We could not resist the opportunity to take a day safari being offered on a minibus for the total cost of £44. We arrived in town at 5am, and was greeted with this:
Yesterday we had shared a table in a cafe with a guy called Samson, and he overheard us ordering this morning's taxi. It turned out he was coming on the safari too, and he rushed over to us and ushered us on the bus to ensure we were on the front row opposite him. The seat had a ledge for us to rest our feet on, but also a heater.. not good for the watermelon! We sat for 20 minutes, and as we were about to set off the front passenger turned round and said 'Guess Who!!' It was Mr Titto, a guy who comes to our house every few weeks to sell us batiks and gifts.
Stopping at the gate, we dashed to the toilet and took a couple of pics while monkeys raided our belongings! We also
For the first hour or so we saw lots of giraffe, impala, buffalo, wildebeest, impala. Then we stopped at a river and walked over a swing bridge, with crocodiles underneath. On the other side of the bridge the 3 guys asked if we could have pics taken with them?! So we did and thought nothing of it.
Then we noticed the difference between this and a private safari. We drove for 2 hours, seeing virtually nothing along the way, to a Hippo Pool. If you had been on a private safari you could have said no that's not worth 2 hours of driving each way! But no...
We got to the Hippo Pool, ate lunch, the Tanzanian guys insisted on sitting with us as did Mr Titto and they just took sneaky pictures of us eating! The big family had brought huge polystyrene things of samosas, chicken and chips but we were good with our pasta and melon.. oh and HOT cans of Coke!
Had to then make the same boring journey back to towards Seronera, visited the Tourist Info centre but couldn't really see anything as we had no idea how long we had. Took pics of random fat rodents and at one point one of our group tried to take my camera so he could take a picture of me with a giant guinea pig???
Then we set off home, took hours to get to the gate but did see a herd of elephants and a lion, on the way back people behind us kept taking sneaky pics of us (bloody mzungu obsession), Samson even showed Amy a pic of me - he had taken a pic me on the bridge and zoomed in the pic on my chest :-( Then when we reached the gate we weren't allowed out as we were too late; after much argument they let us go. It was going to be about midnight when we got home and I was on early shift, so I thought I would ask Sue to do it but my phone had no credit or battery and Amy's had a no signal! Eventually we sorted ourselves out and Zoe agreed to do the early bit.
Interesting day aboard the Vengabus...
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