In 2013, I went on a four-day Safari trip while we were in Africa. My friend, Alesa and I went with Ilmaasai Company (ilmaasai@hotmail.com) which was located in Arusha, Tanzania. We learned about them through a group of American service volunteers. Loth is the owner and we worked with him to plan our trip. Due to some scheduling changes, we ended up being available to go a day earlier than we had planned and he was able to accommodate us. His driver, Bryson, picked us up from the Springland's Hotel in Moshi at 7:30 a.m. on Monday morning.
Three recommendations for a budget safari trip:
1. Ilmaasai Company (ilmaasai@hotmail.com)
2. Elimasai Tour Company (ngilasi@yahoo.com), 255.783.032.090
3. Michael Medoth (micmedoth@gmail.com), 255-784-279-597, http://www.tanzaniamagictours.com/meet-magic-team/ also see Tanzania Magic Tours reviewed on trip advisor-- https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g297913-d10341654-Reviews-Tanzania_Magic_Tours-Arusha_Arusha_Region.html
Later, while I was in Tanzania, I met another man who does tours. It is the Elimasai Tour Company. (ngilasi@yahoo.com) Elia's phone number is 255.783.032.090. If you contact him, please let him know that you got his contact information from Rene. He does the camping safari similar to what I describe below.
I met Michael Medoth while I was in Tanzania too. He owns/manages an orphanage in Arusha (www.osiligiorhanage.org). He is a very thoughtful, organized man and I'm sure would do a fine job of planning a safari trip.
Back to my experience:
We stopped by to pick up Ruth, who was also in Moshi. She is Venezuelan and living in London. She was in Tanzania for her great-aunt's funeral and to meet the nuns her aunt had lived with for many years. She was a delightful young woman and a photographer. Alesa and I were pretty happy that she was there and we look forward to seeing her pictures of things we saw too.
We drove to Arusha to get the rest of our group: a young, newly married couple from Poland, Paolo and Johanna. They had been married for three weeks. We met them at the office. It was more like a shack, tucked back behind some buildings. We had a dark green jeep with three rows of seats, a driver (Bryson) and a cook (Simon). So, it was a fun group. Soon, we departed in our jeep. The top cover comes off and the 2nd and 3rd row passengers can stand up under a canopy to observe the safari animals.
We drove first to Terengeri National Park. Along the way, we saw a lot of Massai people. They wear very colorful clothing and wrap themselves in colorful cloths. All the children carry a stick and most walk with herds of animals. We saw a market with a hundred or so Massai people.
The Massai men wear blue when engaged, red when they are warriors; each color has a meaning. Though to be honest, I saw lots of red and blue. . . so I felt that the definitions were maybe a little broad. Bryson said that the Massai men don't do a lot; the women do everything (again, I hope that was just his opinion).
Apparently the Massai collect elephant dung, dry it and grind it into powder or milk it because the elephant eats all kinds of plants, it should be good medicine.
When the boys have white-painted faces, that signifies that they have just been circumcised and thus, become men. Apparently the women cut off all their hair when they are circumcised. We didn't see any bald women.
Arrow Soob WHY--Hello in Massai (Simon was part Massai, though contemporary and wore modern clothes, no jewelry, and his ears were like mine).
All along the road to Terengeri Park, there were speed bumps. They seemed very unnecessary as the road had so many pot-holes, noone would go too fast anyway.
TERENGERI
We saw: zebra herd, impala, ostrich, monkeys, baby zebra (mom killed by a lion), tsetse fly (I remember these from my college parasite class), elephants, wart hogs (they kneel to eat closer to grass roots which they like best), water buck, giraffe (photo 197 on camera), mating ostriches, eland (like impala with straight horns), wildebeast (they hang out with the zebras).
Our first night was at a campsite overlooking Manyara lake called
Panorama campsite. The tents were very small, about the size we had on
Kilimanjaro, but Alesa and I shared a tent this time. The bathrooms were not well
maintained and we opted out of a shower (thank goodness for wet wipes for "some" sense of cleanliness. Dinner was prepared by Simon
and was good. We explained to our group that we were Mormon and that we
didn't drink even though they kindly offered us their beer and wine.
We contented ourselves with water. After dinner, there were some
"musicians"/acrobats. They were definitely better at the acrobatics.
Here is a description of some of their antics: They spun a bike wheel
on their hand, hand, bottom of foot while turning over on the ground.
They juggled while putting one of the guys on the other's shoulders.
They jumped through hoops (bike rims). They did feats of strength:
blocks on a table and three stacked. Guys would do a hand stand, stack
on thing end, move stack while hold body upside down and upright with
one hand. They finished by singing the jombo song.
NGORONGORO
We saw: herd of giraffes, jackal, crane, gazelles, warthog (run with their tails sticking straight up like an electric trolley) and wildebeest, zebra, heartbeast, hyena, lion, hippos, mating lions, baboon, cody bustard bird, ostrich (walk like they have high heels, cute eyelashes).
Then we went to our accomodations (below).
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| This was the kitchen where Simon prepared our food. Each jeep had a cook and so each table represents a different jeep. It was fun to watch them each coming up with a meal for their tourists. |
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| Each table cloth represents a different jeep. We ate at the red tablecloth. We loved the popcorn. The meals always start with soup. |
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| Flat tire! A little excitement. Bryson and Simon changed it expertly. |
SERENGETI
We saw: lions, giraffes eating acacia tree (their tongues are bluish and they don't seem to mind the thorns), impalas, many hippos in a pond, crane, hens with blue heads, tall birds with outspread white wings near hippos, leopard in a tree, baboons, elephants, yellow acacia, sausage tree, dikdik, 2 dead hippos, mongoose, yellow billed stork, topi.
Serengeti sunrise drive: hyena, hippo out of water, monkeys mating, 10 monkeys in a tree (reminded me of Hats for Sale) pride of 5-6 lions, 3 cheetahs eating something, leopard eating in a tree, meerkats (dozen).
Bryson says you can tell a male from a female zebra by brilliance of white and black stripes?????
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| A leopard pulling a newly killed gazelle up into the tree. |
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| Baby baboon riding on its mother's back. |
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| Early morning hippo. |
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| A pond full of hippos: maybe 20. |
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| Hyena. |
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| Elephant droppings--to scale. |
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| Serengeti sunrise. |
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| Warthogs and zebras. |
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| Warthogs kneel to eat the roots. |
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| Weaver birds make nests. At the foot of this tree is a lion, which I didn't get a good picture of. Alesa was almost close enough to grab its tail. Fortunately, there were some branches between us and the lion. |
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| Wildebeasts. Interestingly, they often hang out with zebras. |
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| Zebras crossing the street in front of our jeep. |
Here are my swahili (swuh-HEE-lee) words from the Safari:
Twenday--Let's go
Simba--Lion
Twiga--Giraffe
Keyboko--hippo
Key FAR ru--Rhino
Chew ee--Leopard
Molgo--Water buffalo
Tembo--elephant
Kwa HAIR ee--goodby
Sowa-sowa--alright
Some uh HAW nee--excuse me
Habari ya ah su boo he--Good morning
Habari mchana--Good afternoon
Habari ya jee own knee--Good evening
Asante qua ku en daysh us vee zoo ree---Thank you for driving us so well.
Asante qua koo pee ka vee zoo ree---Thank you for making us such good food
cause ee me zoo re---good job
sofa sani--good job
The money is a shilling. 10,000 shilling is about $6. The exchange rate was 1625 shillings to the dollar.
The second day, we dropped our stuff off at Simba Camp at Ngorongoro Crater. It is rather rustic with a big field for tents. The bathrooms have much to be desired. I would definitely prefer a tree!!! Might just do that.
Lunch was bread and butter and shredded carrot, fried chicken, empanadas, hard-cooked-egg (still with the white yolk---I can't quite handle that combination), orange juice, muffin. We ate lunch while watching about 6 hippos in the lake. All the safari jeeps come to this place for lunch. There were probably at least 50 jeeps. However, once we get spread out in the crater, we only see a few at a time.
And Polish:
Jen QUEE uh--Thank you
Pawlo said to look up Kujawiak style music from Poland and the Mazowsze fold dance group. He dances with a folk dance group there.
Day 3 at 8:48 a.m., we had a flat tire on the back left. I got out and helped with some lug nuts. Everyone else stayed in the car. In retrospect, maybe I should have stayed in the car too, but I was feeling helpful. We didn't seem to be close to any animals as we were still up on the ridge. That may have been a false impression though. . .
We stayed at Nyani public campsite for Wednesday night in the Serengeti. Both Alesa and I kind of sighed at the accomodations: a dusty field for tents, a cooking pavilion, an eating pavilion for tourists. The bathrooms were in better shape than the previous night, more squatty potties. We both took advantage of the showers here.
Things I am craving: ice, lettuce, anything dairy, JIF peanut butter.
The jeep drivers/guides have radios and share sightings with each other. The Serengeti is divided into areas including: Balloon area, Massai Kopjeks, Soronero River area (hippos), Villi ma Saba area (7 hills area), Moll Kopjeks (stone mountain), swai mountain.
Heading back to Arusha. At 2:10, I'm watching the two diesel tanks on the jeep. They're both empty.
Here's some of my math:
2152/1625 is the price of diesel. We put in 18.50 liters in one tank for 40,000 shillings. The jeep gets 7-8 km/liter. That is 8 km(6 miles/10km) or 4.8 miles/liter(3.2 liters/gallon). That is 15.36 miles/gallon in the jeep. We put 20 liters in tank so we can go about 150-160 miles. The last sign to Arusha a ways back was 156 miles.
The newlywed couple recommended their hotel to us since we didn't have arrangements for Arusha that night. It was the Silver Palm Hotel, not too far from Ilmassai. We were pleased and were given the same rate they were paying. It was simple, but modern, clean and comfortable. We had dinner. I had a vegetarian curry, a nice shower, and a good night's sleep.
The next morning, we packed up and took our stuff by taxi to Michael's orphanage and met Melinda there. They performed songs for us, braided my hair, shared their math with me. I fell in love with them. They sat on my lap, touched my hair, laughed with me. We washed our hands and they gave us lunch, they played with my glasses. The children all had lime green shirts on as their uniform. Melinda shared with them The Kissing Hand story. I had to step outside as it was way to emotional for me to watch her say goodby to those children she had been with for the past four months. Michael and his wife Hidaya took us to the airport and we gave them the rest of our money including the money we had set aside for a taxi. Hidaya is such a beautiful woman and carries herself like a queen. She is kind, warm, and friendly as is her husband.
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| I left the braids in my hair for a week after I got home. They brought back very special memories of this moment. |
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| Little Robert fell asleep in my arms. What a sweetie. |
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| Michael and Hadiya |
At the airport, we said goodby to Melinda, found out that we could not do standby. So, we had 12 hours before our flight was scheduled. We were $50 away from Arusha. We decided to stay at the airport hotel, a bit of a splurge, but we were glad. We were able to relax, have dinner, and get a few hours of sleep.
We were happy to get to the airport in the early morning. I was called back to a back room to watch someone go through my luggage very thoroughly. They questioned the hand warmers. . . but ultimately packed everything back up. I slept all the way to Addis Ababa. Then, we had another 12 hour layover there.
We had discussed going into town that day since we had all day-time hours there. But, when we learned that the Visa was $20 (not that big of a deal) AND that we also had to have a hotel reservation ($70), we decided to pass the day at the airport. We were in Terminal 2 this time (when we flew from Addis to Kilimanjaro, we had been in the dirty, run-down Terminal 1). Terminal 2 was much nicer and had lounge chairs. We camped out and I slept for a good part of the day. We had a delicious lunch (spaghetti for me, chicken for Alesa), slept some more. Alesa facetimed with her family.
Again, I slept almost the entire way back to the US. George, Lana, Jeff (Lana's boyfriend), and Sam met us at the airport. The had flowers for me and Alesa (so thoughtful!). Once home, I hurried and showered and drove to church for the last of Sacrament meeting and the rest of church. Alesa hadn't slept much on the plane and was pretty wiped out so she didn't go to church.
It was a great trip. I loved the animals, the orphanage, the mountain, the people.
As an additional reference on rating safari trips:
http://travel.cnn.com/tanzania-voted-best-country-watch-african-animals-run-wild-182326
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