It is tired that we start the second stage of our journey: the Safaris.
In the morning our new guide comes to pick us up at the hotel, we meet him and and our cook (Mr Delicious), they will be our companions for the next week. We load our suitcases in the 4×4 with an open roof and we leave for our first destination: Lake Manyara. According to Ernest Hemingway, the Manyara was the most beautiful lake in Africa. Although limited in size (average area 230 km2), the lake is surrounded by varied landscapes: wooded savannah in the east, dry forest in the southwest and dense tropical forest in the northwest. We enter the park through the main entrance, have a lunch at a picnic area in the park and spend the afternoon driving along the tracks of the park, we see elephants, zebras, monkeys, giraffes, wildebeest, hippos and a multitude of birds close to the lake. It’s a good introduction to the safaris. We return to the campsite at the edge of the park and we sleep in tents after a meal prepared by mister delicious. The food is better than on the Kili, the cook has access to markets and shops on the way which makes it easier to buy fresh products.
The next day we take off towards the Serengeti, we pass by the Ngorongoro Crater and stop to take some pictures. On the way we admire beautiful bush landscapes and Masai villages, on the outskirts of the park we start to see gazelles. We have lunch at the entrance of the park, a pic nic prepared by our cook, and we enter the park.
The Serengeti is an absolutely fantastic park, it is exactly as you will picture the savannah. The tall yellow grass, the big stones scattered here and there, the few trees where leopards are sleeping… Our guide drives quietly on the roads of the park, sometimes he receives a phone call from a colleague who sees a rare animal and hurries to show us lions, herds of elephants and even a mother leopard with 3 cubs. In the evening we watch a beautiful sunset over the savannah and spend the night in a campsite in the park. We have dinner in a concrete building with bars on all windows and doors (to protect the building from hyenas). In the night we hear strange noises, in the morning the guide tells us that during the night an elephant entered the campsite and broke a tree…
In the morning we admire the fantastic sunrise and we see hot-air balloons rising in the sky of the park (very expensive). We see large herds of deer, antelopes, giraffes… All the animals of the savannah except the rhinos which remained hidden during all our stay. On the spots where we see cheetahs, lions or leopards, many tourist cars are clustered but overall it did not bother me too much. Our car is well adapted to the safari, the vision is good and the raised roof allows a good view of what is in the tall grass. It is with a smile on our lips that we leave the park.
In the evening we sleep at the NgoroNgoro Crater in a campsite, we have dinner prepared by the cook and play cards before going to sleep. In the morning we enter this absolutely incredible crater, the car slowly descends along a small track on the side of the crater. This vision of the crater will remain forever in my memory. The maximum diameter is 22.5 kilometers and the depth is 610 meters, it is forbidden for the massais to graze their herds inside to preserve the balance of the biodiversity. We drive through the park, surrounded by a multitude of animals, we see hyenas, lions, elephants and many hippos. But beyond the abundant fauna it is also the fact of being in the middle of a gigantic crater that gives so much flavour to this place. One feels out of time like in a parallel world, a change of scenery guaranteed!
We then leave for our last park, the Taranguire. We sleep in a very small campsite before arriving at the park. On the way we buy goat meat that our cook prepares for us on the barbecue, absolutely delicious if we don’t get too formal about the dubious hygiene of the butcher shops where we can buy meat. The Taranguire park is a park renowned for its herds of elephants, and indeed we will see a great number of them, as well as lions and giraffes. The park is covered with trees and rivers beds. The park is nice but when you go out of the Serengeti and Ngorongoro you can’t help but compare everything to these two parks, and nothing comes up close.
We finally take the road back to the hotel where we will spend one last night before going to the airport and flying to our last destination: Zanzibar! We enjoy one last time the restaurant “on sea house” before leaving. If I had to do this trip again I think I would completely skip the Manyara and Taranguire and concentrate only on the crater and the Serengeti, such is the beauty of those.
Video of the trip : ( Safaris 1m56 – 5m20 )
