June 10th
Arrived in AM, little ahead of schedule, in Schiphol (Amsterdam) from Newark. We have a 2.5 hour layover so we walk around the shopping areas in the airport. Margi spots a Casino and decides to make a $100 donation to the Dutch economy. Get a $3.30 Coke lite, walk around a little more, and go to gate to wait.
KLM flight to Kilimanjaro Airport is about 8.5 hours but seems much longer. We arrive on time at about 8 pm local time. We exit the plane onto the tarmac and it feels good to have some fresh air as the temperature is in the 70’s. We get to baggage claim just as the first bags start coming out and ours are like the 4th and 5th bags off. A local baggage handler takes the bags off the conveyor and then wants a $5 tip!! I’m too tired to argue so I make him put them on our trolley and give him the tip.
We are the first out from the customs area and we easily find our Roy Safari driver, Girard, with a FATCHERIC sign. He drives us to the hotel. The roads are paved and like a typical two lane country road back home. The difference is that the roads have few streets signs and no lights or roadside reflectors. Also, there are rumble strips and long, low speed bumps whenever we get into populated areas. Girard drives very responsibly and after about 30 minutes, we turn off the paved road onto a dirt road. We are shocked that the road is so rough and rutted that Girard can only go a few miles an hour in places and has to weave from side to side. We also see lots of shacks and obviously poor people along the road. We are beginning to worry about what the hotel will look like. We go through a guarded iron gate into the grounds of the Moivara Coffee Lodge. The road improves as we drive up to the lodge entrance. The place looks fine and there are porters waiting for us when we arrive. There is a central lodge with reception, bar, and dining room all in the open air style common in the Caribbean.
As we check-in with our voucher, we are given a fruit drink. We ask about a phone and told that there is only one at the reception desk. Two porters carry our luggage to our cottage, number 23, along a series of winding paths. There are path lights but they have a flashlight to help us see our way. The cottage is a standalone place with a thatched roof. The room has a high domed ceiling, a good sized bed with mosquito netting, and a bathroom with a toilet, sink, and shower. We tip the porters and start to unpack a little, as we will be here for two nights. Margi finds that some suntan lotion that she did not put into a Ziploc bag has leaked in her suitcase. Fortunately, all her clothing is in compressible air bags so the only permanent casualties are stains on her safari hat and her sandals. After the cleanup (and some expletives), we grab one of the small AA flashlights we brought and head back to the lodge. Margi makes a $30 three minute phone call to our daughter Amy (we arrived safely) as I watch the clock. We stop at the bar and get a Coke (not lite) and a Safari beer. There are a few Brits and an American father and teenaged daughter there but no one seems very talkative. We find our way back to the room.
While laying in bed reading, Margi notices a small lizard on the ceiling. She is more upset a few moments later when he is gone!! I promise to protect her. We can’t get our noise machine/alarm clock to work even though we have put in new AAA batteries. Margi tracks the problem to a watch battery that must be dead. Hopefully we can find one tomorrow.
June 11th
We rise at 8:15 am and go down to breakfast (included in the price of the room). Sky is partially cloudy and seems to be in the 70’s. Breakfast is a good buffet of juice, fruit, breads, bacon, and an omelet station. We eat in the open air dining area. Margi gets chilled during breakfast so goes back to our cottage to get her fleece jacket. She returns a few minutes later without it because she says that she can’t find it, the room that is!! I finish the last bite of my omelet and go back for her fleece. I get lost also but I persevere and triumphantly return.
After breakfast we walk around the grounds and enjoy the vegetation and views (we arrived in the dark last night). There are giant birds of paradise, poinsettia’s, hibiscus, oleander, bamboo, corn, and trumpet vines. Back to the room, get money and other essentials and head back to lodge to order a taxi to Arusha. Have to wait 30 minutes for the taxi. The man at the reception desk tells us not to walk alone in Arusha but to have the driver come with us.
Camry taxi arrives and we are in Arusha in about 20 minutes. Try to get a cell phone but Vodaphone is too expensive, as they want $210 just for the phone. Driver takes us around but we get a bad feeling about wondering on our own so he take us to a craft market. Is really a tourist trap with rows after rows of stalls all selling the same basic merchandise. The people block your way to force you to step inside their stall. We buy a few gifts for the kids and Margi picks up two brightly colored wraps for herself. Bargaining is required. Driver takes us back to hotel. On the way, we stop for a soda at a grocery type store and I find a street vendor who has the watch battery I need. Back at the hotel at about 12:30. Along the way, we see a cow trying to commit suicide by crossing the main road.
Back at Moivara Coffee Lodge we put on our suits and head for the pool. The day is still partially cloudy but is hot in the sun. We sit mostly in the shade but I spend enough time in the sun to get a little red. I brave a dip in the unheated pool. In place of lunch, we have a coke and a beer. Go back to the room around 4 pm to relax until dinner. Dinner starts fashionably late at 7:30pm and we are, of course, the first to show up. Eventually, a Dutch family and the American father/daughter couple arrive. Dinner is a chicken salad appetizer, tomato soup, pork chop or fish, and pumpkin pie. We skip the pie and go back to the room where I have cognac cuz my lovely wife brought a bottle with her in her carry on for me.
June 12th
We are up at 7:15 am cuz per our itinerary we are meeting our Roy Safari guide at 8:30am. We shower and pack and the porters show up at 8 to get our bags. We go down to breakfast following the porters and see that Roy Safari has already arrived. We have our breakfast and go back to reception to settle our bill (phone calls and various drinks to the tune of $88). They want my email address. Why??
At about 8:35, we meet Joshua who will be our driver and guide for the next 8 days. He is very nice and his English is excellent although I take a little while to get used to his accent. He takes us to the Roy Safari offices in Arusha. It is in a walled, gated lot and is very clean and nice with comfortable lounge chairs, computers, faxes, copiers, etc. We go upstairs and after waiting a few minutes, a guy with a turban and bad teeth comes and goes over our itinerary with us. The only change we wanted was to get a day room in Arusha for the 6 hour layover between our flight in from Zanzibar and out to Amsterdam.
We are all done in about 30 minutes so we use the bathroom and head out with Joshua in our personal Toyota Land Cruiser SUV. On the way out of town, we stopped at an Amex money changing place that has a guard outside it with an automatic weapon. I changed $100 into 10,800 Tsh. We also stopped at a very modern, US style grocery store called ShopRite. It has aisles and aisles of products, many of them very familiar. We buy a case each of Coke lite for Margi, Coke for Joshua, and beer for me. Joshua has a cooler in the car but there is no ice in it and the store doesn’t sell ice. Joshua stops at a place along the way to get some.
It is a long ride to Lake Manyara Park. We have a flat tire along the way. While Joshua is changing the tire, I try to take a picture of a boy by the side of the road herding cattle. He protests but I snap the picture before I see the protest. We get to the park and we stop at the visitor center while Joshua pays the entrance fee. We go down to use the bathrooms and run into a large group of baboons wandering along the concrete sidewalks.
Into the park to start our first game drive. We spent about 4 hours there with a 30 minute break at a formal picnic area that also had a very clean bathroom. We have a ‘box lunch’ that Joshua has brought along for us. On the game drive, we see monkeys, baboons, elephants, cape buffalos, giraffes, impala’s, dik-dik’s (smallest antelope), black faced monkey, hippopotamus, warthogs, wildebeests, elephants, flamingoes, various birds, vultures, turtles, and at a distance, a lion sleeping in a tree.
After the park, we drove about 30 minutes to the Kirurumu Tented Lodge. After check-in, Masai bring our bags to our tent. Each ‘tent’ is in a separate space shielded by trees, is on a raised platform with a front porch, and bathroom is a concrete structure in the rear and it is all covered by the tent. We have two beds, each with mosquito netting. We have 24 hour electric and hot water, a shower, sink, and toilet. The bathroom is separate from the bedroom area by a tent-like flap. We plug in the iPod docking station, put on some tunes, and rest a bit as it has been a long day. Margi goes to sleep and I decide to sit on the porch and try to read but a young kid is trying to beg by standing slightly away from the tent calling ‘Jambo’. I decide to take my camera and explore the place. I find the bar and run into Kelly and Michael, recent MBA graduates from Penn. Over a beer, I get some recommendations from them as they have already been in Zanzibar.
I return to the room to find Margi is up. She has been ‘Jambo’d’ by an even larger group of kids who came right up to the tent. She pretended to be sleeping and they went away. We go back to the bar before dinner (again at a fashionable 7:30) where there is native music and three gymnasts who put on a show. After the show, they put out a can for donations. We meet Scott and Amy from Illinois. They have been in Africa for about 10 days, visiting Uganda and seeing the mountain gorillas. We also find out that they will be at the same hotel as us in Zanzibar and will be on the same flight. Small world.
Dinner is a stuffed tomato appetizer, pea soup, beef stir fry or vegetable calzone, and banana “flan”. Flan is really a granola bar topped with banana’s. We have desert but skip coffee and return to the room to listen to some tunes. We are SOO glad we brought the iPod and the Altec Lansing docking station cuz NONE of our rooms had so much as a radio.
June 13th
We get up at 7:20 as we agreed to meet Joshua at 8:30am. Masai our hanging around the paths so when we leave for breakfast, we direct them to get our suitcases up to the reception area. We have breakfast and meet Joshua at reception where we settle our bill and head on down the road. Day starts cloudy but breaks up to become partially sunny. This is our longest day in the car as we start at 8:20pm and don’t arrive at the next hotel until 5:20pm. We take the Japanese Road (so called by us as the Japanese built it and it is the best road we find in Tanzania) and follow it directly to the Ngorongoro Crater Entrance. Along the way, we stop and fill up with diesel. At the Entrance to Ngorongoro, we have to wait about 20 minutes while Joshua get the permits. We use the bathrooms (very clean and modern).
As we enter the park onto a dirt road, we leave the last of paved highways behind. We see baboons just inside the entrance along the roadside. We basically head upwards with switchbacks. We get to the rim of the crater (a caldera) and have an amazing view. We have climbed so much that the temperatures are much cooler and Margi is actually cold as we stand outside the SUV and admire the view. We take a few quick shots and leave to go down to a plain that will become the Serengeti. The dirt roads are often like washboards mixed with occasional very deep ruts. Progress is slow and dusty.
We go by a few Masai villages but we don’t want to stop. We ask Joshua if we can stop at Olduvai Gorge, which is along the way. We arrive and go to the small visitor center to pay our $6 entrance fee. There are two small exhibit rooms and then an outdoor lecture area that overlooks part of the 55 mile gorge. The lecture is kind of lame but I’m into anthropology so I’m happy and Margi is happy because I’m happy. We eat our box lunch of chicken, fruit, juice boxes, chocolate, and egg in the outdoor lecture area and give the combined parts of our box lunches that we don’t eat to the lady at the ticket window. She does not seem offended. We use the poor bathrooms and head out for the Serengeti.
Drive on dirt roads to the entrance of the Serengeti Park and we wait while Joshua gets the passes. We climb up a stone path to the top of a hill that overlooks the Serengeti. See some birds and (eek!) a lizard. Walk down to meet Joshua and enter the Serengeti.
As we are driving into the park, a single hyena runs parallel to us maybe only 100 feet away. We slow and he crosses a small ditch and stops in a group of trees right next to the road. We pull up and we are close enough that I can hear him breathing!! We see giraffes, wildebeests (literally 1000’s of them migrating), Thompson Gazelles, other gazelles, lots of ostriches, bastard bird, lions, hyenas, impalas, hippos, eagle, vultures, zebras, and a leopard in a tree.
Saw two lions on a rock outcropping called a kopje. Saw a group of lions near a watering hole and a group of zebras and wildebeests keeping their distance. Saw group of about 10 hippos in a pond. Saw one yawning and another turning over sideways. Saw a leopard at a distance sleeping in a tree. Camera got a fair shot of him but with Margi’s binoculars you could see him quite well.
We end our longest day when we arrive at Serengeti Serena at about 5:20 pm with a slight jam of other SUV’s. Get in quickly and register as others unload. Led to room 21, which is the entire upper floor of a thatched roof hut structure that has two other rooms in the lower area. Huts are about 50 feet apart. Room is very nice with large double bed (no mosquito netting), good bathroom (shower only), and a balcony overlooking the Serengeti as the hotel is on the side of a hill.
I go to the pool for a dip while Margi takes a shower. The pool is unheated but I brave it for a quick dip. The pool is curved and has the outer edge where the edge of the pool just meet the water line so that it looks like the view of the Serengeti just meet the water. Very nice effect. I get two wines and return to the room. Margi busies herself with unpacking while I sit on the balcony and read. Take some pictures of the sunset and a bird in a bush.
We leave the room around 6:45 pm and have a few drinks on the outside porch in the pitch dark while waiting for the 7:30 start of dinner. Dinners here are a soup that they bring you and then a buffet that you help yourself at. We skip the banana cream soup and go for the buffet that is very nice. Margi is in heaven as there is a pasta station and the sauce is pretty good. Back to the room after dinner and ask the desk to call Amy in the US. They say that they could only get an answering machine. Amy calls us at about 9:45pm. She had trouble with the number I left but she finally got through. We talk for about 3 minutes.
June 14th
We get up at about 7:20 and go down to breakfast at 8:00. Breakfast is also buffet style with an omelet station, fruit, juices, cereals, etc. We meet Joshua out front for our game drive. We go a different way out and see elephants for the first time in the Serengeti. Saw hyenas by the side of the road with the bones of some kill. Very fascinating as they are truly mean looking animals. While dog like in appearance, they are really in the cat family and females are dominant. We saw about 20 but only 3 or 4 were eating probably females. In the distance, could see a group of lions under a tree. We speculated that the hyenas were finishing up on the lions kill. (elephant, hyena, lion pics)
While Joshua uses his experience and very keen eyes to spot wildlife, he also uses the radio to communicate with other drivers. I begin to joke that all we need to do is look for the Serengeti traffic jams of SUV’s to find something to look at. Despite my joking, we are often the first to arrive at something good to wee. Saw two cheetahs in the grass. Both got up when a single hyena came trotting by. Saw tons of migrating zebras and wildebeests. I had joked with Joshua that I wanted to see millions of wildebeests because I knew there should be migrating at this time of the year (June) and I think we did literally see that many. Saw lioness sleeping in a tree. Saw tons of giraffes that seem to have little fear of the SUV’s. Saw hippo out of water grazing. Joshua says that most hippo attacks on people occur in the early morning when hippos are returning to the water for the day and people are heading out on the water to fish, etc. Saw mongoose near the hippo pond. (more pics)
Back to the lodge around 1 pm and head for the lunch buffet. Go back to the room and read until about 3:30pm. I am having a touch of traveler’s diarrhea so I start the medication we brought along. We go to the reception area to meet Joshua for an afternoon game drive. Walking up to the reception we see a Cape Buffalo sitting next to a small pond about 10 feet from the reception area. We take some pictures and go around to the front to meet Joshua.
On the PM drive we see elephants, and 50 or so hippos in a stinking pond where we go to the edge and are 25 feet from them. We see vultures eating the carcass of a wildebeests while another wildebeest grazes in the background. We see a group of baboons crossing the road with a number of mothers carrying babies on their backs.
June 15th
We are up at 5:25 am to meet Joshua at reception area at 6:00am while it is still dark. We all go to self serve coffee/tea station in bar area to have something before leaving. As we leave, we have to have the SUV lights on as it is still dark. We see giraffes in the beams of the headlights as I try to take a flash picture of them with the built-flash. We drive onto the plains and see a hyena by the side of the road. We see the sun rise. We also see crocodiles, jackals, vultures by carrion, and a lion on the Maize kopje. We see another lioness in the grass and lots of giraffes (again). We see a sleeping male lion that is very rare, according to Joshua. We see two cheetahs. (pics)
We are back at the lodge at 12:45 pm. We wash and go to lunch where we are the first to arrive. Margi has a touch of diarrhea so she starts the cipro. We go to the pool and sit/swim until 4pm. We go back to the room and dress and then go to dinner at 7:29 pm but because the doors are closed, we walk around and enter from the pool side and thereby avoid checking in. Have dinner, go back to our room, and decide to call Amy. Margi calls the front desk to ask them to make the call but they inform us that Amy has called just a few minutes ago but they couldn’t find us as we hadn’t checked in at the restaurant. So we decided to call Amy. She was worried. Talked for about five minutes.
June 16th
Up at 5:55 am and meet Joshua at 7:00 am. Go on a drive mainly across the plains where wildebeests and zebras are migrating. In the early morning, see a cheetah walking along the road. See four lions leaving a kill to a flock of vultures. See another flock of vultures digging in a wildebeest carcass while other wildebeests graze near by. See thousands and thousands of wildebeests and zebras. Drive right through herds of them. See baby wildebeests and baby zebras. See an eagle in a tree.
Return to the hotel around 1:30 pm and have lunch. We have opted not to go out again today so we eat lunch and go back to the room to rest and pack as we leave the Serengeti Serena tomorrow. Go to the main bar around 5:15 pm. Have dinner and go back to the room to read until 10 pm.
June 17th
Up at 6:40 am, do final packing. Meet porter outside and have him take our bags to reception. We go to reception first to settle our bill to avoid the rush later. Bill was $290 for drinks, telephone, Internet, wash, etc. Go to breakfast and complete an evaluation form for our waiter (Julius). Meet Joshua at about 8 am. Insure our bags are all loaded and we depart for Ngorongoro Crater. Leaving the Serengeti, we see an elephant with its trunk up, which is a good luck sign (according to Margi). See a wildebeest carcass by the side of the road. It is a new kill and hyenas/vultures haven’t found it yet. (elephant – carcass) Have a 4 hour drive to the Ngorongoro Crater that includes a few stops for viewing animals along the way. Also have a longer stop at the entrance to the Ngorongoro Crater while Joshua does the permit thing. As we get closer to the crater, the environment seems to get drier and drier as we are on the dry side of the mountains that contain the crater. We see Masai tending their herds and Masai kids begging at the side of the road.
We arrive at the rim of the crater at about noon and take the steep, switch back road to the crater floor. Joshua switches the SUV to low range as the road is very steep. We get to the floor of crater and it is much different than the Serengeti. There seems to be less vegetation on the plains and then a woodland area at one end. There are fewer grazing animals like wildebeests and zebras. Joshua says that there are mostly the same animals here except that there are no giraffes. The other difference is that the crater floor, while very large, is small compared to the Serengeti. The effect of this is that you see more SUV’s than you did in the Serengeti. At times on the Serengeti, we would go for an hour without seeing another vehicle. In Ngorongoro, there always seemed to be another SUV in sight, making the “traffic jam” situation even greater.
The first interesting thing we see is a leopard in a tree. We also see the final animal of the big five, a black rhino. He (she?) is grazing a fairly long way from the road. However, we wait patiently (out waiting a number of other SUV’s) and the rhino begins to move closer and closer. He/she finally gets within about 50 yards of our truck but by this time, another traffic jam has appeared so he/she begins to move away. Saw our first bones, elephant bones. Joshua said that it is rare to find them as hyenas have strong enough jaws to crush even the bones of most animals, except maybe the heavy bones of an elephant. Stopped for lunch at a picnic site that had a reasonable bathroom. There are a number of monkeys around and signs saying don’t feed the animals. Apparently the monkeys can’t read this as we saw one monkey jump right into an SUV through the open roof. (Ngorongoro – day 1 pics)
Continued our game drive seeing heron, cape buffalo, warthog (up close), elephants, and of course, lions. Leave the crater floor on a one way (up) steep road and get to the Ngorongoro Serena Lodge at about 3:15 pm. Hotel is very nice, built on the rim and our room overlooks the crater. It is much colder up on the rim so the room has heat!!
I go down to the lobby as I have looked at the Serengeti Serena bill and I think they have made a mistake. I want the people at reception here to confirm that the mistake and I hope that as these are both Serena hotels, they will be able to do something. They agree that I have been overcharged by about $17 and will work it out with the other lodge and deduct that amount from our bill here. While I am doing this, Margi is at the gift shop seeing if they have any batteries for Matt’s camera (as we did not bring the charger). They don’t. Margi buys more postcards and stamps as part of her job on every trip is to be our official post card delegate. We go to the bar and Margi has tea as she is cold and I have wine. We sit by an circular fire in the center of the room. I try to help the fire by moving some logs and proceed to drop a burning log on the floor. Staff member helps. Hakuna Matada. We meet two divorced ladies from Orlando and talk. They came through London to Nairobi (Kenya) and then drove into Tanzania (in a SUV with a driver/guide). There are here for two weeks and will be leaving on Sunday. Left the bar and spent 30 minutes on the Internet. This place has the cheapest Internet rates we have found. Send and answer some emails. Amy is on so we actively exchange emails with her. Everything is ok at home. Amy and Mark are having a small pool party while we are gone so the dogs will have company for the entire day.
Go to dinner in the dining room upstairs from the bar. It is NOT a buffet like the Serengeti Serena. There is a self-service salad station. Soup and a choice of two entrees are delivered to the table. Then there is a self-service dessert table. The food was good and the desserts were the best we’ve had so far. Back to the room and call the front desk for heat as it is cool in the room.
June 18th
Up at 7:20 am and meet Joshua at 8:30. The day is foggy and everything on the rim is wet but it is not terribly cold. Down on the floor of the crater, the weather stayed cloudy all morning. Saw an elephant next to a tree that we think he pushed down to get to the leaves. Saw a black maned lion mating with a female. Saw a male warthog trying to mate with a reluctant female. (mating pics) Saw more elephants, lions, birds, hippos, and a black rhino from a distance.
Stopped with our box lunches at a picnic area. There are about 20 other SUV’s there. Joshua warns us to watch out for the birds when we are eating our lunches. Most people are eating in their vehicles but we venture out about 20 feet in front of our SUV on a grassy area overlooking a large pond. We open our lunches and start to eat. Margi raises a chicken leg to her mouth and a bird with a four foot wingspan comes down over my shoulder and tries to grab the chicken from Margi’s hand. She is literally knocked over and is slightly scratched by the birds talons. But, the bird did not get the chicken!! We retire to the SUV for the rest of our lunch. When we come back from the bathrooms, we see Joshua eating his lunch outside but he is lying on his stomach with his head and food under the front of the SUV!!
Back at the lodge at 3:30 pm. Re-pack our suitcases and prepare a box of things that we don’t want to take to Zanzibar as this is the last day of our safari. We plan on giving this stuff to Joshua in hopes that he can use it or sell it. After packing, we go down to the bar to sit by the fire. We chat with the ladies from Orlando. Just before dinner there is a Masai native dance demonstration. Dinner is tilapia or steak.
June 19th
We are up at 6:15 am and go to the front desk to pay our bill. The bill is adjusted for the overcharges at the Serengeti Serena. Porters get our bags to the reception area. We leave at 7 am for Arusha. Joshua wants to leave early because we have asked to stop at a craft center just outside Arusha and he is afraid that we might run into some delays on the roads as there are lots of trucks that use these dirt roads early in the morning. In fact, we are delayed for a few minutes as we wait for two large trucks to squeeze by each other on a tight curve. We see numerous water buffalos along the roadside. Joshua stops at a market in a town on the Japanese Road to buy rice and fruit. He says that it is cheaper and fresher out here than in Arusha. It takes three hours to get to Arusha. We stop at the craft center but have to wait for 30 minutes for the boss to arrive and open up. Margi buys souvenirs. From the craft center to the Roy Offices is only a few minutes. We stop there and get the details of the day room we requested for our 6 hour layover in the Kili airport after our time in Zanzibar. We have been booked at the KIA Lodge, which is on the grounds of the Kili airport.
Joshua takes us to the Precision Air offices in Arusha as they are flying from the Kili airport instead of the Arusha airport because of some remodeling. We have to wait at the Precision Air offices for a shuttle to take us out to Kili. Joshua gets us into the office, speaks to the attendant, and leaves us with a four hour wait until our flight. Our safari is done as we proceed to Zanzibar for some relaxation in the sun.