It's time for Safari! (Tanzania)

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It’s safari day!
After a lot of back and forth about wether or not I should do a safari I decided I would join Jay and his girlfriend in their safari to Tarangire, Ngorongoro, and Lake Manyara!

Day 1

My friend Julia and I woke up extra early to make sure we would be ready by 8:20am and still had time to go for a quick store run to get some Savannah Dry (cider) for the safari.

After breakfast I went out for the store run but this is Tanzania and everything is “pole pole” (slowly slowly) and the store was, of course, not open. This pole pole thing is really getting on my nerves, they have never heard of effectiveness in this country! Everything takes five times the amount of time needed… absolutely everything!

At around 8:45 we got picked up by our safari guide and driver, Hans, and we headed over our first park: Tarangire.

Hans being Hans!

Looks like Julia is ready!

The drive there was actually nice; we drove on a paved two way highway and on the sides we could see a lot of Masai people walking their cows and goats. We even saw a couple of Masai teenage boys wearing black paint with white stripes on their faces and Hans told us that they had just been circumcised and that for a month they live in the wild until they can go back to their village.

A boy before and after our truck went by! haha

We arrived at Tarangire after a two hour drive and at the gate we all had to get out of the car. We each had to go to the office and register so they could have a count of how many people entered the park… Why don’t they figure it out with the number of tickets sold? Most things in Tanzania are a mystery to me!

Hans had to go and buy the tickets and guess what? Pole, Pole, Pole, Pole, and more freaking pole! Tanzanians are like 100 years behind on how to deal with customers and how effectively do things. Hans told us it would take maybe an hour but luckily it took only like 40 minutes and we were ready (but in reality it shouldn’t take more than 10minutes to get tickets and permits!)

We got a new driver!

At last we were ready! Hans opened the top of the truck so we could stand and see animals! Yeay! So exciting!

The safari started with your standard gazelles, exciting for about only the first time! We kept driving and saw a lot of beautiful baobab trees which I think are super cool looking, like an electrocuted tree!

Baobabs everywhere!

Gazelles

Then things started to get a get a little more interesting, we found beautiful zebras, which are probably my favorite animal.

And then I saw an animal I have never seen before… wildebeest! These are the animals that killed Mufasa in the Lion King! They were super cool looking with their horns and white beards. Hans told us that wildebeest pee 40 tons a day and poop 4 tons a day, that’s a very high number for one type of animal. Can’t even imagine what the number would come to from elephants in Tarangire!

The drove continues and we stopped by a water pond where some zebras were and far away we noticed an elephant and Hans said he was coming towards the water to have a drink so we waited. He was a fast elephant, rather quickly this grey blob moving through the trees became clearer and clearer and Hans was right, he came, drank some water and quickly left. I think we were rather disappointed as how quickly he vanished, I had built it up in my head that he would drink and play in the water but that didn’t happen.

Later in the day some other elephants did make up for the first elephant water disappointment; these elephants gave us a full mud show! It was probably the highlight of my day, especially the baby who rolled in the mud with its mom, it really looked like they were having the best time!

My favorite photo! Baby looks so happy!

Our first sight of a giraffe was rather cool and easily missed, she (or he, but I tend to think all giraffes are girls, maybe because I think they are all so pretty! haha) was sitting on the grass with her tall elongated neck looking all cool! From there we managed to see many giraffes, and even one on the side of the road on the way to the lodge.

During our 6-7 hour safari we were able to see many smaller animals but somehow we all got excited at the sight of pumbas (aka warthogs) which are Hans favorite animals. He said that he has much respect from warthogs since the one time that he saw one tricking a lion (well, a lioness since they are the ones who do the chasing) by running and going in zig zags and escaping the lioness.

Before getting to the lodge we stopped at a viewpoint to admire the view of beautiful lake manyara.

After a whole day of animal spotting we finally made it to our lodge, Haven Nature. We got the tents as our accommodation and we were pleasantly surprised as how nice it was with beds inside and the bathrooms were clean and the showers had hot water and amazing water pressure… perfect for washing all the safari dirt!

At Haven Nature we met with our cook, “Godson”, who had come all the way from Arusha in a dala dala carrying all our food! He was definitely god sent as we were starving and he prepared a delicious meal for us!.

DAY 2

Really early wake up call, by 6am we were all in the safari truck and ready to go see some animals!

We headed to Ngorongoro conservation, home of many animals and the masai! The place is called conservation instead of park because it is a conservation center, conserving nature and the Masai community. I thought we would see Masai walking around the crater but that didn’t happen.

After an hour and a half or so of driving we finally arrived in Ngorongoro gate and of course we had to get out and do the whole ticket purchasing thing so we went inside the tourist center and read about the animals inside Ngorongoro.

Once Hans was ready we got on back into the truck and drove into a very bumpy dirt road. On our way up it was very very foggy but we still managed to see our first buffalo, and Hans added “don’t worry you’ll see many of them today” and we kept driving.

After a while we got to yet another gate and Hans had to do whatever paperwork was needed to get the truck into the crater. The view was pretty great down to the crater, i could see a small road doing down and the safari trucks going down.

By then it was 9am and we were starving so before heading down the crater we had the breakfast that Godson had prepared for us.

On our way down to the crater we saw our first set of lionesses! I was disappointed because they sleeping and laying down and I wanted the guys to experience a lion awake and see their face but it was still exciting.

Ngorongoro has a population of about 200 lions and by the end of the day we had seen at least 30 of them, meaning that we got to see about 30% of the lions in Ngorongoro… pretty cool.

Lioness sleeping!

You can hardly find them within the yellow grass!

My favorite part of the day was when we were driving to where another 2 trucks were looking at two male lions and all of a sudden I saw a lion head get up and then go back to sleep. I told Hans to stop and backup and we were able to watch the lion on our own for a while, so cool!

Fun fact that I didn’t know… Lions mate 80 times a day for 3 three weeks, they are in what they call “the honey moon period.” Lions do nothing but mate all day! It sounds exhausting and no fun at all! They go without hunting or eating for that long. If you ask me… I would for sure pick a nice meal over mating every 15 minutes for 3 weeks!

We were lucky to find a mating couple!!! We stayed there and watched the action. The lions would be laying down and then the lioness would stand up and walk around meaning that she was ready and the lion would come and do his thing for exactly 2-3 seconds and then they would lay down again… I would definitely pick a meal over that poor action!

Lion and Lioness

The landscape of Ngorongoro was so different than Tarangire and it was kind of crazy to think that we were driving inside the crater! so super cool!
The scenery was literally like what we were shown by Disney in the Lion King and thanks to Micky we were able to listen to some of songs of the soundtrack while we watched the animals, it was really funny!

All animals eating!

What was left of a Buffalo!

Our lunch spot was awesome, overlooking a pond!

On day two we were lucky to see a Rhino from far away (for like 5 minutes) and once again lots of zebras, gazelles, pumbas, and wildebeest.

And Asians with crazy lenses!

We also found some birds:

And a hyena.

And… my favorites (just like the zebras).. HIPPOS! They look so cute and cool!

The 2nd day was even more majestic than day one, such a highlight and a place not to miss in Tanzania.
Before heading back to the camp we stopped for a nice view of the crater.

DAY 3

By day three I was extremely tired and was already feeling like I had seen enough but I still had to power through lake manyara. We arrived at the gate and Hans went to do his thing and we actually had a little tour by one of the staff. He showed us different plants, the tree the giraffes eat from, and shared some history about lake manyara with us, I thought it was a great way to kill the time!

Note: We saw ZERO climbing Lions!

We entered lake Manyara national park and we quickly found monkeys, monkeys, monkeys, everywhere!!!

My favorite was the blue balls monkey! and the ones picking the bugs out of the babies.

We then made it to a pond and found so many birds, we saw storks, flamingos, marabú, african yakana, adada abbis, secret babies, pelicans, black heron, egyptian goose and so many other that I have no idea what they look like!

Then we went to the hippo pool, where you can get off the truck and walk into a platform to see the hippos. Unfortunately the grass was tall and no hippos were there but then we got to another pond where there were some sun bathing.

In Lake Manyara was very hard to spot animals because it was part jungle with many trees and long grass which makes it easier for animals to hide and harder for us to find them.

Almost at the end of the day we stopped at the sight of one elephant munching behind the bushes and we decided to stay and see if came out of there and to our surprise within fifteen minutes more than fifteen elephants came out and cross right in front and back of our truck! It was amazing!!! They stayed within two to five meters from us and they dumped dirt on top of themselves, and some where friendly playing with each other… super cute!

Then we were finally done with our safari and it was simply amazing, we had a fun group, a great guide, and saw a ton of animals.

About Post Author

Andrea

Hi! It's me... Andrea! In 2016 I decided to drop everything and take a year to enrich my life and travel around the world. It turns out the world is just too big for 12 months! Still on the road and sharing my experience as a solo female traveler around the globe!