After our Kilimanjaro trek, we did a two day Safari: one day at each of the national parks of Tarangire and Ngorongoro.
Map of Kilimanjaro, Tarangire, and Ngorongoro national parks.
To start our Safari we were taken to the Ngare Sero Mountain Lodge for one night to be close to the Tarangire national park.
The lodge is on the slopes of Mount Meru just outside Arusha and was once a German colonial farmhouse built in the early 20th century from the times that Tanzania was a German colony. After losing the first world war, however, the German East Africa experiment was ended and for many years the farmhouse and its estate was abandoned and lost while it was reclaimed by the jungle.
The lodge was rediscovered by accident by the British much later on when Tanzania became a British colony. There was little more than foundations remaining but it was acquired by Mike and Gisella Leach who rebuilt it and opened it to guests in 1973 and it has remained in their family ever since.
Tarangire National Park
Ngorongoro National Park
Ngorongoro is the worlds largest intact volcanic caldera. It is about 3 million years old and the walls are up to 610 meters high and 19 km across from one side to the other. To get to the crater you need to follow a long track which climbs up the side followed by a long descent down to the bottom again. At the highest point there is this lookout.
The local people are called the Masai and you see them walking along the side of the highway mostly. They wear coloured shawls according to their tribe and wear sandals on their feet made from recycled car tyres and always carrying a stick.
They appear to be untouched by the modern world and live almost entirely off of the milk blood and meat of their goats and cattle. You can see the isolated huts they live in spread out on the side of the highway sited to be near their livestock.
These ones were employed by the lodge we stayed in to sweep the paths and unload luggage. They also did this welcome dance just for us when we arrived at the lodge.