Tanzania - why is safari here so expensive?

Part 8 of "From Cape Town to Nairobi in a Land Rover"

Our first day in Tanzania was not lucky. (We crossed over from Malawi on the 3rd of February. (Once again: Our route map can be found here: https://share.delorme.com/ClaudioAngelini ) We were travelling along a major through road where all the trucks and heavy traffic. The general limit on the road was 80km/h – which is sensible for a good tarmac road where goods are transported along. What we did not know was that this road has a lot of villages along it – and the road definitely hasn’t built in a way that would safely pass the villages. So – we continued collecting traffic fines. Neither of us saw the 50km/h signs that popped up before a few houses appeared. The policemen had a speedlaser so we couldn’t really argue with them (once we had 81km/h and the other time 60km/h in an area where the speed limit apparently had just dropped to 50.  Although I do think one should follow speed limits, I do also think that planning the major transport route in the country through various small villages with no care to the safety of the villagers except for speed limit signs is extremely stupid. It doesn’t help the villagers (most of the trucks don’t slow down) and it’s also inconvenient for the travellers (who would rather just get through the area without needing to guess at every corner whether the speed limit has changed).

So, great, we spent about 36 euros on speeding tickets in 3 days. The amount is small if you compare it to European speed ticket charges, yet it was enough to put one in a bad mood as we could have easily avoided these fines. After the first one we tried to be more careful – yet still ran into another speed control when we didn’t see the markings.

When you look at the roadsides in Tanzania you understand why
the police are so actively stopping vehicles on the road. At every
corner you see a truck that has driven off the road - either
because the driver lost the breaks (burned them), because he was
speeding into a corner, or simply because he fell asleep behind the
wheel. One example here on the left.

A close-up on the same container.

... and one more picture of the marvellously disastrous driving
in Africa. Be careful on the roads here!

The first night we stayed at the Old Farm. This was a lovely campsite and they had charming lodges. I think I should come back here and stay a couple of nights in their lodges, just doing nothing.

We had full moon at Old Farm. No need for a headtorch
when walking to the bathroom building at night.

Just as we were leaving in the morning, Claudio spotted a funny sound
from the engine. He started checking on it - and found the belt
nearly broken at three points. So - our departure got slightly
delayed while he changed the belt and removed a huge number
of dead butterflies, bees and dragonflies from the air filter housing.

The next day (4^th of February) we drove all the way to Dodoma and found ourselves a camping site slightly north of Dodoma, out in the bush. A very peaceful night, nothing or nobody disturbed us.

On the 5^th of February we continued to Arusha. We ran errands, and make a few phone calls on our Kilimanjaro hiking trip . We were not impressed by the town of Arusha. Terrible traffic, chaotic place. Later we picked one campsite slightly outside of town, Colubus Mountain Lodge and camp and headed there. Although the staff was friendly the place was slightly disappointing – run down and clearly not maintained. Bathrooms were a little dirty, toilet seats were missing or broken, sinks had not been cleaned… We still made a fire and dinner.

On the 5^th I was starting to feel the travel tiredness. I don’t particularly like changing places very often, yet I agreed to the road trip as it sounded quite cool. I however think I’ve now seen pretty much all that I needed to see. Kilimanjaro and Serengeti – then I’m ready to stop. Maybe I’ll go straight to Nairobi after Serengeti and leave Claudio to finish the rest of the trip on his own. Apart from being tired of traveling itself, I’m still not very convinced me and Claudio make the best travel partners. I’m thinking perhaps it would be best for both of us that I head back earlier than planned. In summary, I was in a rather blue mood when we stayed at Colubus.

The most interesting thing that happened at Colubus Mountain Lodge
campsite was Claudio catching a bat in the bathroom. I was going to the
bathroom when I saw this little buddy lying on the floor. It looked
a little injured or stunned - a little surprising as I thought bats
had a radar and were able to fly around objects - such as bathroom walls.
Claudio was a bit careful when cathcing it as we know that bats may spread
rabies (hence the gloves). He managed to move it outside, and it rather quickly
recovered and took flight. Very cute!

On the 6^th we had to nail down our Kilimanjaro booking. We made a few additional phone calls. Picked one of the operators (Gladys Adventures) and confirmed with them. Then we also emailed our miscellaneous list of six friends who had put their hand up for the climb. Mostly these were Claudio’s friends from Goma, Congo, but also a young German couple we met at Roy’s rest camp before we crossed over from Namibia to Botswana. We ended up choosing the same the operator the two Germans had also shortlisted.

After we got our Big Climb arrangements all settled we drove off to Lake Manyara national park. We paid USD 45 per person as park entry fees, USD 40 for the car and 30 USD per person for the campsite. USD 190 for one night in the national park! This was by far the highest charges for safari we had paid so far, and Manyara is still cheaper than Serengeti – and Ngorongoro is even more expensive. So – we will probably not go to Ngorongoro. All plans after Kili are still open.

Lake Manyara was a bit of a disappointment. They are known for their tree climbing lions and there should be plenty of other wildlife, too. We saw mostly the usuals: Elephants, impalas, giraffes, warthogs, ostriches, a few hippos in a very small pool (one on its own in the tiniest little pool – like having  hippo in a small condo swimming pool). We also met two Germans and found out we had missed 7 lions by 15minutes – they had first been up in a tree and then came down to a waterhole. Ok, the lions exist, we were just unlucky.

Giraffe in Lake Manyara was of the opinion 

In the evening we headed to our small campsite. It was a  campsite without any supervisors or staff. They had facilities – clean showers and toilets – and the campsite was very cozy. The older German couple we had met earlier also camped there. Besides us two, there was nobody else, so we sat together for a long time talking after dinner. It turned out that they live in Switzerland and the husband works for a Swiss company that was bought over by a  Finnish company.  So he had been to my home country, Finland, many times. His projects for power plants had also taken him to Bangkok and Singapore, so we had a lot to talk about. The highlight of my evening still was when I spotted a serval cat sneaking up from behind our fire and towards our car (we were sitting by the Germans’ car). It sniffed around for a long time, stood on its hind feet sniffing towards the direction of the garbage bag – and at that point in time we decided to gently show it the other way. It went hiding in behind a tree whilst we packed away the garbage (in the car boot) and closed the doors. In a few minutes it was back, but as soon as it noticed the garbage bag was gone it snuck off behind the bathroom building and disappeared in the bush.

We also found scorpions on the campsite!  I saw one in the ladies toilet, it went hiding in a hole in the wall. Claudio found another one behind the dishwashing point. So cool.

An interesting story the German couple shared with us was concerning the hyenas in Moremi, Botswana, that we had also seen. Apparently in a German travel guide book or a traveller forum it is said that these hyenas are not quite as harmless as the camp staff may have said. They told us they had heard there had been an incident a few years ago where a young boy was camping with his mother. The boy was sleeping in a separate tent and he had left his tent open because he wanted to take pictures. According to the story, the boy fell asleep and at night the hyenas came and killed him. How old the boy was is unclear (some sources said 16, others 4). The story may not be entirely true, not at least to the smallest detail, but I’ll keep my eyes on the hyenas also in the future. Even if they were not dangerous, they are definitely cheeky creatures.

After Manyara we camped one night at a nearby campsite outside the national park and then drove to Moshi. On the way to Moshi Claudio spotted a chameleon on the road. We stopped to take a few photos, especially since I’ve never seen one before.

Hello, new friend!

The Chameleon quickly decided it loves Claudio.

Love him so much that it refused to leave.
I refused to touch the chameleon.
In the end I gave it a little push with my camera pouch to tell it
"That's my buddy you are hanging on to! Go back to the bush and find your own."

In Moshi we found our tour operator and started getting ready for our Kilimanjaro hike. I will leave the Kilimanjaro climb for another blog post. It definitely deserves its own chapter, it was such an amazing experience.

The rest of our stay in Tanzania was rather uneventful. (Note: We did continue traveling together with Claudio. I did not jump in a bus to nairobi in Moshi after all). In the end we decided to skip Ngorongoro despite the fact that there were a few of us interested. The scheduling did not work out. To really see the best of the crater's wildlife, you need to get to Ngorongoro around 6-6.30am, right after the gates open. We found out that cars with foreigners in them were only allowed to start driving after 5am and Ngorongoro is a 3 and a half hour drive away from Moshi. Not worth it this time, we woudl need to combine it to another safari in the nearby parks to make it worthwhile (and we did no want that). Serengeti was not for campers (campsites are not maintained, the place is aimed at high end tourists staying in lodges) and Ngorongoro schedules did not work out (and it is also very expensive). No more safari for us in Tanzania. Too expensive!

We decided to drive to Rwanda instead, maybe hop into Congo (that did not work out once we found out Congolese visas take two weeks to process), then drive over to Jinja in Uganda for some whitewater rafting, and eventually go to nairobi where our trip ends. On the way to Rwanda we stopped one night at a guesthouse on the roadside (we could not find a campsite and the villages were too densely populated for wild camping) then drove via the town of Mwanza by Lake Victoria. In Mwanza we camped at the Yacht club grounds (nice but a little run down) and the next morning we took the car ferry across to the west side to save us the trouble of backtracking our earlier route. The last part of the road near Rwandan border crossing was a bad tarmac, full of potholes. We were happy to arrive on Rwandan side where roads were in good condition!

So, more about Kilimanjaro in the next post.