Simbas in the Camp

January 7, 2010 - January 9, 2010

Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania

After Masai Mara, we headed back to Nairobi for a night. This would be the first night that we would set up our tents. I opted to stay in the dormatories, which turned out to be terrible: there were four other people, mozzies, no mozzie nets and the room was small and stiflingly hot. The tents, as it would turn out, were lovely. They are standard dome tents, very sturdy, with mosquito flaps that allow cool breezes to waft through.

After a terrible night, it was on to Arusha on our big custom-built truck, nicknamed Rufansa. When we crossed the border into Tanzania, it was only myself (the lone American) and the Irish passengers who had to pay a visa fee of 100 USD; everyone else only paid 50 USD. There's gotta be a reason for it--I wonder why? What did we do the good citizens of Tanzania?

The trip itself, which should have taken 6 hours or so, in fact took 12. Passengers were sick, the start, it would turn out of a terrible stomach bug that would take out most of the group. It was raining and the roads were flooding, an inauspacious start to a journey. We arrived at a muddy campsite to set up our tents in the dark and those on cooking duty had to pull together a meal.

The next day, we loaded into Land Rovers with pop tops for a drive into the Serengeti. There are lots of traces of early humans in this area, which is pretty cool and the landscape is amazing.

On the way, we stopped to view Lake Manyara, where there are lots of birds and hippos. I only wish we could have stopped longer for more bird peeping.

Our campsite in the Serengeti was terrible: no water and flush toilets that didn't flush, leading to unsanitary conditions. It was real bush camping. We had dinner in a structure that was a dining room with chickenwire walls--the "Cage." Before dinner was served, one of our tour leaders ran in the the news that "There are lions in the camp!" I shone my headlamp outside of the cage and saw, not 10 feet away were two huge lionnesses. Camp staff drove a truck towards them, and they slunk off, only to return. Turns out there was an entire pride of 8 - 9 lions in our camp that night, and they were unperturbed by the clamour we made to get rid of them. Needless to say, bathroom visits that evening included escorts by armed guards and all night I could hear the male lion roaring.

The next day, we bush camped on the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater (actually a caldera, because it has water inside), where it was very cold and absolutely lovely. Inside the crater, there was an amazing concentration of game life, and we saw, again, lots of lions, including these lions hanging out in the middle of road. It was a wet morning, and like cats, they wanted to dry off!