Karen walked out of our lodge door this morning and said she
doesn’t want to leave – she wants to continue doing game drives. But alas, this is our departure day. Our guide had us leaving early so we could do
one last mini game drive on the way to the airstrip (I have to be careful not
to call it an airport). Even the little
game drives are fun. Immediately down
the road from our lodge, we see Elephants (RIGHT next to the road), Impala,
Dwarf Mongoose, African Fish Eagles, one last lion pair, giraffes, zebras (of
course).. Every day we go out, we see
something different with the animals. It’s
hard to leave.
We said goodbye to Joseph, our driver (but our tour guide
Richard continues with us) and hop onto a 13-seat scheduled service plane back
to Arusha. The airstrip in the Serengeti
is what you would expect. A flat gravel
airstrip and a shack and some bathrooms and some parking. Nothing more.
It was a quick 50 minute flight to Arusha, where we head back to our
original lodge for lunch and to rest for 3-4 hours. We had to repack and reorganize our luggage
since only some of it went on to the Safari, while a lot of the stuff from the
Amsterdam part of our trip stayed here at the Arusha Lodge. Now, we say goodbye to the Blog for this
Shabel adventure and head out to the Kilimanjaro airport for our flights
home. It’s going to be a very long trip
with 21.5 hours of flight time alone.
(through Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, then Amsterdam, then LAX) Then a drive back home from LAX. Fortunately, we have a long weekend waiting
for us for recovery.
We hope you have enjoyed the blog and the pictures. We also hope this inspires many of you to
find a way to take a Safari trip to Tanzania in the future. It will not disappoint.
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| He couldn't have been more than 10 feet from the vehicle |
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| Topi |
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| Dwarf Mongoose |
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| African Fish Eagle (eating fish, imagine that!) |
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| Our last lion sighting of the trip -- from a distance |
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| Our 13-seater from the Serengeti back to Arusha |
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| The same Elephant in the sun right next to the vehicle |
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| Family shot in front of the Safari vehicle we have been with the entire time |
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| Arusha Airport (where the Tanzanian president had just landed!) |
Loved your blog - interesting narrative and great pictures. It does motivate one to get this trip on a bucket list. You all are very fortunate. So happy for you. What company did you go through?
ReplyDeleteLove,
Mom/Grandma