Arusha (Safari) – Tanzania

Jorge Yuri
17 de fev. de 2016
4 min de leitura

Arusha was the sixth stop of “Reviravolta ao Mundo”. After a good night's sleep, we were able to recover a little bit of the 12 hours and a half travel of the previous day. We woke up early, had breakfast and then our guide / driver showed up at our hotel to start the safari. We arranged a 4-day safari with an agency in Arusha with meal included, camping and one night sleep inside the Serengeti. In these four days we would visit the four main parks near Arusha: Tarangire, Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro Crater and Serengeti. A safari tour in the beginning gives an impression to extrapolate things and invade the lives of animals, but nowadays, unfortunately there are not many many options if you want to see nature as it is. Fortunately, even with all the tourists in the parks, the animals seem to follow their normal life. In addition, the parks do not have fences and all the area close to the parks belong to the Maasai (tribe originally from Tanzania). The animals are not limited to parks. The only problem is that out of the parks they are outside the protection of the guards, so they can be hunted, even hunting being illegal in Tanzania it still happens. This is an issue taken seriously by them. On TV every five news, one is about the illegal hunting. A safari tour is not like being at the zoo and most of the time it can easily became boring because we spent several minutes looking for animals and when we see some, often it is so far away that we could not see very well. But apart from this annoying part, seeing the animals in their natural habitat is indescribable. Day 1 – Tarangire Compared to other parks is the least interesting, but we were in the season that there are many elephants, so we ended up going to see it. We saw several groups of impalas, chimpanzees, elephants and warthogs, but no large feline. Upon leaving the park we saw a small group of giraffes, but far away. As it was our first day, it was interesting to see how was the safari in the parks.

Day 2 – Serengeti We were greeted by millions of wildebeest and zebras that started the migration of the Serengeti, where the animals leave the southern part of the Serengeti (Tanzania) and go to the northern part (in Kenya) looking for food and water. With these millions of wildebeest and zebras, several carnivorous animals take advantage of the abundance of food and are the following. With that we saw our first big cats, including some lions. We also saw some herds of elephants (larger than the Tarangire, it was another kind), hippos, buffaloes and giraffes. The highlight of the day was when we saw a few meters from our car, two lions eating a buffalo and nearby two lionesses sleeping in the trees. The lionesses killed the buffalo, ate what they wanted and then went to sleep in the trees. Then the lions were eating what was left and still had vultures and hyenas nearby just waiting for the lions to end up eating too. Another strong point was sleeping in the Serengeti, without fences and the sound of some animals. It was the starriest sky we've ever seen in our lives.

Day 3 - Sunrise in Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater We woke up early and went to a "driving game" (as they call the tours through the parks with the car) in the Serengeti to watch the sunrise and see if we could find the diurnal animals. We thought we are unlucky for not seeing many animals but in other hand we saw and listened lots of birds and a beautiful sunrise in the park. Our luck changed a little when on the road to Ngorongoro Crater, we saw two lions and we could get close enough of them. After the morning in the Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater arrived in the early afternoon. The Ngorongoro Crater is a crater of a disabled volcano and according to our guide it was the last place that dinosaurs lived on earth. The top view of the crater worth the visit and when we enter the crater there are so many animals that the game drive is very fun and busy. We could see many animals, giant elephants, lions and giraffes. Until the Ngorongoro we hadn’t seen rhinos. According to the guide they are 22 in that crater. Lucky we could see two of them a bit far away.

Day 4 - Lake Manyara After 3 days of safari we were tired and after the adventures in the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater, Lake Manyara was just a little disappointing. The strong point of Lake Manyara are the flamingos in the lake, but to our surprise, our car couldn’t get close to the lake, so we couldn’t see the flamingos, also according to the guide they had already migrated from the park. If we didn’t see the flamingos, we saw a herd of at least 20 elephants crossing the road a few feet from our car.