Another smooth trip!

I am very glad to be writing this as I promised myself that I wouldn’t write my next post until the dreaded reports were done, even though there are more fun adventures tell you about. Writing reports when there is a beautiful 31 ° heat outside and a church blaring out a really out of tune guitar and choir has nearly driven me crazy but they are now practically finished , thank goodness! So now I can up date you on my latest adventures to the Serengeti.

We had 2 days off as our half term and we all decided we needed to get out of Mwanza so that we didn’t all go mad doing reports for 4 days. A trip to the Serengeti was planned and a car hired. How hard could it be to drive ourselves around the Serengeti, What could go wrong?

The man hiring us the car turned up early to drop the car of at the flats so we were all very excited to get on the road. Chloe and Emma went to fill up the car with petrol and discovered that the petrol just came flowing out the bottom of the car.  We phoned the car hire man and he said it would take a Tanzanian 20 minutes to fix…………. 11/2 hours later he turned up with a fixed car and promised that there would be no other problems with it. We all laughed and hoped this would be the only issues we had to deal with on our trip.

We all piled into the car and got on our way. Chloe was enjoying her first experience of driving in Tanzania and with in no time she was like a true Tanzanian driver beeping at random bikes, goats and cows in the middle of the road.  1 hour out of Mwanza the engine decided it didn’t want to go any further and just stopped on top of a speed bump in the middle of the road. Luckily we were just driving through a small town so we all pushed the car off the road and hoped someone would help us.

  

As you can imagine 6 white females with a broken down car attracted a lot of attention!

Fortunately one of the 30 people staring at us was a helpful mechanic who was our hero.  After lots of standing around and men shouting unhelpful instructions at him he found the problem ( we still have no idea what was the matter!). The mechanic sucked out some oil with his mouth,  plugged the tube back in and the car started. There was a lot of cheering and we paid him for his hard work with a piece of cake, a can of sprite and the equivalent of 2 quid!

We were very happy to be on our way but slightly wary that the car could just stop at anytime. The mechanic had obviously solved the problem as we got to the Serengeti gate without any issues.

We had a map of the routes through the Serengeti but were slightly worried that all the grassland was going to look the same. Anyway, we didn’t need to worry as we managed to get one of the park wardens at the gate to come with us for a free picnic lunch and 4 quid! He was very excited that he was going to spend the day with us rather than sitting around doing nothing.

He did a great job of finding us lots of Zebra, hundreds of hippos and some huge crocodiles to look all before lunch.

We ate our lunch in a small hut by the airstrip and shared it with a very brave red and yellow spotty bird.  

After lunch it was my turn to drive. Slightly nervous, as the car was massive and I haven’t driven for 10 months, I slowly maneuvered the car back on to the track and off we went.

After only a few minutes it was like I had driven yesterday and I was loving dodging the massive holes in the road.  The Warden decided we should drive down a track that had (no exaggeration)a metre high grass down each side and down the middle. It was like driving through a field of grass but the warden assured me there would be lions if we kept on driving. He forgot to tell me that there was a rocky path up to a amazing view point to drive up first! Anyway by then I was a pro so got us to the view point……. the warden had to be all macho and go out and check with his gun, that he had insisted on bringing with him, that there were no lions prowling with so we could get out and admire the view. 

I discovered that going down hill off road was a bit more scary than up hill. We got down safely and he decided we should follow a track that wasn’t really a track but a slight dent in the grass. Up ahead we could see some brown blobs in  tree so I slowly crept forwards until we were a couple of metres from 2 lionesses sleeping in the tree. After we had watched them for a few minutes a little furry head of a cub poked out from behind the trunk.

I have decided that I might have a career change as being a safari driver was great fun……. but I would need a quick mechanic course.

We stayed in a lodge just outside the Serengeti and the next day we went for a boat trip with the fishermen on Lake Victoria.  Although we didn’t have to paddle we did have to make sure we sat still otherwise there was a lot of rocking!

The trip also included a walk around the Sukoma tribe village on the shores of the lake and a visit to the school for the village children.  As soon as we got into the village we were accosted by some children who didn’t leave our sides!

 

Despite the dramas at the beginning and being quite used to nothing going quite how you think they will when you are in Tanzania, we all had a great time. Serengeti is never the same however many times you go and driving was a new and exciting way to explore it.

Well, it is now only 4 weeks tomorrow that I will be getting on a plane back to (I here very sunny!) England. I have got lots of fun things like swimming galas, cross country, book day, a trip to a beach on the lake and prize giving assemblies to fit in at school before I can get on that plane….. Oh! and a bit of teaching if I can squeeze it in!