Tanzania

Arrival

Tanzania was the second part of our trip to Africa. There, we had half of the time we had in Namibia and therefore couldn’t really go way futher into the country and what I really wanted to see there, was the Serengeti and the Great Migration which i read goes on until July. At first, actually, i didn’t think we’d see so much wildlife in Namibia, so Tanzania was “The safari destination” in my head and Namibia was to see mostly scenery, deserts etc. but by the time we went to Tanzania, we’ve seen almost everything already. So we landed at Kilimanjaro International Airport and were picked up by the driver of the hotel where we stayed or more like from the company we went on the tour with. From Kilimanjaro to Arusha was only 50 Km but it took a LOOOONG time to get there, probably 1.5 – 2h because it was a 2-way road to Arusha and many trucks would slow us down, we even almost had a truck crash into us, i almost said my prayer when we were overtaking and the truck started going into our direction (it’s left side driving there) and i noticed the truck didn’t see us and also started overtaking, i think i screamed a little and the driver of our car somehow managed to avoid it by moving more towards the curb. Gosh, that was scary, i haven’t had this happen to me since I was a child but exactly because it has happened before, I’m nowadays always anxious when i overtake a truck on the highway and I move as far away as possible on my lane and drive as fast as possible to overtake. Anyway, we reached the hotel and entered the room, it was a very modest room, the bathroom was quite old and rusty and a bit dirty etc but it was ok, doable for one night, since the next day we would leave for our tour and would return the night before our flights for one more night here. The garden, though, was goooorgeous. We went to get some dinner and the first thing i noticed was.. OF COURSE, new birds for my spot list. I was so excited. I had started making a list of all birds and other animals i’ve spotted and I was very excited to add a few new species of birds from my first night in Tanzania. At some point, we were talking to the manager of the tour agency who came to explain how the tour would go and a Hadada Ibis landed on the roof of the hotel and I barely contended myself from just jumping and leaving to run for my camera, of course by the time the guy was over the ibises were gone and I was soooo disappointed and angry but I got to see them later on again so it was all good 😀

A Fair warning

The best part (for me) of Tanzania was that while Namibia was a gorgeous desert full of vibrant and rich culture, Tanzania was the place to experience the real wild – the campsites in the heart of Serengeti were not fenced at all and that meant that wildlife roams around you at night and can and WILL come just outside your tent. It’s literally a WILD experience that brings you emotions varying from excitement, through fear to disbelief and will make your imagination wild too. So think twice and make sure you are open for experiences like this which could scare you but would also bring you unforgettable memories. You’ll hear/read my stories in the next lines/posts.

Tarangire National Park

The SUV we would go around with was a bit old but the nice thing about it was that the roof could open and inside the national parks we were allowed to open it, although we were not allowed to stand up while the car is moving due to the “African massage” haha (super shaky bad roads which literally shuffle all the insights of your body). We traveled with a couple from Spain where the lady (Patricia) didn’t speak English at all but her husband, Havi, did. The tour began by picking up the Spanish first and then us and we started on our way to Tarangire National Park. To be honest, I’ve done almost 0 research on purpose, so I could also have something to look forward to and have the surprise factor for myself too, but the first thing that also Shelley told me about and you just notice right away, especially coming from a country with so much barren land like Namibia.. is the lushness of Tanzania. Everything is super green and lush and the zebras we saw right after entering Tarangire National Park, were somehow different on this background. Also the zebras we saw in Tanzania in general, were the type that we were hoping to see in Namibia’s desert areas – Hartman’s Zebra – with no stripes on the belly. While the ones we saw most often in Namibia were the other type – Burchell’s zebra – with stripes all over their body. Before we entered the park, though, we stopped at the entrance and while we waited for the guides to sort the entry for us, I just HAD to run back to where we came from into this area because I saw.. a GIANT BAOBAB tree! I got sooo excited! There was also a huge pile of animal skulls the largest of which was an elephant skull, it was GINORMOUS! Just the skull of the elephant is almost the same height as I am. This was super impressive to see from up close. Also, many kids were there coming together with their schools to explore their own country and wildlife, this was beautiful to see. And they were very curious and kept staring at me and our group haha 😀 I snapped a few photos of them and I just love how they posed at the entrance of the park with the arch saying “Tarangire National Park” and a huuuge baobab tree next to it. And yet, the thing that left me in awe the most, were the MASSIVE, MAAAASSIVE Baobab trees, I was soo excited for them, didn’t know I’d see Baobabs on this trip so when I did, even though they didn’t look like the ones in Madagascar with a smooth round trunk, these were still soooo thick and massive, and gorgeous. Although I was looking forward to seeing the “umbrella” trees I had painted on my nails – the acacia trees, I couldn’t stop taking photos of the Baobabs. As it turned out, Tarangire was the only place we’d see the baobabs as there aren’t any in Serengeti so I am super glad that I did see them and that we went there. Tarangire was full of wildlife, as we were riding we not only saw herds of zebras and giraffes, but also “accidentally” spotted the smallest antelope in the world which I totally love but have only seen in the Netherlands’ zoos – the Dik-dik <3 It’s barely larger than a dog, super skinny and with a long snout that it swings left and right as it’s trying to smell something in the air 😀 Super adorable and i was AGAIN, super excited! They told us that if there’s one dik-

dik, there will always be another one. And sure enough, the other one was there too. On the way to and after the water hole we spotted mongoose, warthogs, vervet monkeys, ibises, and hornbills (at the lunch break location). We arrived at a water hole where we saw so many elephants right next to the baobabs, drinking and bathing, along with their calves, super cute picture to see and I have some super beautiful photos of them. We also witnessed 2 elephant bulls fighting each other, then warthogs arrived and more zebras and wildbeest. The Tanzanian wildebeest was different from the Namibian – white and grey in colour as opposed to dark in Namibia. Very interesting to see another sub-specie of this member of “The ugly 5” 😀 At some point, we noticed that.. someone was surveying the animals with a sharp eye – a lioness. She was a lone “wolf” for some reason and she didn’t really go hunting after the animals, but they all disappeared when they spotted her and she went to drink water instead. Turned out as we figured out later, that in Tanzania it’s pretty common to see lions, unlike Namibia. So it was great to actually see so many lions and we did see prides in Serengeti on multiple occasions. The water hole was packed full of tourist SUVs, each fighting for a better spot to see the animals, each wanting to see and stay the longest and it caused immense congestion in the middle of the savannah which was interesting to see. The not-so-funny part of that day in Tarangire, was the lunch spot – literally in the middle of nowhere, the SUV stopped and parked under a faint shadow of an acacia tree and they put the food on top of the car – 3 pots – meat, rice and spaghetti or so and plates and cutlery and some coca-cola in cans. So each of us got some food in their plates and then.. had to find someplace to sit.. well, there wasn’t an abundance of benches, exactly 0 of them, so I went to sit on a root of a tree and while I was trying to get there, many sharp spikes from the tree got stuck onto my thin sandals which made me “learn my lesson” and not wear sandals from then on, and then when i sat, more spikes poked my butt 😀 That was still part of the experience so I wasn’t unhappy just not mega comfortable if I could say so. At some point, 3 kids started coming towards us, judging by their clothing, they were from the Maasai tribe but weren’t daring to come closer. I suppose the tour guides are not very friendly towards them. But the kids were hungry so when we were finished with the food, I asked the guide if he could give them some food and I noticed on his face that he was reluctant and didn’t like the idea but i guess, because I asked, he did give them the leftover rice (not the meat ofc..). Maybe he wanted to take the leftovers to his own family, i don’t know, but i’m glad he gave some food to the kids. Havi, the Spanish guy, did a barter with one of the kids and gave the kid his hat in exchange for his shepherd’s wooden stick (which he later lost 😀 oh, well). Anyway, another thing that amazed me, was the sheer number of prey birds that were sticking out on the top of the Baobab and the Umbrella trees – maaaany many vultures, buzzards, falcons etc. I totally loved it. We then went on to our lodge for the night. It was an amazing location, i feel sad that I cannot remember the name, a beautiful lodge with a stunning pool area and monkeys around us. The style was a bit like The Flinstones, was so funny and cicadas were singing in the evening and I saw not ONE but TWO kingfishers! I was so excited <3 And that was the last sign of civilization for us..

Olduvai Gorge & Serengeti National Park

The next day we started on our way to Serengeti and to get there, we had to pass through the Ngorongoro conservation area. We would go down the crater to check it out on our last day so on the second day we only entered and passed on the rim of the crater but did not go down. Still, we had to stop at the entrance and wait for the tour guides to get the entrance documents fixed which gave us just enough time to go to the toilet and for me to, first, go inside the museum area and take pictures of everything that includes text about the area so that I can read it later and learn more about it and write more accurate information here. A fact that I didn’t know but the tour guide, who I forgot to write the name of – Ezekiel, told us that a “conservation area” is basically an area where both people with their livestock and wild animals live together and a national park is only for wildlife. So Ngorongoro was populated by people whom the government aims to relocate in the near future in order to leave the area only for wildlife, but the Ngorongoro area has a direct connection with Serengeti and other parks which allows the animals to roam free. Well, except for the rhinos, for which I will talk about when we get to the Ngorongoro park later. So as we drove through the Ngorongoro rim on our way to Serengeti, I was checking my photos and had my SD card out of the camera and was copying and checking photos, basically stuck with my face down onto the phone when i heard the whole group shout “Aaaaaah!” and I lifted my face and looked forward and.. I saw.. a TAIL.. a f*cking TAIL.. and everyone else saw.. a LEOPARD! Oh my God, trust me, I wanted to commit suicide at that moment, I was soo pissed at myself for staring at the stupid phone, I couldn’t live with myself. This was the last bit about seeing “The Big Five” and only Fill saw them all, I saw “The Big 4 and 1/4” (rhino, elephant, buffalo, lion, and.. the tale of a leopard..). Havi and Patricia didn’t see a rhino in Tanzania, so they also couldn’t see all Big 5, while we saw quite a few of them in Namibia. The Big Five actually consists of the five most difficult-to-hunt animals, they are named so not after their size and are named so by hunters. From that moment on, I was like a wounded animal, constantly whining about the leopards and really became fixated on seeing a leopard.. well.. spoiler, we never saw one again. The sheer luck of a leopard crossing the road right in front of your car, like 10m away, is a once-in-a-lifetime luck which, of course, I didn’t have.. Aaaanyway.. on our way to Serengeti we first stopped by a famous place – the Olduvai Gorge, one of the most significant archaeological sites in the history of humanity – there were found two of the early ancestors of the modern-day humans – “the Nutcracker man” and the “Handyman”, dating from approximately 1.84 million years ago. The Handy Man is actually the one that is believed to be the ancestor of modern humans, with a larger brain than the Nutcracker Man, half the size of a human today, while the Nutcracker man had a brain roughly one-third of the size of the modern human and a huge jaw with powerful muscles and twice the size of today’s humans.

<< photo of nutcracker man and handyman >> and <<photos of the jungles of Ngorongoro with the myst >> and << read and write info from Ngorongoro info photos i took >>

We proceeded to Serengeti and entered through the Naabi gate. At all gates, there were coffee places, souvenir shops, and toilets to freshen up and also there was just outside sort of a basin with a water tap to just wash your hands and it was full of water and all the birdies were there bathing and drinking water, poor things. At some of the camps we’d stop by later on, I would turn the tap on for a few seconds, after noticing birds waiting around, just to get some water on the ground and they’d immediately go there to drink 🙁 Poor things, relying only on human mercy. I think I did it in some places around Namibia too, it was an even worse drought there. Also, there were info sheets placed on lamp posts with information that there is conservation going on for the endangered Secretary Birds and I found that so cool, that they care and protect them. So after we took some breaks for drinking, toilet, shopping or lunch at the gates, we went into the Serengeti National Park. We had a game drive on that day, but it was short, mostly on our way to the campsite, so not really a game drive in the full sense of it. So when we arrived our tents were already built, this was a nice change from Namibia where we had to setup and dismantle the camp every day, we had our chef with us whom we picked up from the city and he was cooking in the kitchen building along with the other group’s chefs. He cooked SOOOOOOO delicious.

We still saw quite a lot of antelopes and zebras and some prey birds, the vastness of the park was very impressive with the scattered umbrella trees here and there and I loved it. What did not make a very good impression on me, though, was the huge areas that were burnt to black. Because for me it’s horrible to think about all the tiny animals that cannot run away from the fire and just burn alive. So when I asked they told me that these are controlled fires mostly done so that new fresh grass can grow for the grazing animals to have enough food and secondly, because tourists who come here and eat nuts or seeds, drop them on the ground and that can cause alien plants to start growing and spreading which may overtake the local plants and thus, deprive the animals from their food source. So after seeing elephants, giraffes and lions and whatnot, we arrived at the camp for the night. We were going to sleep there for 2 nights and the camp was super dark, only the building for kitchen and dining was lit and a few round tables with benches around had lights and it was full of people. There was a rush hour in the mornings at 6AM before everyone left for their daily game drives. This was our first night really “out in the open” with actual wildlife walking around and we did see already in the evening bisons super close behind the kitchen building. We also had a little friend staying with us – a little dik-dik <3 Poor thing was alone, I assume its partner was probably killed by predators like hyenas or lions or maybe even a coyote. One of the nights I accidentally scared it off by lighting the torch in its eyes, not knowing it was the dik-dik, so it stood up and moved a bit further down, i felt so bad for disturbing the poor little baby. It was alone, I couldn’t see its mate anywhere so I assumed it probably fell prey to a coyote or hyena or so and that amplified my feeling of guilt when I accidentally scared the little thing off 🙁 It had come so close to humans to seek protection from predators and I felt like I was endangering it bc I scared it off 🙁 The first nigh

t I saw it behind the kitchen area and the second night it had moved to the bathroom area by the tents. But it really wasn’t safe around us. Both nights I heard lions roaring, some times it was far, and other times it sounded pretty close. One night we had hyenas laughing basically in the camp and another night coyotes were fighting just outside our tent, right next to my head, it was very creepy and scary, especially in complete darkness and next to your ear. One of these nights I got soo creeped out because I knew Fill had been to the bathroom and in the middle of the night I woke up, it was pitch black and i could hear the sound of a plastic bag, it sure sounded to me like some animal has put its head into a plastic bag, perhaps one of ours, inside the tent and was trying to eat whatever it found there. Since they always told us not to leave anything outside the tents and to always close the tents completely, I thought Fill had forgotten to close the tent and now there was a hyena or coyote inside the tent and was eating our food. That’s what I thought and it’s pitch black, i open my eyes and it’s basically the same as if i had them closed and my brain made up all sorts of scenarios. I froze, I was quite scared and didn’t dare to move, but suuper slowly I turned around to look at the tent’s wall so if this thing bit me, it wouldn’t at least be on my face and then slowly i went under the sleeping bag with my head covered. I was BOILING alive inside the sleeping bag, from the increased heartbeat and adrenaline, but also from the layers of clothes I slept with but i didn’t dare moving. So at some point, Fill moved and I called him in a whisper and asked him if he closed the tent when he went outside and he said yes and then i told him that I thought there’s something in the tent eating from a plastic bag 😀 hahaha and then he laughed at me and said I’m crazy and this was the wind hitting the tent 😀 hahah I DIED 😀 Of course, he couldn’t stop telling the story later on to everyone.. :/ Soo these were definitely fun moments, now that I think of it in retrospect. But it wasn’t funny when i thought an animal was INSIDE the tent, but when i heard them around us, I was excited. Also, because I knew that also lions could wander around us with pretty much the same likelihood as any other animal, so I tried to avoid going to the bathroom at night (meaning while everyone was asleep). But on the internet you can find a video of a man who tries to shoo a lion away from his tent and constantly opens the tent, says “shoo” and closes it and then again and again, irritating the lion even more. That’s quite scary. Check out THIS VIDEO with the lion roars. We also heard these roars, just not right outside our tents but it was super close, luckily they didn’t attempt to enter our tent o.O You have no gun, not even a fork 😀 Nada, you just sit there, keep quiet, and hope for the best. So it’s not for the faint of heart.

The plan was to spend 3 days in Serengeti, one of which would be to go and see the Great Migration at the Maasai River in the North of Serengeti. So we had to leave very early as we had more than 3h to get there and the road went out of the Serengeti and then went back inside so that meant we had to stop at another gate and so on. At some point, we diverged from the road, which wasn’t really a road inside the Serengeti anyway, but rather a dusty path that was VEERY bumpy, giving you the so-called “African massage” from all the shaking 😀 and we diverged from it into the very faint, barely noticeable, traces of SUVs and drove until we reached a huge number of cars following and waiting for the migration. There were hundreds, if not thousands of wildebeest and not a lot of zebras. So all the cars had stopped and waited, very far from the river and on the other side was Kenya. In the river are the crocodiles that would feast once the crossing starts, we were hoping to see the crossing, but had to be patient and wait far away from the Mara River, because Ezekiel told us that if they haven’t started crossing and the cars go close, they will scare the animals, but once they really begin to cross, nothing can stop them anymore and that’s when the cars can go and watch what’s going on. We waited around 3 hours but the only thing that happened was the wildebeest running up and down and back and forth around the cars, I think the cars scared them and made them scatter but they would gather again further down in the direction of the river. There were also hundreds of cars, sooooo many, I didn’t expect so many cars, really, but there really were at least a couple hundred cars. We had to eventually have lunch and they parked the car a bit to the side of the main action and we could go down the jeep but were not allowed to move away from the car because you never know who’s looking at you.. But i really wanted to go and take a look at a big tortoise remains to see what happened to it and it looked like it was burnt so at first I thought it was the “controlled” fires, but then realized that part wasn’t burnt and so this must be blood, just dry and black. I snapped a quick photo and ran back to the car, the tortoise was only like 5m away, so i didn’t go far. Unfortunately, even though a few times it looked as if the wildebeest were just about to start the crossing, they never really did. Also, they were afraid to pass between the cars, but the few zebras with them kind of led the way and after the zebras, the wildebeest also started coming between the cars, they would run as fast as they could and it was soo amazing to witness this insane chase between them, big and small, running up and down and bringing up a cloud of dust while making funny “moo”-like and also burping sounds. Super funny to watch and at the same time marvelous sight to see the thousands of them fathering. We did see many more headed there, so they were still gathering to be as many as possible for the crossing into the Maasai Mara into some fresh grazing Kenyan lands. Oh, also Ezekiel told us a funny story – why wildebeest is called “spare part” animal in Tanzania 😀 It’s because it has the face of a grasshopper, striped maine like zebras, the tail of a giraffe, buffalo horns and a hyena’s posture 😀 hahaha

The last day was for central Serengeti where we really tried to find a leopard, but instead, we saw a big pride of lionesses that decided to move away from us from the side of the road where we saw them, to go somewhere far and we managed to count i think around 11 or so. Also a big group of giraffes was so cute to observe, I totally love giraffes, they are super funny animals to watch and when they run it feels like their neck wingles so much backward that it will put them out of balance and they will flip back 😀 But it never happens 😀

Ngorongoro Crater

The Ngorongoro crater is the sixth largest caldera based on area in the world with a diameter of 16-19 km but it is the largest one actually unbroken and unflooded caldera in the world. It is an almost perfect circle with walls continuous and intact. Ezekiel told us that “Ngorongoro” means the sound that the bells make. At the bottom of the crater lies a huge lake which is the oasis supporting a large number of wildlife living there, ranging from black rhinos to elephants, buffalos, zebras, leopards, hippos, lions, wildebeest, warthogs, and many, many species of birds, like the endangered secretary bird that I really wanted to see, the endangered grey crowned crane and the near threatened (as of 2024) Kori bustard (called so, because it keeps forgetting where it laid its eggs and lies more in other nests, or so the story of Ezekiel goes haha) as well as flamingoes, vultures and many more raptors, ibises, and herons. The crater looks like a jungle on the sides, so lush and beautiful, so mystic with the fog engulfing it in the early morning, it’s magical, and the sounds of the jungle are just magical. I really wanted to stop for a bit and keep quiet and just listen but it didn’t happen, it was always full of tourists or, if no tourists, our group would talk.. But it was nevertheless, priceless to drive and just randomly see an elephant munching next to the road with a backdrop of the the crater’s jungle. Just pure magic for me. I tried capturing this in some of my photos, but i don’t know if i managed to. The issue we had, though, was the constant dust and ash wherever we drove, including the Serengeti and also Ngorongoro, we had inhaled so much that it really felt as if we had swallowed buckets of ash by the end of the whole trip. And the “African massage” was something I thought i’d get used to and i kind of did, but at the end I really had enough of it too. The SUV would jump left and right and up and down all the time, no break, you really had to hold on very tight or otherwise fall and hurt yourself or break your camera or something. It was officially not allowed to be standing up while driving but after a while, i couldn’t care less and i’d occasionally stand up to see better and to try and spot animals better because the windows were super dirty from the ash.

There, at the crater’s campsite, I had the best experience in my life, also the coldest of all nights there in Tanzania. Because it was at the top of the crater at about 2500m above sea level, the wind was merciless and the area where we camped was out in the open on a field with a huuuge tree in the middle. The campsite was basically kind of split in two halves, both with the same infrastructure – the meadow close to the tree where the tents were placed. And compared to the tents in Namibia, this tent on the Ngorongoro crater was like a 5-star hotel – so huge we could actually put the two mats next to each other and have enough space to enter without stepping on them and also enough space on one side to leave our bags. We did have to leave most of our luggage at the Charity Hotel on the first day due to lack of space in the SUV so we packed the most important things and travelled with a backpack each. Don’t ask me how you fit 1 week’s worth of stuff in a backpack but the packing master that I am, I managed haha 😀 So the meadow with the tents and then there’s a concrete building where the guides would cook and sleep and another for a dining area and behind them 2 small buildings – one for men and one for women, with showers and toilets. With one or two lights for each half of the campsite. The bathroom did not have hot water so we were pondering whether or not to skip the shower but I didn’t after all. It was just the fastest shower in history – a few drops of water enough to get me wet and then shower gel and then the fastest rinse in history, like 2 min, no hair washing.

The water wasn’t freezing but given the cold wind outside it wasn’t the best experience once you get out. The nice thing about the Tanzania trip was that the tents were magically “putting themselves up”, we didn’t have to set them up, someone had already done that always when we’d arrived for the night. So our tent was the first on the row of tents and that meant the one in the corner basically. Upon arrival on the other side of the camp, we saw an elephant happily grazing from the nearby bushes and immediately went to see it, of course staying at a good distance from it. But it was very close to the other half of the camp’s female facility. I had a call with my father and showed him the elephants. It was soo cool! Then, we went to have dinner, but first I walked around to take some photos of birds and then we had a very delicious dinner, consisting of soup and some cooked fish and vegetables. The issue was, that somehow we got assigned the table with other people and the soup was not enough for everyone and while me and Patricia didn’t feel shy to wait for everyone else to go first like Fill and Havi did, there was not enough soup for the two of them. Eventually, Ezekiel and the other guys made a bit extra but it wasn’t really the same. Anyway, the dinner was still nice and then we went to brush our teeth etc and go to sleep. And THEEEEEN.. then it was around 3AM when I woke up and Fill quietly called for me, whispering. When i answered he told me that there was something outside. We thought it was elephants because he heard heavy thuds right next to our tent. I was so angry that he didn’t wake me up, but at the same time scared because I had no idea what animal it was and was afraid to go out but I really had to go to the bathroom because the cold weather had sped up my call of nature. Fill also needed to go and we just had to.

So we grabbed a torch and carefully opened the tent. On the other side of the huge tree was the other camp and they also only had 2 lights and it was a good distance away. So what we managed to see was 4 sets of 4 legs on the other side of the tree close to the other camp. But we didn’t see the giraffes, only their legs and only in the middle and that was due to the light only illuminating that part, the rest was pitch black. The moon was suuuper red when it rose, i’ve never seen such a thing before, but later in the night, somehow it didn’t really illuminate the ground so we couldn’t see anything. We pointed the torch at the ground, didn’t want to startle the giraffes, who knows what can they do in panic from our lights – step on tents or i don’t know. So we ran as quickly as possible to the male bathroom, including me, and then right back to the tent. Then we laid down and stayed awake. Maybe 30 min later or I don’t know how long, we heard the giraffes coming back.

Sloooow, heavy steps.. thuds, coming closer.. “tup… tup… tup… tup…” and all around them is perfectly quiet.. and then.. right next to my head “tup..”. It made me so anxious, I had no idea if the giraffes see the tents and if they are obstacles for them so I actually (of course would’ve been useless) but I lifted my head and turned sideways on my arm, with my head up. A few more thuds and they went away. Later on, I remembered that Kennedy in Namibia told us that the steps of the elephants are practically silent and you cannot hear anything due to the pads on their feet, so it couldn’t have been an elephant anyway. These images are generated by AI but I tried to make them as close as possible to what the situation really was. It kind of worked. The rest of the night was cold but calm too.

In order to protect the black rhinos from poaching, the rangers of the Ngorongoro crater count the rhinos every single day and if a rhino attempts to climb the crater in specific locations (due to the lush jungle vegetation, it’s only possible to do so at a few places), the rangers block their way and shoo the animals back down. This allows them to better keep track of the rhinos in the area. The government wants to move the local Maasai away from the area also due to the threat of poaching – because Somali and Sudani people come to the crater and work with the Maasai local people to track and kill rhinos. On top of the crater, there is a wall with the names of many rangers and people who found their death while protecting the wildlife of the crater. It’s so sad and at the same time, I feel so happy and thankful that people like them exist.

The Maasai tribe of Tanzania

The Maasai are a tribe living in the North of Tanzania, they speak the Maa language. They are a nomadic tribe and have originally arrived from South Sudan and migrated southwards until they found the perfect conditions for their lifestyle with enough grass for their cattle to graze on in the South of Kenya and north of Tanzania. Maasai are regarded as warriors and are great at hunting and killing lions if they threaten their village and cattle. Nowadays they are not allowed to kill lions anymore, but back in the day they would throw a bow arrow at the lions and kill them this way. Approximately 50000 Maasai people live in the Ngorongoro crater. On the last day, we had a trip booked to a Maasai village. This was such an enriching and amazing experience, similarly to the Hibba village we visited. It started off with our tour guide – a sweet Maasai guy called Raphael, who would bring us around to show us the huts they live in. The village we visited, was still quite new. They only had 1 or 2 completed huts, the rest were halfway built. The huts are small and dark and sometimes split into two “rooms” where up to 3-4 people can sleep at once. Raphael showed us how they keep their cattle and explained a thing or two about their culture – for example, the Maasai tribe doesn’t drink water, only porridge during the day. They also drink cow blood. They extract the blood with a bow arrow from a cow’s vein and when they have enough, they cover the wound and let it heal OR another option is collecting the blood upon slaughter of the animal. They showed us some traditional dances in the village, like a dance they have to celebrate when a warrior kills a lion, or a dance to win over the lady you want. Some of the dances involve jumping as high as you can, the dance is called Adumu and is incredible to see and experience. They pulled us in to dance with them after they dressed us in typical Maasai clothes and gave us some necklaces and earrings. There were games like throwing a bow arrow where the arrow must poke the ground and stay like this and it was apparently difficult to do, or maybe they just pretended because i made it from the first attempt hahah 😀 I loved taking photos of the ladies in the tribe and the elderly, especially THIS gorgeous old lady, this is not my photo but i do have a photo OF and WITH her myself. We also gave them some colouring books and crayons and the ladies organized a market where we bought souvenirs, earrings and other things. I gathered everyone to take a few nice photos of them which I later sent to Raphael on instagram and he was very happy about them ^_^ Overall such an unforgettable experience!

Final Thoughts & Moments

Our last night was not in the Charity hotel, but closer to the airport, as we requested so in order not to have to wake up super early, and already knew what the traffic is like and didn’t want to stay 2h in traffic. The company booked us a great location where this beautiful lady, albeit a bit grumpy, asked if we want to order dinner as she needed to know an hour early in order to cook for us. Fill didn’t want to, but I did and this was THE BEST MEAL I’ve ever had.. ok at least for all African food i’ve ever had. Oh my god! I will never forget the taste and I’m drooling almost by only thinking about it – super tender half a chicken, soft and insanely delicious bread, African flat bread of some sort and the most delicious curry I’ve EVER had! You grab a piece of the bread and with it you hold some of the vegetables inside the curry along with the sauce. You only eat with your hands but OH MY GOD! This was soooo, sooooo, sooooooooo good! The best meal ever! And i eventually started talking to the lady and she even softened a bit. The breakfast the next morning was also great, but nothing like that dinner..

In Conclusion..

In conclusion, even though we had half the time we had in Namibia, the trip in Tanzania was so intense and so full of wildlife and so eventful that it did feel as long as the Namibian trip.

The secrets to my packing and traveling with a hand-luggage sized suitcase and a backpack for a 3-week vacation to cold and hot places at the same time are.. well, let’s see.. <<< Finish this section and upload the video >>