Our safari trip in Tanzania was our first (but hopefully not our last) experience of watching wild animals in national parks, and of trying to sleep in a tent while hearing the hyenas laugh at night. It was a wonderful adventure to never forget.
Tarangire National Park
Tarangire National Park is relatively small, which made it a great start of our safari adventure. We easily spotted a lot of different wildlife species already on our first day.
I was amazed by the beautiful African landscapes in this park. On our first day of safari, we already spotted zebras, wildebeests, ostriches, buffalos, elephants, monkeys, lions and gazelles from our jeep – bringing us to a score of 2 out of the big 5.
The wildlife was not as spectacular as in the other parks we went to, but visiting Tarangire National Park was nevertheless an enjoyable way to ease in to our safari adventure. We had lunch at a picnic place while being accompanied by monkeys. They were sneaking around trying to steal our food (but don’t worry – they shy away fairly easily).
We spent our first safari night in a tented camp, where we had a private cook preparing our dinner.
Ngorongoro Conservation area
On our way from Tarangire to Ngorongoro, we stopped at a Maasai village to meet this fascinating tribe. We got to enter one of their huts, see their cattle and even went to school with the Maasai children.
Ngorongoro Conservation area is down a crater, which makes for dramatic and gorgeous landscapes. It is also the place where the Rhinos live, but we visited on a very windy day. Apparently Rhinos aren’t big fans of the wind, so we didn’t see any.
We did get to see a lot more different wildlife species than in Tarangire, including hyenas, pumbas, jackals, flamingos, hippos and meerkats. We also saw a giraffe here, bringing our score to 3 out of the big 5. It felt like being in the movie the Lion King at times.
We stayed the night in the Rhino lodge where we watched the most amazing African sunset from our private balcony. The lodge itself was super comfortable as well. I would love to stay at the Rhino lodge again.
Serengeti National Park
The final and main destination of our safari adventure was Serengeti National Park, which is where we had our most precious safari moments. Our safari driver was the only driver who found a cheetah keeping an eye on her four cubs playing around. As there weren’t any other jeeps around, our driver decided to leave the road to get us a little bit closer to the cheetahs. Being so close to the cheetahs was definitely my favourite safari moment.
Another fantastic moment was us finding a place to hide from the rain during our lunch break, and finding out that marmots were doing the same. Visiting the hippo pool is also a unique experience that is not to be missed when visiting Serengeti – although it’s hard to forget the sounds and smell from that pool. Finding a leopard sleeping in the tree brought our final score to 4 out of the big 5.
We stayed two nights in a bungalow tent in Serengeti, from where we could hear the hyenas laugh while they walked around our tent at night. We heard a lot of wild animal noises during the night, which all added to the sense of adventure. We also had a lion walking around the tented camp at night. Luckily, we were blissfully unaware of this until we saw the footsteps the next morning. I don’t think we would have slept very well that night if we knew.
