Tanzania Safari

After Kili, we took a five day safari trip around the Serengeti (Swahili for endless plain) visiting many great national parks. We travelling in a huge Land Cruiser this time through the great infrastructure of Tanzania.

Again we saw incredible wildlife with the highlights being lion cubs playing and feeding and the elaborate ostrich mating ritual. We stayed in great lodges built right in the parks where lions literally wander THROUGH the hotel at night while hunting.

It is truly incredible how the wildlife (prey and predators) ignore the presence of humans as they go about their business. For the most part I thought my presence was not harming their behaviour, and hopefully helping to preserve it!

Good times!

Mt Kilimanjaro

We met met my friend Erik in Arusha on July 7 and headed for the mountain the next day. For four days we trekked up the Machame route towards the summit trail. Hardly roughing it, we had 14 porters, 2 cooks and 2 guides to assist our fragile western bodies up the mountain. Being served on the mountain was a bit hard to take after canoeing in the great white north recently, but in the end the crew helped us up an incredible amount of elevation (19800 ft)!

Our total group was five people and we all summited on July 12 at 7AM after 7 hours of final night ascent. Great feeling to go down afterwards!

The trip was amazing despite the incredible number of other hikers on the mountain... Try Mt Kenya for more remote challenge!

Kenyan Safari

With help from Anna's friends in Nairobi (from Western, but I can forgive them), we spent 7 days on a safari in Kenya's National Parks. First off, Kenyan roads are terrible! The tarmac is so bad that dirt roads have formed beside the roads to avoid the plentiful cavernous potholes.

Anyway, despite banging around in the equivalent of a VW Westvalia on endless dirt roads we had a great time in the parks! The animals where too numerous to list but highlights include a lion eating a zebra from the inside out and two leopards. Totally amazing that the animals and parklands are resisting the crush of humanity that surrounds and often encoaches on them!

Ended the dusty safari with five days on Kenyan coast in Mombassa and Malindi. Decent beaches but endless touting made more comfortable staying in hotel by the pool!