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!!!

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.

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.

TODO TEXT

What a night, not a single noise, fantastic! And what a sunrise… today it’s an early start again, we want to go to the Nxai pan park and till be back at 16.30 in Maun to go flying with the helicopter. The drive to the Nxai pan gate is very fat, but they tell us that the only waterhole with water is not the one we hoped but the one 20 km further north, well we should manage, we go. As we get there another car tells us they roughly saw lions. We spot them also, 2 females with 2 cups. As we wait for a better sight, one female comes out and goes for a drink making all the antelopes very nervous. She is just thirsty, but what a show and what a machine.
On the way back we make a loop to the Baines baobabs, a group of baobabs that was made famous by the painter and explorer A. Baines which depicted them very carefully allowing detailed comparison with nowadays. Apparently in over 150 years only one branch broke off.
We drive off in a sort of a a hurry since we have only 3h left and 150km to do, should be no problem unless Murphy’s law decides to kick in, and it does. after 5km of deep sand we see a group of 10-12 tourists with their luggages out of the car, they are stuck. Thys and I check their tire pressure, they have over 4 bar, in sand you usually have less than 2, in deep sand even as little as 1.4. we deflate their tires, but it is too late, they already dug themselves too much in the sand so we need to pull them out with the defender. We manage, and they are super happy thanking us in polish and giving us drinking water to wash our hands… they load the car and leave to the baobabs, now its our turn to go and guess what, we get stuck in the holes of the other car. Some sweating after, using the lift jack, some wood and pushing, we get out and can drive to Maun just in time for our flight briefing…

After a pleasant night with the usual hyena visit, we start toward north gate and then further to xaxanaka. This area is much more swampy and bird-life is very abundant, we see plenty of fish eagles, pelicans, herons, yellow billed and marabu storks, hammerkops and spoonbills. Add some hippos, elephants, plenty of red leechwe and the stunning dead trees landscape of paradise pools and the day would be perfect. Well actually it is also the place we decided to give our “tip” to Maureen and Theys, we invite them on a boat cruise on the xaxanaka lagoon.
The trip is fantastic, this is the okawango as I always immagined it, reed filled swamps with shimmering rivers, anthelopes, hippos and many birds. Plain amazing.
Back at the camp we find our site occupied, but the problem is quickly solved by sharing the huge space.
Ready for sleeping, but a strange noise outside the tend worries us a bit, foremost because we can’t understand what it is. It sounds like a mixture of a large bucket of water being moved around, the waving of a light saber, Darth Vader’s breathing and branches being cracked. Really really strange. As it gets louder (and very very close) we finally manage to make sense of all the noises. The bucket is the stomach and the breathing and the waving is the trump of an elephant eating just by our tent. Wow and ohhh but we still manage to fall asleep and foremost to wakeup in one piece. You might think being in a tent in africa is dangerous because of all the large cats, but actually most wildlife related accidents are with elephants and hippos.

For our last day in Moremi we decide to do xaxanaka – 4th bridge – 3rd bridge – black pools – south gate and then down to Maun. This to try to spot wild dogs, cheetahs and crocodiles. The plan works only for the crocs. We get to see a very large one at black pools. The highlights of the day though, are the various water-crossings that we find in the way. Thys is not really in love with them yet, but he is a bit more confident than the first day.
In Maun Maureen an Thys invite us for dinner at the camp restaurant before we go to try to sleep near some extremely noisy animals… British teenagers on a summer sort of camp.