Tanzania - Part 2 - The highs and lows...

From our little 'holiday' style break on Zanzibar we headed north to Tanzania's 'adventure gateway'. After a long journey by bus, ferry and then another mega 10 hour bus we finally arrived in the beautiful Arusha, where we were met with
cooler, more tolerable weather - hooray! Surprisingly, we bumped into two
lovely Aussie girls Fleur and Jess - one who we know from home - and
went out for a mega BBQ feast... we were loving Arusha already!! The girls
also happened to be heading out on the same Northern Safari circuit- Yay, some
friends!



Day 1 - The next day we set off on our five day camping Safari of Lake Manyara, the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crate. We started the trip in Lake Manyara which was an incredibly beautiful and lush National Park - full to the brim of animals and close encounters. The animal highlight of the day for my mature husband was definately
the hundreds of Vervet monkeys we saw. John did not love these monkeys because they were little and cute though; he loved them because they had fluro blue testicles!! The result being that we now have at least 50 photos of blue monkeys balls - awesome!!! We spent our first night camping under the incredible African sky - which truly appears to have a gazillion more stars than the rest of the world and bizarrely also a week long full moon - What a great start!


Day 2 - We set off with our safari buddies David (England), Coti and Andreas (Chile) to the famous Serengeti National Park with high hopes of seeing the Big Five - Lion, Leopard, Rhino, Water Buffalo and Elephant. We were in the park for all of 20 minutes when we saw a pride of about 30 sun-bathing lions (Tick 1!) lazily lounging over an outcrop of rocks with two huge alpha males manning the fort. The lions kept
increasing in numbers appearing out of nowhere with zero concern for our 4WD, some even rubbed against the tyres as they passed by. We were no doubt off to an ncredible
start in the Serengeti!



Further into our first drive we were gobsmacked to also see a leopard (Tick 2!) lounging in a tree and a huge overflowing hippo pool. In addition to this we also saw an abundance of giraffes, elephants (Tick 3!), wildebeest, water buffalo (Tick 4!), monkeys and zebra - Unfortunately, they barely rated a mention as they're so common to the guides, but to us they were still awesome! After a great intro-drive we headed back to our picturesque camp spot for sunset over a warm fire, an amazing dinner and some great camp-banter!

Day 3 - After our incredible start we were pretty relaxed about the possibility of a slower morning. However, our guide Andrew who became know as 'Eagle-eyes' (to our group and many others) continued to spot lions, hyenas AND a family of cheetahs!! A mum and her 4 cubs posed and played as we excitedly snapped up photo's and listened to them pur as they strolled past the 4WD - What a beautiful animal!




Rolling on in a post-excitement daze, we were pretty surprised when our guide turned off road driving a million miles an hour (whiplash) because he thought he could see a male lion in the
distance. Sure enough ol' Eagle-eyes had done it again and we arrived to see a huge male lion carrying and chowing down on a freshly killed wildebeest - Luck was really on our side! We watched closely as the lion tore into the wilderbeest only coming up to show off his blood soaked mane - David Attenborogh eat your wilderbeest heart but! This opened our eyes to our next goal - To witness a LIVE kill. This was largely led by John who was OBSESSED by lions and couldn't wait to see one take something, anything, out. Johnny couldn't stop referring to his Animal Planet DVD's, much to the irritation of the rest of the group!

Day 4 - Up before the sun we set off for the last day in the Serengeti. After a slow start (we weren't concerned as Day 3 turned out pretty good!) we came across a group of female lions stalking several Zebra across the park. In actual fact there were a few potential kills going on around us with various prides on the prowl in our vicinity. After watching several failed attempts patiently, we noticed one female lion separate from the group cross in front of our car and mark out a lone wildebeest (known as dumb-ass). Accordingly, the wildebeest noticed the single lion closing and decided to run away all of 50-100m - Ha! Without and hesitation the wildebeest completely forgot the impending DOOM and began eating the grass! Moving forward slowly, crouching when the wildebeest popped its head up, the lion stalked close enough to count hairs and jumped on the wildebeests back, bringing it down in one slick move. As the beest rolled and kicked the lion tore into his jugular and suddenly it was... over!

The lioness only fed momentarily before it then went off to gather the rest of the pride, to share in the kill. Within half an hour she had returned with about 10 more lions and 5 or so cubs, where they all fed together for the sunday roast! Smeared blood up to their eyeballs, caked claws and the sound of flesh ripping - talk about the circle of life! (MEGA TICK!!)

Shortly after the kill we left the Serengeti fully satisfied and headed to Olduvai Gorge where the first upright walking Humanid remains were found, from over 1.75 Million years ago! The evolution theory thickens...

Day 5 - With such an amazing safari to date we became a pretty stubborn group! Giraffe, elephants, impala etc. didn't really tickle our fancy much anymore, but we were still on the hunt for the very rare black rhino. We headed to Ngorongoro crater for our last night and stayed at truly amazing campsite at the rim of the Crater. This is noteworthy not just because it was probably the most beautiful place to camp in the world but also because our campsite was invaded by elephants, much to the delight of all the campers and terror of the guides. The elephants came to drink out of the water tank and were literally 1 metre away from about 100 stunned campers. It created quite the stir however, in the middle of the night the camp saw further invading bush pigs (pumba) and water buffalo terrorising tents, 4WD's and beer cans! Luckily we had 2 armed guards with their AK47's, ready to protect us... if only they were awake!

In the morning we rose for our last game drive in the crater which was very beautiful. However, there wasn't a great deal of wildlife about. Fortunately though, we did spot a few black rhinos therefore completing our BIG FIVE!! They weren't necesserily at close range (500m?) but a spotting is a spotting whether you're using binoculars or not.

Overall our second safari experience was wonderful and we feel very lucky to see what we did and share the time with a great crew!


Kilimanjaro - 6 Days of Torture and turmoil!

After a few relaxing days back in Arusha and sad farewells to our Safari buddies, our attentions diverted to mega challenge of getting to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro; Africa's highest mountain. After reuniting with our Canadian buddies from Egypt, Kayla and Erica, we set off for the Mega Trek along the famed Machame route and with our new group name - Team Beavaroo.

Day one was awesome and we were all pretty confident despite the freezing night time temperatures and lopsided camp spots. We had enjoyed a 6 hour walk through rain forest with little feeling of altiude and arrived at camp (3000m).

Day two proved to be more difficult, particularly for me (Ren) as I had a head cold that was making it pretty difficult to breathe at 3800m. We had to trek for 7 hours straight up hill in the blazing heat. The day ended in vomiting and fear of what was still to come - It was evident that our tour companies hourly estimates were quoted in Swahili time. The general rule was double what they said!


On day three the tides turned and I was feeling surprisingly better, however Johnny was now starting to feel the symptoms of altitude sickness and getting worse and worse as we went higher. He had also mismanaged his sleeping bag the previous night and was unable to do it up leaving him with a bit of a chill. The 'walk' turned out to be a punishing 9 hour day climbing up (to 4200m) and down before finally settling at 3950m. We retired to bed early hoping tomorrow would bring better things.


Day 4 started out OK, but it was really where our serious problems began. After literally scaling the a cliff face of a 200-300m and hiking up and down hundreds of meters in the sleeting rain and hail we realised that we were only really half way to our destination! F$%king guides and there 'times'! The day just wore us down and the idea of summitting was getting further away in our minds. It became the most soul destroying day of hiking ever imaginable and with every passing hour John was getting worse. By the time we finally reached our camp site we were drenched to within an inch of our lives and freezing our butts off! The point of this final camp at 4700m was to sleep in the afternoon until 12pm and then get up to start a 5-6 hour summit to the top. It didn't look like things were going to move forward.


At about 8.00pm Johnny started to become delirious with a pounding migraine, which meant he could not see or piss straight. After doping up on all the Panadol and drugs we could lay our hands on things rapidly declined. By midnight the summit was a forgone dream: John's temperature was way too high, he was incoherent and yelling and basically unable to stand on his own two feet... Hmmm?

At 4am the diagnosis was made that John had acute mountain/altitude sickness and needed to be taken down immediately. It was -5 degrees and everything we had was sopping wet from the day before but, 'Operation Rescue John' came into effect. At this stage I asked what our "emergency rescue fees" actually covered (I.E helicopter, 4WD?). Our guide turned to me with great concern and said "Mrs John, I'm very sorry but we do not have a helicopter. BUT, we do have a basket with a wheel on it that we could put him inside... however, sometimes people fall out and get very hurt....." Shit! By the time we had got Johnny dressed (someone had to tie his shoes and zip his jacket) and I had packed our rucksack, we were on the road to go at 4.30am. Whilst mentally patting myself on the back for my crisis management skills and for organising a stellar rescue mission/team, I stood up to the lead the group down the mountain and then.... passed out from hunger! I awoke further down the mountain on the back for porter enjoying the worlds most scenic piggy-back ride! It was obviously going to be a very long day.

After 8 hours walking we finally reached the town of Moshi to be carted back to Arush. Thank the lord! John refused a trip to the hospital and we went instead went to have our first meal in 2 days! It is really only now that he is fully back to normal - or back to being himself at least!

As this is written it is the eve of our volunteer work in Kenya. We are both nervous and excited about the next few months of work and all that it will encompass.. We now know that we will be placed at an IDP Camp at Gil Gil, Kenya, a town about 2.5 hours out of Nairobi. Our camp is home to about 400 people who suffered extreme atrocities and hardships as a result of the 2007 inter-tribal political clashes following the federal election. From these clashed they were made homeless and are now trying to rebuild a new community free from trouble and the memories of the past. Our camp has no electricity or running water, so we may be less frequent with our contact and showers. But, we will still keep you posted on our weekend excursions out of the camp. We are really pumped to meet our new "family" too.

Til next time - thanks for reading.....

Love Ren and Johnny Mac