Day 31

Today was our first full day on safari. We had breakfast in camp and then left at about 7.15. 

Alladini had decided we would drive south for the day. Our first sighting was of a jackel followed by a group of ostriches and then a group of giraffes. 

Later we saw a herd of buffalo complete with yellow billed oxpeckers and cattle egret on their backs.

We also saw plenty of birds during the day and spent quite a bit of time with the bird books trying to correctly identify them.

At one point we were treated to a visit from a hyena who ran down the road and straight past us.

Montague’s Harrier

It was just after 9 when we saw our first kill of the trip!!......a black heron with a mouse that he eventually swallowed whole!!

At around this time Alladini commented that with so few tourists “the environment is recovering” - he was referring to the road tracks that in some places are now quite difficult to see.

Continuing on we spotted 2 lions asleep on some rocks. One was striking some great poses so we got some good photos, the other just slept under a bush.

We stopped to stretch our legs under a tree and then decided to have lunch there. We each had a lunch box with a freshly prepared meal inside - a great improvement on the old style of lunch boxes.

This afternoon delivered warthogs, gazelles, eagles, vultures, kestrels and buzzards as well as several sightings of hartebeest. 

Pigmy Falcon

Coke’s Hartebeest

Two Banded Courser

Tawny Eagle

Lappet Faced Vultures

Lesser Kestrel 

Mid afternoon we saw our second group of lions asleep on some rocks - again we got some good photos.

There were more birds including a kori bustard showing us his mating pose and a secretary bird sat on a nest. We also saw some cute bat eared fox cubs but didn’t get any decent photos.

We got back to camp about 6, showered and had dinner. The food was good again. We had had a great day.

Day 30

 So today we started our safari. For anyone interested I will just give a few details about our booking process. 

We have booked our safari through a Tour Operator called e-Trip Africa. Once we arrived in Tanzania we contacted 7 Tour Operators with offices in either Arusha or Mwanza, to get quotes for a 10 day safari. Most came back with a similar price apart from one that was a lot more expensive and one who failed to reply. However we found the level of accommodation offered in the quotes did vary quite a lot. To be fair I am sure any of these companies could have arranged a great trip for us, however whilst the price we got from Ben at e-Trip was mid range his response offered the most useful information, it had clearly been written specifically with our trip in mind, rather than just a “cut and paste” reply. 

Having chosen to do our safari with e-Trip we then worked with Ben to fine tune our safari. He contacted a variety of lodges/camps for us and negotiated some very good discounts and so we are now booked to stay at some places we would never normally expect to be able to afford. In the end his final price for our trip is now cheaper than anything we were offered by any other Tour Operator we contacted. 

So on to the safari itself.

This morning we had our breakfast and said goodbye to Robert. Alladini picked us up 8 am and we were off. On the way he told us that he thought it better to drive outside the Serengeti to the Ikoma Gate and enter the park there rather than enter at the nearby Ndabaka Gate. This would allow us to cover more miles quickly and so give us more time for some leisurely game viewing  once in the park and still allow us time to get to our lodge in time for lunch.

This all worked well and we reached Ikoma gate by about 10.45. The park office was very quiet as was the car park so Alladini quickly completed the paper work and our “safari proper” began.

Our first sightings included elephants, warthogs, a lone giraffe, topi with a baby, impala, hippos, crocodile, grant’s gazelle, waterbuck and of course lots of birds. I will not include pictures of all the birds and animals we see as this would make my blog entries very long but I will add a few each day. I will perhaps make a separate album of all the birds at a later date.

Dark Chanting Goshawk

At about 1pm we arrived at Matawi Serengeti Camp which will be our home for the next three nights. We were met by Otto, the camp manager who took our temperature and asked us to sanitise our hands. We were then offered a fruit juice by Glory, one of the camp staff. Otto gave us some information about the camp and showed us to our room, which is massive and nicely furnished and has a lovely view.

Lunch was just the 2 of us and was served in the dining room. We will be joined by 2 other guests tonight.

After lunch we settled into our room and spent a bit of time sat on our balcony.

We met up with Alladini again at 4pm. This afternoon we saw more elephants, ostriches, buffalo, birds and a pride of lions eating a buffalo they had killed earlier. 

Red Billed Hornbill

Black Shouldered Kite

Northern Crowned Shrike

White  Headed Buffalo Weaver

We got back to camp just before the heavens opened. We just had time for a quick shower before dinner. The shower was hot and had good pressure, just what we wanted.

Dinner gave us our first taste of more cosmopolitan food for quite a few weeks. We started with soup which was lovely (safari camps always seem to serve amazing soups), followed by beef stroganoff with rice and vegetables and then creme caramel. It was all lovely.

A great start to our safari