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After packing up camp and having some breakfast, we piled in to a bunch of 4×4 jeeps and headed east towards the national parks, I don’t think anyone felt good after the previous night, and were very glad when we stopped off for a second breakfast and some Coke!

The journey to the Serengeti takes you through Manyara National Park then climbs to the rim of the crater before descending in to the serengeti plains, the view from the Rim looking in to the crater was something else.

From such a high vantage point the animals looked like ants across the bottom of the crater, it was easy to see the common routes taken, and herds of animals roaming the vast area, the rim of the crater was shrouded in cloud, giving the whole a very special feeling.

We had lunch in the shade of an acacia tree on the serengti plains, overlooked by a family of Masi, at was here we discovered one of the jeeps had broken its rear axle on the dirt roads, a repair was made, but eventually we had to abandon the jeep by the side of the road.

We arrived at the gate to the serengeti, opened the jeep roof and had a sunset safari to our campsite in the middle of the park. after most of the day jammed in the jeep it was a refreshing change to stick our heads out the roof and watch the elephants, hippos and antelope go by.

Over the next couple of days we safaried all day seeing Lions, Cheetah, Zebra, Antelope and lots of other animals, it really was like being in a safari park. At night we could hear the animals all around, including the not so distant roar of Lions, one elephant even invaded the campsite to drink out water.

On our last day in the Serengeti we piled our tents back on the roof of the jeeps and zoomed out of the national park towards the crater, briefly stopping for ice cream a the park gate, and to see a Cheetah and Lioness in the sun, we also clocked a Ostrich a about 45Km/h!!!

We reached the crater rim campsite at dusk, and it quickly became quite cold, the rim is around 2286m above sea level, so everyone suddenly pulled out sweaters and trousers, quite a change from the scorching heat of the plains and after a day of being an the funny english man wearing socks and sandels everyone was pulling out socks and joining in. (I had a seriously infected toe nail, and the socks were an attempt to keep the flies off it).

That evening the campsite was invaded by a number of elephants and believe me it is quite the shock to walk out of the toilet block into the rear end of an elephant. The guides were cooking for us during this time, and after a nice warming meal we all headed for our tent for a good sleep and for the first time apreciated warm sleeping bags and wished for the sleeping mats we’d left in Arusha. After a good old fashioned fried breakfast we descended into the crater on a very steep narrow road, thankful for the one way system, and as soon as we reached the 19Km wide crater floor we saw heards of wildebeest and zebra, and got the classic ‘Zebra crossing’ photo.

During the rest of the safari we saw a family of Cheetahs covered in blood and lazy after a kill, Hyenas skulling around, Hippos, Elephants Eland, and a gang of monkeys. The concentration of animals in the crater is like no where else, it is a perfect environment with plenty of food, water, and a nice climate, its easy to see why animals go there. But eventually we had to leave to journey back to Arusha and Snakepark campsite, ready for our truckride to Dar-Es-Salaam and over to Zanzibar.

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