As already mentioned, Andreas was still sipping his beer with pleasure, the long-awaited shower already in his mind’s eye, when Mel revealed that today’s accommodation had to be cancelled, as we would be picked up by a shuttle in Moshi in half an hour to go to Arusha that same evening. We were picked up by Andrew and after almost 2 hours we reached our destination in Arusha. We clarified all formalities and paid for the upcoming tour. As the kitchen was already closed, we each had 2 beers and watched the hustle and bustle around the bus station from the balcony – lots of noise, hectic activity and a fight included. Also interesting to see was a house diagonally opposite that had been built on the roof of a house.

Day 1 – Transit and Tarangire National Park – A crazy team

As usual, with a slight delay, our driver and guide Douglas picked us up from our hotel the next morning. By the way, we had been referred to another provider the day before because the tour with our actual provider could not take place. Of the other planned passengers (3 Polish), one had tested positive for Corona and now all 3 were stuck in Poland. So we got into a new group and there were now six of us in total. First, we picked up Henrique (Henry) – a slightly older Spaniard who lives in India during winter. He is a super relaxed, lovely guy who had a lot to talk about and is well known in India with his own band. Afterwards, we picked up the other fellow travellers from the “international” Arusha airport (with an enormous delay) – a rather loud group of 3 girls who had somehow found each other by chance: Winita (Chinese, who lives in Switzerland and is 105 years old according to her own statement, owns a dance school), Jasmin (Swiss, 33 … the loudest of all three, singer and CEO of a street food company (Galileo already reported about her and the most expensive hot dog in the world created by her)) and Andu (born in Madagascar and emigrated to France at 16, now 31 years old and data analyst). During our tour together we had the opportunity to get to know each other a little better.

The first thing we noticed at the gate of Tarangire National Park was that it was getting a bit more touristy again. About 30 safari jeeps lined up next to us in front of the gate and Russians were swarming everywhere. The park was really beautiful and again we saw quite a few animals in the wild – it was always a treat to see how the animals behave when they are not caged in a zoo. We saw loads of zebras, giraffes and elephants, which caused astonished exclamations from our fellow travellers – for all 4 of them it was their first game drive. This was only interrupted by our picnic with deliciously filled lunch boxes and a Kilimanjaro beer from the can. Andu lost her banana to a cheeky monkey who snuck up, jumped on the table, grabbed the banana and was gone in a flash – Douglas had warned us.

Our accommodation today was a lodge near the Tarangire National Park, which we reached about 6 pm – road conditions and distances are somewhat different in Africa than in Europe. We had dinner together and chatted for half an eternity about God and the world. Winita turned out to be a hardliner when it comes to conspiracy theories about Corona and the use of 5G as a weapon against the population, but she was still very sympathetic.

Day 2 – Heading to the Serengeti – Advanced Camping

After we had repacked our luggage again the next morning and had to leave most of it at the lodge, space had to be made for all the camping equipment, we started on our way into the Serengeti – the highlight of the whole tour. We were now also accompanied by Alid, our cook for the next few days. A master at the gas cooker and a funny guy.

  • A first look into the Ngorongoro Crater

The way was quite long and we had to pass the Ngorongoro Crater before reaching the Serengeti, which we would visit again at the end of our tour. Between the crater and the beginning of the Serengeti we took our lunch break and met a German couple with children – Andreas had already recognised the husband’s blue and yellow Lok Leipzig jersey at a distance of several hundred metres. We talked for a while until Douglas called several times for us to leave. Around 17:30 we reached our campsite and in no time the car was unloaded and the tents were set up. Henry only realised now that we would really be sleeping in normal tents in the middle of the Serengeti – without a fence around the campsite. On the spur of the moment, he had Douglas drive him to a lodge to sleep there – leaving us with one more beer to share between the remaining people. The crazy, loud team entertained the whole place and the kitchen while we helped Alid cook, sang, danced and listened to loud music. Not all campsite residents were pleased with this and we sometimes earned “stares”. One of the cooks could read the following from his face when he saw Jasmin cooking: “Great … now these white people are already taking away our jobs in the kitchen”. The majority, however, were happy about our colourful bunch and joined in every bit of fun.

After dinner we saw that we really were in the middle of nature – a hyena had ventured into the middle of the camp and was looking for food by the kitchen, not even 5m away from us. Just as quickly as she had appeared, she disappeared again into the darkness of the night as more people approached. At night, hyenas and lions could be heard roaming around. Although Andreas had allowed himself a joke with the 3 ladies of the neighbouring tent – he played hyena noises and scratched at the tent – everyone slept wonderfully that night.

Day 3 – Serengeti – Cats everywhere

After a quick breakfast, we set off on our morning game drive. Douglas had brought Henry back to our group from his external sleeping place and we were thus complete again. The sun had risen only a short time before and the light was simply breathtaking.

While Douglas was on the lookout for the first animals, it wasn’t long before we were to be insanely lucky (once again). Directly in front of us on the road, a pride of lions had made themselves comfortable – females, males and cubs seemed well-fed and therefore did not let us and our vehicles upset them at all (distance sometimes only one metre). We stayed for about half an hour and watched every single step of these beautiful animals, who felt a certain arrogance or rather a grandeur in their entire manner. A little later we saw elephants, giraffes, wildebeest (here called Wild Beast), cheetahs and a leopard again.

After a longer stay at a hippo pool with a lot of hippos, where there was a lot of “action” due to territorial disputes, we unfortunately had to leave again at around 11:30 in the direction of the camp. At times the ride was extremely bumpy and at one particularly difficult spot we almost got stuck – Douglas skilfully got our huge Toyota Land Cruiser out of this situation. After our lunch, we left our camp for our next campsite at the Ngorongoro Crater. On the way there, we again passed the endless expanses of the Serengeti, where we could see millions of wildebeest and thousands of zebra – it was the time of the small migration of these animals to the southern part of the Serengeti (coming from the Masai Mara in Kenya). The sight was breathtaking and even a hyena posed for us to say goodbye.

When we arrived at the campsite, our tents from the day before were already set up – we had no idea how Douglas and Alid had performed this magic trick. We had a very good dinner – including a punch that Jasmin had prepared from fresh fruit, the very sweet white wine (which we had already “enjoyed” the night before) and a bottle of Konyaki (a kind of high-proof local gin). Even Douglas and Alid were thrilled and after dinner, we talked for ages with Douglas educating us slightly drunk about his and the Masai culture, weddings and other customs (including circumcisions and changes of the over 150 tribes in Tanzania). Again and again there was a slight shaking of heads on both sides – this was just 2 totally different cultures meeting. The atmosphere was nevertheless very relaxed, friendly and interested. For a while we were tied to the kitchen anyway, as buffalo (very dangerous – responsible for the second most deaths in Africa) ran across the campsite and if we needed anything from the tent we were only allowed to walk the 10m to our tent escorted by a ranger with a strong torch and AK-47. Even at night we could hear the buffaloes close by.

Day 4 – Ngorongoro Crater – A very rare find

Unfortunately, the last day started with a small accident after breakfast. Mel had unfortunately not paid attention to the floor when leaving the kitchen. There was a drainage channel about 30 cm deep, covered with a metal grid. Unfortunately, there was such a wide gap in said grid that she stepped into it and cut her leg a little on the metal. Douglas, Alid and Andreas were immediately on the spot to clean the wound and apply a first bandage.

  • On the crater rim

After this shock, we drove towards the crater rim to enter the crater from there, 600m deep. The weather was very cloudy and humid, so Andreas now became the rooftop engineer for the day, “allowed” to open and close the pop-up roof of the Land Cruiser every half hour. In the process, he once got the skin of his hand so caught in the metal hinge that he now also had a bleeding wound on his hand – this was probably our “special” day. During a short break at a small lake, which was full of hippos, “Dr.” Henry again around Mel’s leg – new bandage, ointment and cream (he was well equipped to avoid infections).

  • After the “emergency operation” there are further instructions directly

Besides the already familiar elephants, which we could once again look at very closely, we saw a hyena with “fresh” prey and 2 lazy, sleeping lions. At the end of our tour in the crater, we saw another special feature in the very far distance, which is really rare to find. We saw 2 black rhinos. These are very rare and live mostly hidden – they are black because they feed exclusively on certain leaves and not on grass. With this highlight, we left the crater – back to the lodge of the first overnight stay to pick up our luggage and then drive back to Arusha, where we still exchanged phone numbers with Henry and Winita and afterwards enjoyed a shower and a hot meal with a cold beer. Once again, the coming night was to be very short.