2013: Week 5

Saturday 26 January

Wedding Day! We had a fab day, despite there still being lots to do this morning (I was at the reception venue at 08:00 and Jon spent a couple of hours there between 09:30 and 11:30). In the end it all went smoothly, and anything that didn't was kept far away from me so I didn't know about it :).

Sunday 27 January

All we did today was clean up the venue (actually, our families did that; by the time we got there it was almost all done), go out for lunch, pack to go on honeymoon and drive to Heathrow, so here's another photo from yesterday.

Monday 28 January

We got up at 03:30 this morning for our 06:30 flight to Amsterdam, and then a ten-hour flight to Kilimanjaro Airport in Northern Tanzania. We arrived at our lodge at around 22:30. It's a shame we're leaving here at 08:30 tomorrow morning, as this place is gorgeous!

Tuesday 29 January

On our first day on safari, our driver, Peter, told us his nickname was Mr No Guarantee - he would try his best to find all the animals we wanted to see but he couldn't guarantee it :).  What he could guarantee today, though, was elephants. We drove through Tanzania's principal northern city, Arusha, and spent the afternoon driving round Lake Manyara National Park. Sure enough, we saw loads of elephants, and also lots of baboons.

Wednesday 30 January

Today we drove from Lake Manyara through the Ngorongoro Conservation Area to Lake Ndutu, which borders the Serengeti National Park. Within the Ngorongoro Conservation Area is the Ngorongoro Crater, which is what's left after a volcano higher than Mount Everest erupted and collapsed in on itself thousands of years ago. We didn't go into the crater today but we will do on Friday. For now, we just stopped at a viewing point on the rim of the crater and got a random Frenchman to take our photo.

Thursday 31 January

Today was definitely the best day on safari in terms of seeing animals. This morning we saw, among other things, three lionesses and two cheetahs, but my favourite sight was of this beautiful leopard with a cub in her mouth. Having spoken to other safari drivers, we managed to establish that this leopard had given birth to two cubs, probably within the last 24 hours and possibly even as recently as this morning, and was transporting them one by one to the shade of a bush. We found her as she was moving the second of the two cubs, then once she'd got inside the bush we didn't see her again, and we probably waited almost an hour to see if she would come out :). Our driver said it's rare to see leopards in this area, and even rarer to see one with a cub like this, so we felt very lucky.

Friday 1 February

Today we left the Serengeti and drove back through the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, going down into the crater itself to see if we could see a rhino. There are only about 20 black rhino living there, but they don't leave the crater as the sides are so steep, so they're a bit like sitting ducks. Having said that, the floor of the crater covers 100 square miles, so you still have to look quite hard to find one. We did manage to find one, in fact we found three, but while they were lying down, which they were, they just looked like big rocks, and even when one did stand up (after we waited for well over an hour), we were far enough away that it still looks fairly small in our photos :). Instead, here's a photo we took yesterday afternoon when we went on a game drive into the Serengeti. There were zebra, buffalo, wildebeest, gazelles and numerous species of bird everywhere, in all directions. Beautiful.