March 2024
On leap day this year Sam and I got married! (I know, I know… took us long enough.)
We left Florida to go on one of the things that has been on Sam’s bucket list the whole time I’ve known her… a safari! So off to Tanzania we went.
It was such an incredible adventure that took around 29 hours of travel time to get from Sarasota, Florida to Arusha, Tanzania about 30 minutes from the Kilimanjaro Airport.
A few years ago I picked up the habit of doing a daily journal. Every morning at 8:00am I have a little shortcut on my iPad that reminds me to journal. I spend about 5 minutes just spitting out whatever is on my mind at the time. Stuff like what I built, or things that I did the previous day. Just a good reminder and a way for me to reflect back on what happens throughout the years.
On March 13, 2024 my journal started out with…
March 13, 2024 12:04pm
Eastern Serengeti, Tanzania, Africa
Tent 5
“Holy shit. We’re in Tanzania. Yesterday I didn’t have a chance to journal because we were in travel mode for 29 hours”. It was a long trip. When we lived in Bali, it typically took us anywhere from 22-24 hours to get from the states to our villa in Bali, so we were pretty familiar with that kinda travel.
The next segment of the journal talked about the flight and me trying to get an upgrade for free (unsuccessfully for the first flight).
Then…
“Btw as I’m writing this there is a wildebeest walking about a football field in front of me fright now and I see antelope and some giraffes in the distance.”
here is the photo I took with the iPad…
After breakfast and heading out to the airfield at 6:45am we ended up boarding the plane in the picture below.
We ended up flying into ‘the bush’ on a small little plane shown below. It was crazy, we’re just flying along at around 10,500 feet and there’s some mountains that are around the same height… and then we land in a flat field where we then were picked up by our driver.
Sam and I were sitting right behind the pilot because we boarded first. In total there were 8 people on the flight. We flew right into the bush. Then when we landed I asked if I could go out the same door as the pilot, because why not? He told me it was fine. That was a first for me.
It was our honeymoon, so we ended up having our own private driver for the experience. It was awesome.
The drive from the airfield to the first camp was considered the ‘appetizer’ according to our guide/driver. We ended up seeing wildebeest, warthogs, baboon, zebras, giraffes, impalas, eeland, antelope, a ton of birds and some other animals I didn’t write down in the journal that day.
The next day…
March 14, 2024 9:59 am
Eastern Serengeti Nyumba, Tanzania, Africa
Tent 5
After the morning breakfast at camp we ended up doing a walk directly out towards where the animals were roaming. It was pretty exciting initially, but we didn’t get close to anything. When they see humans they kinda just wander away, kinda like normal animals out in the wild.
The guides were super into birds, so we stopped and they named a bunch of different birds. We’re not really bird people, so it was just a “oh cool” kinda moment.
The first night in the tent was a rough sleep. The wind was ripping through and the tent was moving all the time. At one point I pulled out my phone because of how loud it was and recorded, but you can’t really tell on the phone.
The other campers had a similar experience with their tents when we chatted later in the day about it.
We had gone to see a Maasai tribe on the 13th so I wrote briefly about that.
“Yesterday we did a nature hike after visiting a Maasai tribe. They have these little huts that the women build that are made of dung and sticks. The women were outside with the children and we just kinda awkwardly were hanging out there and the kids were all smiling at us. “
“The kids were unbelievably cute though. Sam took some photos of them and showed the kids and then a video of them and showed the kids. They loved it and giggled so much. “
“We went inside their house and it was separated pretty nicely for the size. There were 2 beds that had cow hide as the mattress and there was a little oven made out of rock inside with holes in the side of the wall for ventilation. It’s a very different lifestyle than anything I’ve ever witnessed.”
“They have dogs but not for petting,. The dogs are like the guards of the area and will bark at predators to alert the families that something is messing with their stock. “
A lot of the early day notes were kinda oddly worded and I think it was from sleep deprivation + adrenaline and excitement. Other notes I included here are just direct copy/pastes so you can see like the error with spacing or spelling.
March 15, 2024
Eastern Serengeti in the jeep
Tanzania, Africa
“Well we’re in the b ack of the car and it’s hard to write with how bouncy it all is. Who knows how much I can write… might need to write later today.
It’s 8:32am. I’ll come back to this when the road is easier
Alright well now it’s 4:40pm and the road didn’t get any easier. It was about 8 hours of car time with Harrison the guide/driver. “
That right there explains a LOT of the time in the vehicle. You’re bouncing around pretty much nonstop so writing was pretty hard. I would have journaled earlier in the day that day, but we had breakfast and then had to be out to see things earlier in the day.
On the 14th of March we ended up going out on another nature walk. You’ll see the morning campsite in the photo below:
This was our tent along with front porch that looked out over the vast land. After coffee, we went down for breakfast and then did a walk out into that area directly in front of where our camp was.
We went to a gathering of Maasai women who were making things and selling them to us tourists to help fund their projects and school for their families. You are supposed to haggle and we had a guide, William, who is in the photo with me below who handled the haggling for us. We ended up getting small gifts for a few people. It’s tough to pick up a lot of gifts when you travel light like Sam and I do. (We also went to Paris after Tanzania so didn’t have a ton of space)
It’s honestly impossible for me to put into words what it was like being out on the drive and like “on safari”.
If you’ve ever been to a zoo, you get to see some of the animals we saw. In fact…
I had been to the Kilimanjaro Safaris in Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Orlando, Florida… so I had seen a few of the animals in person, but it isn’t even close to the same as seeing them out in the wild. At the Disney one, you see these animals in their little set areas. They’re separated based on what kinda animal they are and they don’t have a lot of space to roam.
and in the wild in Tanzania… well..
I took this photo when we came across ‘The Great Migration’. In the back there you’ll see a vulture flying, zebra, and wildebeest pretty much just right on top of one another. They all travel along in the pack and it’s just incredible to witness.
When we came across it, there were just rows upon rows of these animals and it went on to the left, straight ahead of us and to the right. Behind us it was pretty much nothing until we came across this.
and if you look a little behind and to the right of the watering hole there… there were 2 lions. We were told by our guide that they were on their honeymoon and aren’t really going to be hunting or anything.
At some points during the drive, we were driving for 20-30 minutes and would only see a few antelope or a few birds and the rest was just land. It made me feel very small and insignificant. It was interesting to just look along and not see any other people or animals. Just empty land.
At one point during one of the days we were driving through the Serengeti National Park in northern Tanzania just down one of the roads and walking down the road was a lion. Right outside of our window… just minding it’s business while we pulled up next to it and then drove past it.
Here is a peak into our morning at one of the camps…
Outside the tent was just land full of animals. It was incredible.
The most interesting part was probably at night. It’s just pitch black outside with zero light pollution. The only light is what comes from our tents and the main tent where the employees were and the food was being prepared.
Over night the wind would rip through the hill we were on and the walls and roof of our tent would shake. Then we would hear the sounds. The like growl of the wildebeest and other noises that Sam and I weren’t used to. It was a good thing we were so exhausted by the night that falling asleep was pretty easy.
In the mornings when we woke up, we’d look out and have a coffee or tea and just relax looking out over the beautiful fields. We’d see birds flying, giraffe, wildebeests, antelope, warthogs and various other creatures just living their lives as if we weren’t even there. It was absolutely incredible.
We also did the hot air balloon over the Serengeti and landed in the bush. What a way to see the land. Just fields upon fields.
It was an odd feeling going up in the hot air balloon. You start on your side in the cage and as the hot air fills up the balloon, it lifts the cage up and then all of a sudden you’re floating.
Here are a few more pictures from our great adventure…
Hippos smell bad.
