Saturday 21st June....
Left hotel 8 am and arrived at lodge at 7 pm tonight so another long day...just had dinner and a whole bottle of wine!!!! Wireless only in the restaurant so here goes with the events of today...went on safari in Lake Manyara Park first this morning...bit of a non event in that the same animals we had seen until we had an encounter with an elephant...we sat there and froze as we thought he would roll our vehicle...quite scarey...lots of vegetation and trees in this park...even some rain forest but so hard to spot the animals....back to our lodge for lunch...the food in Kenya and Tanzania has been fantastic... and then 1 pm we were off to the Ngorongoro Conservation area.....we climbed to 2,600 metres with lots of vegetation and so green...then coming down the other side it was so dry...unbelievable to see the change in the landscape...before heading onto this road we deflated the tyres a little as it was more African massage roads!! The roads in the Lake M park though quite good and much better than the Masai Mara but so many vehicles here and so may more tourists than Kenya...All the vehicles here are Range Rovers and oh the dust as we got further down the track into the day...we are travelling with another vehicle and we are always the 2nd vehicle eating his dust!! As a matter of interst Tanzania is nearly twice the land area of Kenya and yet the are only 5 million more people in Tanzania so there are wide open spaces here and the place just seems tidier and not the clutter and shambles of Kenya...en route to the N conservation area we saw lovely fields of flowers and lots more sunflowers so perhaps this is where all our sunflower seeds come from..and so at 4 pm we actually entered the Serengeti and it was dead flat and perhaps a little greener but no trees....and we saw lions...not real close but at last they are here...the dust was horrendous and the Masai people here look so dusty but as we got closer to the lodge there were a few hills and some trees...lots of big rock outcrops which made an interesting landscape....our guide Dafa, took us for about an hour on a dusty track in the long grass before we returned to the bumpy road to the lodge, in the hope that we would see lions in that area....oh boy, today was like riding a bucking bronco...Michael is sitting in the front with Dafa but I am in the very back and I couldn't tell you how many times my bottom left the seat today in fact we have been discussing it over dinner tonight in that Dafa travelled at about 90 km per hour over roads that hardly existed today so we are all pretty shaken tonight but this s Africa....tonight we are in the middle of no where in the Serengeti but it is amazing how they build these lodges...we have to keep our door closed even though we have balconies as the baboons and monkeys are a real problem...we are bobooned and monkeyed out as we have seen so many, particularly this morning but we have to say the babies are really cute...tomorrow we have 2 safari drives in the Serengeti so here's hooping for some real exciting stuff....Laurel we love your comments but we look forward to hearing from you all..M & F