it never felt like it was crowded, even when there was a gathering to see the lions at one point, there would have been maximum 6 trucks. It seems there is some unwritten rule asnd as trucks pull in others pull out and no-one ever pushes in front or hogs, so it is really nbice to know that everyone gets an equal chance. The only bad thing is that it is so dusty when they drive past, you literally get coated in a puff of dust. One of the guys was wearing sun glasses and at lunch had glass marks, not from the sun but from the dust. We were using baby wipesd to get the dust at least off our faces and the wipe would nearly be black. So George wasn’t lying when he said it would be dusty. We would have to duck into the truck cab sometimes when a truck passed it kicked up so much dust. We were and our clothes were covered from head to toe. Welcome to Ngorororo Crater peeps.
We gor another 1.5 hours looking and finding hippos, elephants, more wilderbeast, baboons and zebras in the hundreds before heading out the other side of the crater and to our destination of the Seregheti at 2.40pm. I kid you not, we thought the roads were dusty in the crater, well we hadn’t seen anything yet till we hot the road to the gates to exit Ngorororo. These roads, loosely called, were terrible. They are not paved, it is loose gravel, stones and dust. Dust dust dust everywhere. It is so hard to explain just how flippin dusty and bumpy it was, butr to give you an idea, when a truck travelled in the opposite direstion you couldn’t see in front of you for a few seconds till the dust had settled down. Freddie was doing an amazing job, by this point he hd been driving for nearly 7 hours and we still had another 3 hours ahead of us!!! On ythe bumpy dusty road. My ear plugs for my IPod wouldn’t even stay in my ears for long as they kept coming out it was that bumpy and the volume was maximum due to the noise. All that aside it didn’t stop Freddie rom driving at 89km an hour, so we got some air time from our seats once in a while and there was a lot of fish tailing, which I wasn;t a big fan of, as I am sure that he has no control of the vehicle when the back wheels are slipping all over the shop. But he does this for a living and he is used to it, so I have to leave my life in his hands. We did establish that he currently has one wife and was looking for an Australian wife once he found out where I was from. I am telling you Africa is definetly a good country for my ego!
We are now well and truly in Masai territory. As we were driving through the country side, you know passing giraffes and impalasa, there were also Masai walking the plains. It was a little surreal, as it was dry as a bone, not a building in sight and then you would spot a red Masai blanket just walking. Where was he walking to? Where did he come from? We also saw some young Masai, the diffenece is they have their faces painted white, which looked a little scary. When they are 13-15 years old they are circumcised and thgen they have their faces painted for 2 years before they are then allowed to waer the red Masai blankets. They just look at you when you drive past, no smiles or waves from these guys.
So we had to check out of Ngorororo National Park and then we had to get permits and check into Serengheti National Park. This process took about 45 minutes as there were so many trucks and jeeps all doing the same thing. We are now in animal territory so keep your eyes peeled for animals. Well we didn’t have to wait long, we saw lots of giraffes, which now is officially my favorite animal and also happens to be Freddies, so he was more than happy 5to stop at everything single giraffe for me! It was so cute. So we travelled for further hour and a half to check in for our balloon ride that we have booked fro tomorrow. I am not sure if I have mentioned this before but Manu and I were keen to do the Seregeti Balloon flight. It is normally fully booked and quite hard to get on, Jools couldn’t get us on it, so Manu got her boyfriend on to it and he booked it for us from Swisserland, which only came back confirmed 3 days ago. It is not a cheap exercise, at 500USD, but I could justify it by knowing not many people get to do this amazing experience, whne will I come back to the Seregheti and I haven’t spent much money to date, so why not. ThereThere are 4 of nus ballooning from our groupn tomorrow morning, so we all checked in, got some pre-flight nformation and then drove for another 30 minutes to where base camp was going to be for the next 2 nights – our wild base camp at that.
So we arrived into camp at 7pm making it a 12 hour day with the thought of setting up tents a little exhausting, so you can imagine our surprise when we got out and George surprised us, Simon and some of the staff had already set up our tents for us! Oh thankj-you tent/camping god’s what a wonderful thing for them to have set up 10 tenst! We were on the boundry of the camp sit, so if an animal wanted to take us, we would be at the top of ythe menu, but I guess that will just add to the excitement of our sleep tonight.
The water truck had been, so there was water in the showers, but Lisa and I thought if tomorrow is ginbg to be as dusty as today then we aren’t going to bothger having a shower. By this time our hair is like straw, it has that much dust in it, it really feels disgusting, but no point washing it and our feet and chests and arms and kegs were all dusty as hell. We are now calling it the Serehgeti tan. This stuff should be bottled I rekon. It was alittle strange that there were only 2 showers and a toilet for the men and a toilet for the gals for the whole camp site, with about 70 people n camp tonight will make it a little busy down that end of the camp. I guess it is better than nothing considering it is supossed to be a bush camp after all.
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