After Dar Es Salaam we visited Stone Town in Zanzibar for 4 days where we did a spice tour, sampled the very good food and just relaxed a bit from all the traveling. We then headed to Arusha to organise a tour of the surrounding regions of the Serengeti, Lake Manyara NP, Ngorongoro Crater, Lake Natron and the crater highlands and Maasai villages.
The tours were expensive and we were wondering if we should cut out the section to the Serengeti to reduce the price since we unfortunaletly missed the wildebeeste migration (a bit of a stuff up in the planning), but how can you visit Tanzania and not see the Serengeti..so we blew the budget. When we arrived at the gate of the Serengeti we both thought we had made a big mistake as there was nothing around. After some time though the Serengeti didn't disappoint and we had some of the best game viewing of anywhere we had been, plus the plains are exactly what you expect to see, it's iconic Africa. We got to see a spectacular lightening show across the plains and finally a cheetah sighting, we saw 6 all up and all close sightings, amasing, plus all the big cats. At one point there was a leopard on one side of the road and 2 cheetah's on the other I didn't know where to look.
After visting Lake Mayara and the Serengeti we visited Ngorongoro Crater then headed for the crater highlands for our trekking through Maasai territory. We started half way between Nainokanoka village and Empakaai Crater with an armed Maasai ranger to protect us from the buffulo, not that we saw any. We headed into Empakaai crater to see the thousands of flamingo's that feed there before camping on the crater rim. The next day our guides packed our Maasai land rovers (AKA donkeys) with some supplies and we headed off on 2 days of trekking through the highlands via Nayobi and Acacia before we descended into the Great Rift Valley. Our campsite at Acacia used to be a maasai village until April of this year when Mt Lengai errupted and left a thick layer of ash on their huts and their cattles grasslands, so they moved on. The walking here was very dusty and dirty due to all the ash and black volcanic soil.
We rested up for a few days near Lake Natron and did an easy canyon to a nearby waterfall for a swim with one of the maasai villagers before an ascent of Mt Lengai, an active volcano in the Rift Valley. On the day of the climb we woke after about 3 hours sleep at 11pm to start from the base about midnight. As we left the campsite and got our first view of the volcano I thought our opportunity to climb it was over as it was glowing red. Our guides stopped and exchanged a few words of Swahili and started off again slowly and left us in the dark. Eventually they said that it was just a maasai grass fire, which we didn't believe a word of. We were quiet anxious, but they reassured us that it was normal, including the smoke rising from the top. As we got closer I realised that the fire was at the base not on top. We trusted their judgement so we headed on up and up. The climbing was really hard, walking up soft ash is like walking up a sand dune made of talcum powder, you would take a step forward only to find your foot slips back most of the way. We keep walking for quiet some time and the inlcine just kept getting steeper and steeper, the ash softer and softer and our progress slower and slower. I was wondering how I was going to make it at that rate with close to a 2 verticle km ascent and descent ahead of us. Eventually the incline got to about 45 to 50 degrees and luckily the rock got a bit harder under foot so the progress was a bit easier. My volleys were good at this point nice and grippy, but I did manage to drag half the mountain up and down in them. We reached the top just as the sun was at the horizon over the crater rim...perfect timing! The crater was making some very loud disturbing noises and steaming a lot, we couldn't see the lava, but it bubbling away below us. As the day lit up we could see for miles over the Rift Valley, the exposure was something else and I had to calm myself for the steep descent. Climbing this volcano was very dirty work, we had to scramble up with our feet, knees and hands, so we were both very grubby. The way down was faster but invloved some very exhausting downclimbing and rolling down the loose stuff, eventually we made it with jelly legs and starving hungry and stumbled back for a well earned breakfast at 11:30am.
For those that have asked about photo's I'll hopefully be uploading some more in the next week or so.
I hope you are all well.
