George, Joey, and Henry and I started planning their Tanzanian Safari in March 2017 for their November 2017. Three photographers on Safari in Tanzania - I was ready to see some great pictures of wildlife and landscape and I was right. George, Asante sana for sharing your Safari Story with us and your amazing photos.
" We had a spectacular time! In pretty much all respects, it was everything I imagined it would be.
Festo and Nathan were great but Nathan gets a special mention as he had us for the 9 days and 800+ kilometers; he was not only a wonderfully knowledge guide but an excellent (and patient :-)) travel companion. Life in the Land Cruiser was great, even with the free African Massage (as Nathan described traveling down some of the roads).
Camps and lodges were very comfortable and we were very well fed and taken care of in the camps. Ngorongoro Farm House was a nice oasis after a long day drive down from Kati Kati ... walking up the hill and seeing the sunset over the lawns, someone handing me a cool cloth and lemon water, I thought "Ok, I think I could hang here for a while".
The game drives and wildlife viewing were superb and the weather ideal; we'd certainly recommend that time of year to go, rains, not a factor at all and in fact welcome to keep the dust down. Temperature nice and summer-like, crowds not a factor at all (well almost never, there was that leopard site ... :-)). It would be nice to go back and see the same areas right after the long rains though ... the stark contrast I imagine.
We missed out on the rhino at Ngorongoro and only saw the wildebeest hover but not cross at the edge of the Mara but otherwise, we saw all the big and small mammals and lots of birds (about 100 names on our list). Our cameras got a good workout and we're still curating the 5k+ images each of us have. Tough to capture the full impact of zebra and wildebeest out to the horizon in the Central Serengeti ... that is quite a memory.
For me the trip was one big highlight but a few things come to mind ...
- When we were in the crater, we watched this big old bull elephant saunter across the crater floor towards the marsh where Nathan had us positioned. The old boy stopped maybe 12 ft away and just stood there, dust bathing and looking at us for about 15 minutes and then just continued on his way.
- Being a city boy, I don't see the Milky Way very often due to light pollution so I hoped to get a night sky shot at some point on the trip. At Kichuguu, what was just as memorable was the honor guard of camp staff we had around us, simultaneously ensuring we didn't get eaten and just as keen to look at the results.
- On arrival at Kati Kati, Nathan had a somewhat extended dialogue with one of the Camp #2 staff after which, he chuckled and told us that we were in the right place but, since a family of elephants had gone through the kitchen tent the previous night, we were being moved to Camp #4. All was well and we got to see and hear a loud debate within an elephant here the next morning ... camp staff figured it was likely the same herd that had visited camp #2
Thank you for putting this all together for us and hope to do it again someday. "
Makes me happy when my Safari goers get to fulfill their Tanzanian Safari dream.
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