After an 8 hour flight from London we arrive at Nairobi. A great airport, many shops here to stroll around. We are taken to the Holiday Inn which is a fantastic hotel, with great food, and spend 1 night here. Then we drive to Arusha, Tanzania.
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Changed vehicles at Arusha for our safari vehicle & driver. Had a long drive on unmade roads to our safari hotel, Serena at Lake Manyara. The rooms are very good, pool setting beautiful (an infinity pool), food excellent & staff cannot do enough for you. Get up at dawn, have a dip in the pool & take pictures of the sunrise. After breakfast we are off with our guide Abraham. Have a guided walk in the hills with a Masai warrior who told us about the trees & shrubs & how they were used by the medicine men. After lunch, taken on the verandah looking down into the Rift Valley & views over Lake Manyara, we entered the National Park. The animals we saw were plentiful - baboon, giraffe, zebra, impala, dic dic, hippo, elephant, lion, knu, warthog, buffalo. This is what we came to Tanzania for! Another long drive on unmade roads (this is the worst part of the holiday - very bumpy and dusty)! Staying in the Sopa Lodge - another fantastic hotel. The views from our room are brilliant. It started to rain whilst we were having lunch - they have come early! It had stopped when we set off in the bus on safari, we were out for 3 hours but didn't see much in the way of game, perhaps they don't like it being wet? We did see some giraffe, water buffalo, hyena. jackal & eagle. The next day was much more exciting. A pride of lions sleeping with full bellies right on the side of the track! Then somebody saw a cheetah on the move in the grass. Abraham took us to a great vantage point, a hummock of grass. 3 in all, mother & 2 young & they all headed for & sat on the hummock. What beautiful animals they are. We saw a lot of game today. After lunch, had at the visitor centre, we were onto the cheetahs & the lions we had seen earlier - got some great shots of mother crossing the track in front of us. A very long bumpy drive, by far the worst journey. Stopped for lunch at Olduvia Gorge where some of the oldest human remains were discovered.
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Bull elephant - Ngorongoro Crater
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We stopped at a Masai village & for a fee were welcomed by the chief who gave us a tour. We watched the men doing their distinctive 'jump' dancing (the highest jumper wins the wife), were introduced to the women for photos, were led into one of the huts where the chief explained their way of life to us & we asked him questions too. Finally we were shown the school where the children sang us some songs. What an eye opener for us, we really do live a sheltered life! We finally arrive at Ngorongoro Sopa Lodge, thank goodness. I don't think any of us could have travelled any further. The hotel was super. The views from the bay windows of our room overlooked the volcanic crater, 20km wide with 600m high walls. We had a full day safari down in the crater & we were quite disappointed as we didn't see any cats! We did see a black rhino but he was quite a long way off & even on full zoom the pictures were poor. We did see quite a lot of the other animals - hippo, elephant, zebra,
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| What's really great: |
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antelope, gnu, jackal - so it wasn't completely useless. Of the 3 reserves this was the most disappointing, although the crater itself is spectacular. We were escorted to our rooms at night by security and we found out why. They pointed out a very large water buffalo grazing near the rooms! When we got to our room & looked out of the window there was a family of buffalo just outside! Fantastic.
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Hyena - Ngorongoro Crater
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We went to the railway museum in Nairobi. We took a taxi (agreed the fare before we got in) and the driver waited for us whilst we were there. The rolling stock and engines outside were not in really good order, but interesting none the less. The museum inside was much better, very interesting, a lot of history given, many artifacts. There was a large tin roofed building alongside the museum, and we could hear loud music and chanting coming from within, apparently it was a religious service in progress.
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| Accommodations: |
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Warthog - Ngorongoro Crater
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All the hotels we stayed in were very good, the locations were out of this world, the staff couldn't do enough for us, the food was exemplary. This was the 1st holiday (3rd world) that we didn't suffer stomach problems! So they must be doing something right over here.
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The bar at the Holiday Inn was okay, although the staff tried to shut up shop, before we were ready to retire! We soon put matters right in that respect!
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The 2 restaurants at the Holiday Inn Mayfair Court, where we stayed were excellent. One was an American styled fast food outlet, but the quality and service were excellent. The other one was the usual hotel retaurant, giving buffet meals, again very good quality, and the service was excellent.
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Published on Sunday October 31th, 2004
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Publish on Facebook
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Wed, Nov 17 2004 - 10:27 AM
 by bineba
You were so lucky to see cheetahs & lions. We went to South Africa and all the big cats kept out of our way.
Good report.
Sabine |
Tue, Nov 09 2004 - 08:22 PM
by picasso
Wonderful very informative with awesome images
Keep it up *****
Boris
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Mon, Nov 01 2004 - 02:43 AM
by ravinderkumarsi
hiii dave,
excellent report and nice to read .
very nice pictures too.
ravi |
Sun, Oct 31 2004 - 04:24 PM
 by rangutan
| See, reports work out well also without pictures. Great descriptions. |
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