Tanzania part 3

This is the last post I shall put up on our African holiday as time is passing and life is slowly returning to normal, just, with other things taking their place in my consciousness , mores the pity.

As you'll see from my journal entry, I had actually worried, before the trip, that I would be bored on the game drives, how wrong can you be ?



Although trying to sketch the animals on the move was very challenging, I found it gave me an enormous buzz and made me feel much closer to the animals than taking photos did.



After spending 2 nights at the crater we moved on to the Serengeti National Park, another bone shattering 5 hours on the dirt road.



But what sights we saw along the way.


This page appears to have all the sketches done in landscape and the text in portrait, sorry about that, must have been tired.



How about this for pattern inspiration



When I got home and was able to process my pics I added small prints to the sketches to remind me how the scene had looked at the time and how close, or otherwise I had got to capturing the essence.





I think this pic of zebras being spooked at the water hole has to be my favourite shot of the holiday.



Followed closely by this one.



There were so many highlights on this trip it's very hard to say which was the best, but one of them has to be our balloon flight over the Serengeti. It was a wonderful experience, slowly drifting over the tops of the acacia trees watching the game running below us.



And our wonderful pilot who carefully landed us in a text book landing.



And best of all the flight was followed by a full English breakfast under the acacia tree in the middle of the Serengeti.



It was a sad evening when we left the Serengeti for the last time, not knowing if we'd ever come back.



It was the most amazing trip, that has left a life long impression on me and I'm so grateful to my DH for making it possible, and at the same time I'm so sorry that I was such a wimp during the previous 1 1/2 years of preparation for it. I should have trusted him that I would find it an amazing life changing experience and want to go back for more, which of course I do.

Thanks too to my wonderful children who also had to put up with my winging, but consistently gave me the courage to do it.

Tanzania part 2

It took a gruelling 5 hours to get to the Ngronogoro crater, mainly on dirt roads that were heavily covered with what felt like huge amounts of rocks and stones.







On the way we saw several Maasai villages, and having stopped to take pictures of one about half a mile away the children came running up the hill immediately they saw us, hoping for pens, sweets or money. Our guide said not to give them anything as it would encourage them for other clients he would bring there. It was heart rending though as it would have cost nothing and we'd bought sweets and pens especially.



On arriving at our safari Lodge we were rewarded with this amazing view. All the rooms faced the crater so we not only had this view from the balocony bar , but we woke up to it on the misty mornings too and were able to watch it appear as the mist dispersed.



The boys (my DH and my BIL) were champing at the bit to get down into the crater for the first game drive on the following day after our arrival but they had to wait for us girls to sample the local culture first, much to my extreme delight.

We were treated to the ceremonial dances of both the women and the men at a nearby village.



Even the little ones practice doing just what Mum does



At the time of writing my journal I had no way of printing any pics that I took so on this occasion I decided to use local PC's of the Massai, for the purpose.







This is a pic of our host who was keen to show us the beautiful beadwork his wife made to sell on these tourist visits. Needless to say I couldn't resist and shall treasure the boxes and bowls I bought, having met the maker. My DH also succumbed and bought our host's ceremonial club, well it's a 'man thing'.



Next post I really will get into the animal part of the holiday.

Tanzania part 1

As I mentioned on the previous post, our Tanzanian adventure was a mixture of cultural shock and magical life changing experiences.

My DH really wanted to do this for obvious reasons, being a wild life photographer, and saved for 18 months to do it. I, on the other hand was a snivelling wreck of fear that I would either be eaten by a man/woman eating lion, contract a fatal disease or get stuck in a country that was in the middle of a military coup.

By the time we came to board the plane at Heathrow my anxieties had hit an all time high. I hadn't flown on a long haul flight since I was 21 and wasn't looking forward to an 8 hour flight.



Needles to say it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.



The arrival at Nairobi was somewhat of a shock though, I hadn't expected the departure 'lounge' for the connecting flight to Kilamanjaro to resemble a cross between a depressed school classroom and a Bedouin tent.

My initiation into travelling outside Europe had begun, and I wanted to record my feelings every step of the way.



We flew to Kilimanjaro in a plane that resembled something I'd flown to Jersey in when I was 15, only I'm sure the take off didn't threaten to split it in half with all that noise and vibration.



Needless to say we arrived safely, but to a reception of masked airport attendants and immediately had to fill out medical forms with regard to the Swine flu pendemic. We also discovered the my DH's bag had been lost somewhere in the flight transfers, not a good strart. It did catch up with him 4 days into our holiday, thank goodness.

Finally we made it to our tour vehicle and were on our way to the first hotel. This was our first taste of Africa.


A snatched shot on the outskirts of Arusha



We were both overwhelmed by the real life sights and sounds of Africa as opposed to what we'd seen on TV, for a while the journey, of about an hour, felt quite surreal.



But this was the sight that I had conquered my fears to see, a Massai village, later in the holiday we had the privilege of visiting a village and I was spellbound.

We finally arrived at our swish, luxuriant hotel, which was situated at the end of a dirt road, where people were living their daily lives and children were having their morning break in school.



I found the contrast of going though the lodge gates into luxuriant watered gardens very hard to come to grips with, when people on the other side of the gate had to collect their daily water in large drums on their bicycles or on their heads. Also the rainy season had been extremely dry this year and many of the crops had failed. I'm still trying to process this.



The following morning we left for the Ngrongoro crater and the start of the game drives, which will be in the next post.