Berna's travelblog » Tanzania

A longer way to Serengeti – Or the one where we cross the rift valley to Lake Natron

marco — Sat, 02 Aug 2014 16:11:44 +0000

After organizing the permit for Ngorongoro (involves making a deposit in a bank, getting a receipt and going to an hidden office to charge a chip card with the amount you deposited at the bank) and buying the last needed stuff in Karatu We drive back Mto Wa Mbu, turn left and we are on gravel, supposedly we are about to encounter many hours of bad road. When we draw a rough itinerary, we didn’t want to do twice the same road, so we looked into alternatives to the classic northern circuit which goes directly to Serengeti after Tarangire. I had seen a while ago on a National geographic some pictures of petrified animals at a place called Lake Natron, a highly alkaline lake in the rift valley. Incidentally, Lake Natron also lies on a side path to Northern Serengeti that goes through the great rift valley.
Despite most outfitters told us the road is very bad, the guys at fortes deemed it as passable, so we go.
It is a very long drive, but the scenery is stunning. We cross plenty of tiny Masai villages, vast plains dotted with zebras and all around are hundreds of volcanoes. You can almost feel that it is a very active tectonic area.
The road to lake Natron is more than passable, actually most of the time it is good gravel with some short passages of sand or hard rock. The main difficulty is certainly not being “assaulted” by necklace sellers when stopping for paying the tree communities transit fees [note to older self: 12 pencils are not enough for tree gates].
After roughly 5-6 hours we pass a recent looking solidified lava field and by the little vegetation on it I guess it is 3-4 years old. Ten minutes after we are at Engaresero. Wow, we didn’t know that the village was directly under a still active volcano. And guess what, they propose you to hike it to go see the fumes… we pass, it’s way to hot during the day and the ascend looks long and boring.
Searching for the campsite we suddenly spot a dromedary. Wait a sec, this is no dromedary-land. Puzzled, we keep on driving toward the lake and finally end up at luxury tented camp near the lake. Now it’s all clear, the dromedaries have been imported for carrying the tourists.
One of the guys working there shows us around a bit since there are no guests today. Really nice, but not really our budget range.
At the campsite I try to figure out where the petrified birds are, but nobody seems to know, not even the helicopter pilot that does scenic flights. Pity, we conclude that probably the pictures were taken on the Kenyan side of the lake.
After a nice dinner with a cool bat (literally) hanging around, I go ask a large group if they have any information on the Serengeti’s migration current whereabouts. The guide is a Spanish man that has been guiding in Tanzania for over 10 years and now has started his own company. He is super kind and gives me a lot of suggestions on where we could still see the migration and where to go in central Serengeti without ending up in the main tourists traffic.
Great, there is hope, ten day before the migration was still in Serengeti.

After a visiting some 120000 years old hominids footprints, a breakfast with amazing view and a stroll to Lake Natron we start driving direction north-west. As soon as we get back to the main road in Engaresero, two Masai stop us telling us that we need to go to the community office to register. We go and it turns out that on top of already having paid 1$ each to drive in the community, 20$ each for sleeping and 10$ for 4 branches of wood, they want us to pay a nowhere advertised 30$ activity fee each. We don’t like it. Not the paying bit, but the fact that they are trying to rip us off. Finally, our feeling are confirmed when they agree that 25 dollars in total is enough. Pity, it is a nice place, and the incident ruined a bit the feeling but it is quickly forgotten. And as we see the faces of the two guys when we accept to give them a ride to the town center we are all laughs again… did I mention Eliane was the one driving!? :D

After the town, the road starts climbing up the west side of the rift valley, steeper and harder it is now super fun to drive and our Land Cruiser keeps on delivering… big time :)
We stop at a beautiful corner with amazing views on the valley and the immense extremely shallow lake, we step of the car, take some pictures and then just enjoy.

The road to Serengeti is longer than we thought, and we do encounter some bad sections (much worse than going to Lake Natron) but all is really beautiful.
Finally, around 15.00 we arrive at Klein’s gate, the northernmost entrances to the Serengeti if you are not coming from Kenya (from which we are only 10 Km away).
It’s funny how, when you spend money for something you like you are happy to spent said money. And so we had 812 $ less but in exchange got permission to spend four nights camping and driving around in Serengeti!!!

Tarangire NP, or the one with the Cheetahs

marco — Wed, 30 Jul 2014 16:10:03 +0000

When I asked some friends about Tanzania everybody mentioned Serengeti and Ngorongoro, then while planing the rough itinerary, we listened the guys from fortes car hire, and put Tarangire national park into the plan without knowing much about it.

Leaving Arusha 3-4h later than planned, we even considered skipping it, what a mistake would we have done.
We arrive there sort of late, just 30 min before sunset, and we immediately set off looking for the special camp site where we’ll spend the night. It’s called Kware and we have no idea how it will be like, they just said beautiful and solitary.

just couple of Km into the park we face the first challenge, elephants, heaps of them just on the roadside. Some are fighting, some scratching their trunk o a tree some just hang around, but wow, they are really close and some actually block the road. We stop, get on the roof and enjoy. Just us, the elephants and the setting sun. It’s amazing we couldn’t have had a better start and we immediately know the this trip will rock. :)
We move, we still need to find the campsite. We find some signs, which we follow until we get to an opening in the middle of nowhere surrounded by giant Baobabs. The road ends, there are two little hashes piles, and it is absolutely stunning. We guess we found Kware… wow!!!
As soon as we open our roof-top tent, we know that we were super lucky that fortes car hires suddenly had an extra. In 5 min the full camp is ready, we start cooking our first solo bush dinner under a crazy sky. I’m totally in love…
Alive? yes, you? yes! We survived, not that we ever doubted, but the hyena and other we don’t know what calls in the night were for sure interesting :)

Did I mention how quickly a rooftop tent opens? Well it closes as quickly, this thing is the best invention ever, I’ll never ever want to ground camp any more on safari.
We are off, the first full day of exploration. Super high in our wishes is to see cheetahs but as usual we just take what mother nature gives us and love any second of it.
The Tarangire NP is known for its internal small migration which like in the Serengeti happens annually following the cycles of drought and wet. We are at drought and the animals migrate to the north part of the park where the Tarangire river ensures a water support throughout the year. This makes our life easier because the place to be is one, the riverfront.
We start off by going to the Tarangire Lodge terrace which is beautifully perched on a gorge, stay there a while looking at the morning drinking activity down below. Once we are happy, we start moving south, randomly. For navigation we use a custom brewed solution to use tracks4africa on an android phone (the geek in me is smiling) and some times osmand. We decide intersection by intersection were we want to go, randomly again. That is the beauty of the GPS, we just go where we feel like (even if the “road” is uncharted) and we will find our way back.
The scenery is stunning the river flows in the middle of a dry grass landscape dotted with acacia trees and baobabs. Elephants, Giraffes, wildebeest, zebras, storks are just about everywhere. We keep on driving south and after a short rooftop lunch break, we see a car looking at some tall grass. The driver says that they previously spotted two cheetahs and he points out where. We see them, very far but still it’s a start. The car leaves due to time constrains, we stay, another advantage of self drive. No more cars arrive, it’s just the Cheetahs and us. And they decide to be nice, very nice. They first go to the river for a drink scaring away all the zebras on the other side. Then one tries not very convinced to catch a bird and then they walk to the tall grass again. When one is at 30m we loose the other one in the tall grass and we think that’s it. But then, bam there it is the other is just behind our car, and it seems it is where he wants to be just posing for us for almost an hour. They relentlessly keep on getting up checking around and then sitting down by the car again, those guy are definitely hungry.
After one hour show, they decide that it’s time for real action the one sets off on a light trot towards an impala to the right in the tall grass. The other walks to the left. Due to the tall grass we only see the cheetahs and the impala at intervals.
The first raises his pace now running after the panicking impala pushing him to the left. In a matter of seconds, the second raises is pace cutting the impala’s way and all we hear are 2-3 suffocated noises by the impala and then no more movements.
We are stunned, all happened so quickly and efficiently and it didn’t even look like they were pushing their speed. I guess that is why they are considered the fastest animal on land.

What an amazing first day and the night camp with fresh fire baked bread and view on Lake Manyara is just as amazing.

Welcome to Tanzania – or the one packing the Land cruiser

marco — Wed, 30 Jul 2014 07:08:36 +0000

After the long bus ride back to Lusaka, some very hectic moments getting out of the bus terminal with tens of people pulling us to get into their “taxi” and finally a very relaxing flight we are back in Nairobi airport. Just in time to realize that we’ve not enough dollars with us to pay the Tanzanian visa. Well no problem right we are in an international airport so all should be easy… almost ;)
Long story all ATM out of order and the help desk tryed to rip Eliane off but she still managed to change just enough money., we are off.

Eh look left its the Kili!!! Mountains always amaze me, and the Kilimanjaro doesn’t fail to do so, foremost when it just appears over the clouds.

Yellow fever check and we are in Tanzania :) Africa 14 trip part 2 starts, well actually the preparation of it.
We really enjoyed the time with Maureen and Thys, but for the Tanzania safari we decided to go alone.

We really don’t know what to expect, everybody we asked suggested us to go with guides since the driving is treacherous, the road badly signaled and the drivers dangerous. Still, we figured that it would suit our spirits much more, hence we rented a car at fortes car hire (which I can definetly recomend – Thanks a lot Sarafaz).

The todo list for the first day includes:
– get the car
– get petrol
– get cash
– get food
– get going :)

It’s a short list, but when you have to pass through 10 ATMs to get your cash, it takes a while :)
A fat Land Cruiser with roof tent filled with 50L drinking water, groceries for 9 days (really fun when you usually shop for 1 day), gas, cooking equipment, 160L diesel and a 10 cm tall pile of cash is the sign that at 15.30 we are ready to take off to Tarangire National park.