Tanzania - More Safari and beautiful nature

We spent around 10 days in Tanzania, and 6 of them were spent in different nationalparks doing safari. First stop on the safari was Tarangire that is know for the Baobab trees and huge groups of elephants, which we were lucky to see:

Enjoying some food )

You can see how close the elephants got to the car, it was amazing !

One of the bigger groups we saw, but what you can't see on the photo is that there were something like 100 elephants around in that small area.

Alberte and I enjoying the view from the car.

Baboons cleaning eachother's skin...

...also the albino baboon had the lise eaten directly from the skin

 

Next stop was Lake Manyara, a place where lions are known for climbing in trees, but we weren't lucky enough to see that. But we saw some other amazing animals:

 

The hippos enjoyed laying around doing very little, and around them were thousands of birds.

Enjoying the view from a safe distance

The first blue monkey we saw

Enjoying our lunchbox

At the hotel they had a small band and some dancers in the evening, I tried to keep up, but to be honest, black women can shake like nobody else :p

 

We had a couple of days in Serengeti, we stayed at a great hotel and we saw even more animals. I think our driver liked to show us the lions, or at least we saw a lot of them there:

 

We just enteres the park, and we were lucky to see a beautiful cheetah

A lazy lion in the grass

...but a car almost hit it, so it had to move.

More lions...

...very skinny ones, they might have been very hungry

Dik-dik

Giraffe eating some bushes. We hoped it would drink from the waterhole, but we weren't that Lucky.

Goodmorning to the early gamedrive

Hippos fighting in the water early in morning

 

Zebras everywhere, going for the waterhole

 

In the evening more danicing at another hotel, quite fun :D

 

Last safaristop was Ngorongoro crater, amazing views. I think the scenery was even better than seeing the animals there:

Th view over the crater from the hotel, not bad at all.

In the morning at the safari in the crater it was quite cold, a little bit too much for the old man.

Ugandan crane

Alberte enjoying the great view

the three of us enjoyng the view from the hotel

enjoying the sun in the lunchbreak

Last peak of the crater before we had to go back. That was the end of safari for this trip.

 

The last 2 days in Tanzania were spent in Moshi near Kilimanjaro. We were lucky enough to see the top of the mountain one of the days. On dad's birthday we had a so called cultural tour, interesting enough:

 

The top of Kilimanjaro

The very beautiful 80 m waterfall we saw

We had great coffee at the young guide's house, here he is roasting the beans.

We also tried banana beer, both this one and a homemade one, I am not really sure it is something I could enjoy drinking

After an extremely chaotic and long road we finally reached the hot springs, and it was great, worth the wait !

 

Now we are back in Kenya, at the coast in Mombassa. No more safaris or other planned trips, just enjoying the beach and the great weather for the last week of the vacation.







Kenya - Lake Nakuru, Lake Naivasha, Mt Longonot and Masai Mara

Life in Africa is good! We have been here for a week and a half and we have already seen so many things. We have been on an 8 day safari where we went to a lot of different places. First stop was Lake Nakuru, here we had our first safari and we were so lucky to see some cool animals:

Buffalo

Rhino

Python snake

Baboon eating the snacks that it had stolen from a car

Tracey, Alberte and I lookng out of the jeep looking at animals

Next stop on the trip was Lake Naivasha, where we went on a boat safari. It was really crazy how close we could get to the hippos. After the trip I asked the guide if the boats were ever tipped over by the animals, and he said "Oh yes, many people have died here", I am so happy I asked that after and not before the trip:

 

Hippos taking a nap in the water

 

Pelican showing off for us

African Fish-Eagle

 

Riding and biking was also part of the program at Lake Naivasha. First was biking and exploring Hell's gate nationalpark:

 

 

Later the riding in another part of the park:

 

 

 

Climbing Mount Longonot was tough, mostly because I had troubles breathing, but the view on the top of the vulcano was great:

 



 

Pretty dirty after the climb

 

After climbing we went directly to a masaicamp where we were gonna live with the masai for almost 2 days, walking, exploring the nature and learning about their culture. We were prepared for a bit of a tourist trap, but happily it wasn't like that at all, it was very relaxed, and the masai people were very nice and down to earth. It was very interesting, but we hadn't had a shower after climbing mt Longonot, so we felt pretty disgusting, and we could only wash our hands once while being with the masais:

They were making a bbq from the sheep they had just slaughtered. Here are the legs and the liver on sticks over the fire, and a soup made from lungs, stomach and other stuff from the sheep.

Walking masaimen

We tried to use the bow and arrow

On the right side you can se how they wrap their earflip around the rest of the ear when they are not using jewellery in their very huge holes in the ears.

Our guide and driver, Sam, trying on the male-lion-mane-hat.

Masai children in the village

 

The last stop on our tour was Masai Mara, a huge nationalpark with so many animals everywhere and a beautiful scenery. We completed the big five (rhino, elephant, buffalo, leopard and lion), saw a lot of other animals and enjoyed the time we had driving around in the nationalpark:

 

 

Ostrich

Topi

Leopard

Very cute baby lions

A big group of elephants and their babies

Sam's mudhole, I was pretty impressed that we didn't get stuck here.

Beautiful zebras

Cheetah

Some of the many curious giraffes we have seen

Enjoying the view

A young male lion came really close to the car.

Our car

Alberte enjoying her lunch after some hours of safari.



 

Tomorrow we are leaving for Tanzania, more safari and other interesting adventures. Hope you're all enoying your summer :D