Weekends (part 1)

The first few weekends here gave us a chance to see some of the best sights of Tanzania. We started with Mikumi National Park, the 4th biggest game reserve in Tanzania and covered over 3000km in area. Luckily it wasn't too far away to go on our first weekend, just a 90 minute car journey from Morogoro to reach the park entrance. Nevertheless we were told to wake up early at 5 am to reach the park in time to see the animals before queues start forming and we managed to make it to the park and in the open safari vechile by 8am. Over the next 8 hours, we saw elephants, wilder beasts, giraffes, gaezelles, hippos, crocodiles and even monkeys! It was incredible to be so close to them and I'll be posting photos as soon as I can transfer them onto this blog. Seeing the animals so at ease was such a pleasure, as they appeared so relaxed and free in their natural environment, plus another good thing about Mikumi is that large sections of the nature reserve are not accesible by transport, allowing the animals an opportunity to have access to large areas away from the tourists. If I had to compare it to visiting the zoo, I'd use the analogy of T20 cricket as your zoo experience and a safari as a test match. You're going to see a much more classic experience of animals in their natural habitat, but if you're only bothered about a guarantee of seeing all the animals in one quick go, then you have to rely on luck at a safari - I'll have to wait till next time to see a lion in the wild!

On the second weekend, we decided to climb 2000m to the 3rd highest peak of the Uluguru Mountains in Morogoro. Luckily for this one, it was right on our doorstep! We met Yesyaya, an English teacher at SUA, and started our climb up the mountain at 6:30. In all honesty, we went into this climb very unprepared and defnitely not experienced as we could have been. It took us about 6 hours to make our way to the summit! The relief once we got there was incredible; yet it was crazy how cold and cloudy it was, it was like being back in the UK! We were huddled around a little campfire in a hut managed by a local Tanzanian who spoke no English for about an hour while we recovered ready for our journey back down to the bottom. It wasn't till about 8pm till we finally made our way to the starting point. It was by far the longest trek I'd ever done and has prepared me well for Kilimanjaro at some point in the near future!

Since this, we've done many other things that I"ll share in the next few posts, but that's all for now!