Shooting Game

Passed through from Kenya into Tanzania and enjoyed watching the scenery change from quite lush vegetation to the vast open plains, with a few acacia trees scattered about the place (think 'Gods Must be Crazy') and the Masai people dotting the landscape in their colourful kangas, herding their livestock from one place in the middle of nowhere to another. Border crossing was crazy and we were swamped by bejewelled Masai woman selling all kinds of adornments and getting back on the truck without purchasing something was mission impossible. Passed under the shadow of Mt Kilimanjaro, but so hazy actually didn't even get a peek at the famous mountain.

Our camping stop was at Snake Park in Arusha, where as the name suggests there are a lot of snakes.. thankfully the only ones that we saw where behind glass... still enough to give you bad dreams and jump 10 feet in fright when certain members of the truck tickle the your ankle!! The park was chock full of overland trucks which meant a busy bar and cold showers. The next day we did a village walk, some of us atop camels where we saw inside one of the huts, with walls cleverly built out of cow dung, dirt, ash and water. It is the woman who build the houses and in fact do most of the work in their society, men seem to only attend livestock and rest on their laurels. The Masai people are polygamists so of course had to ask all the questions of how many wives our guide had (two but looking for a third) and how much it costs to get a wife (anywhere between 12-15 cows).. definitely glad that I am not living in that society, or if I did would definitely come back as a man!!

In the afternoon we headed over to the Ngorongoro Crater campsite ready for a few days of game driving. Upon arrival, the vehicle carrying our gear had a flat tyre, so we retired to the bar, only to discover when it did turn up that our tent bag was missing all our tent pegs. Managed to beg, borrow and steal enough to hold our tent up for the night. Pretty quiet evening due to the early start the next morning, though everyone enjoyed having food cooked instead of doing our own cook groups and eating our beloved truck food (actually food has been surprisingly good, just that cooking and shopping for such a crowd is a real effort).

Striking camp in the dark was pretty easy since our tent pretty much fell down of its own accord and then into 4X4's for the game drive into the crater. There were six per vehicle and one crazy driver - our group landed driver named Eric who was intent on training for some kind of African Formula one doing 100km plus on gravel, potholed track. After a lenghty delay at the gates sorting passports and travellers cheques (things always done the most torturous, lenghty way here) and avoiding the marauding baboons, we finally made it into the Crater. It was a bit of a traffic jam situation going on at the bottom with up to 30 odd vehicles all kicking up the dust and jostling for position around the animals, however having said that it was amazing, we saw lions, cheetahs, elephants, hippos, wilderbeast and the usual line up of antelopes, gazelle and zebras.

While passing some of the most amazing wildlife around, our group made the awful realisation that we had not got lunch as none of us noticed the lunchboxes at breakfast (to be fair it was dark and 5.30am)... so it was a mad scramble in the back seat to find the elusive Maryland cookies which took on the utmost priority when faced with the prospect of not eating for another 8 hours. Was hysterically funny and confused the heck out of our driver... hunger does strange things to people. Thankfully we did get some food at lunchtime as someone had noticed our error and brought the lunchboxes for us. Then with lunch in hand went outside to eat only to be divebombed by a hawk, so ate in the car.

Following all the drama and craziness, we headed back up out of the crater (about 600m deep) and onwards into the Serengeti. A crazy 3 hour drive with Eric at the wheel, speaking of which we actually lost one of the spares off the back due to travelling at such crazy speeds. Had an evening game drive in the Serengeti, though didn't see anything too spectacular, the actual park itself was the most interesting part with the rolling grass going on for miles and miles around us and successfully hiding the elusive animals.