Africa, Day 9 Nairobi to Tarangire National Park Tanzania via Kilimanjaro 14 July 2018

After getting to sleep last night sometime after 1:30am it was nice to wake around 7am.
We had a quiet morning, and were picked up at 11am for transfer to Wilson Airport in Nairobi. This airport services the international flights to neighbouring countries and humanitarian flights. The planes here seem to range from personal aircraft to commercials with capacities from 2 to 60 passengers.

Our hotel last night, The Eka, was located about 8km from the heart of Nairobi, but right next to a local night club (they love their bass in their music very much here) and as you have to, a “Greasy Joe’s” style restaurant, the smell of the stale frying oil almost enough to turn us vegetarian. Our room/suite was huge and then it had the biggest “balcony” I have ever seen for a hotel room, around 20 x 15m! We would have gladly given our balcony up to have the exhaust fans moved.

We left the hotel around 11am and drove to Wilson International Airport. This is a secondary airport in Nairobi that services small planes ( from 2 to 60 passengers) to local international destinations such as Tanzania, Congo, Mozambique, Somalia and South Sudan. It also serves as the focal point for local international humanitarian flights by the UN and various NGO’s.

At check-in our luggage, check-in and carry on came to a total of 27kg, we were very proud of ourselves, even if they didn’t weigh our cameras and Deb’s  “handbag”. We left Kenya at around 1pm and flew over the 115 sq km National Park that borders Nairobi. The park is home to lions, Zebra and black rhino, it is surrounded by an electric fence to keep the animals in and is guarded to keep the poachers out.

We arrrived in Kilimanjaro (I was told by a local it is pronounced keel-e-manjaro) at 2:10. We were met by a local transfer guide who helped us through the entry process and onto our connecting flight. Our flight with 7 passengers had unfortunately arrived at the same time as a very large international plane with hundreds of passengers. Our local guide help expediate our visa purchase and help us jump the immigration queue, gave us lunch and got us onto our connecting flight in a touch over an hour! If we had been left to our own devices we would have taken 2-3hrs to achieve the same result, and we would have missed our connection.

There were 3 passengers on our flight to Kuro, a small airport with a dirt runway in the Tarangire National Park.

Kuro Airport

On the way we saw elephants and water buffalo from the plane. We were picked up by our guide for the next few days, Zoya.
We had our own landcruiser troopy set up with a pop top for comfy safariing. Zoya asked us if we wanted to go straight to the lodge, 1hr away, or do a 2 hr trip and get a bit of safariing done on the way to the Lodge. With a little convincing Deb agreed to the safari way to the Lodge.

I am so glad we did. We saw so many animals and birds and trees and country side. Our first sighting was elephants, a herd of around 14 down by a river drinking from holes they had dug in the riverbed. It was more of a family, with a range of youngsters, females, juvenile males and a bull.  A little further along we saw a bull elephant by itself eating grasses and trees by a river. As it walked away Zoya said , “oh look, it’s a 5 legged elephant”. Yes he was big!

We saw quite a few giraffes, a highlight for Deb was a pregnant mare and a couple that were very close to our car and who seemed to pose for us. We also saw Swift swallows, Squirrels, Impala, saddle bill stalk, colourful Starlings, Lilac breasted roarers, Shrikes, Termite mounds,  Fowl,
Warthogs, Grouse, Lak, Dikdik, saddle bill stork on nest, boab trees, warthogs, ostrich, Love Birds, Zebra, water buck and so many more.

We arrived at our Lodge,  Sanctuary Swala Camp a bit after 6pm, just on sunset. We checked in, were given a run down on the activities and amenities here and a safety briefing. Lions, leopards and elephants have been frequenting the Camp at night. So we have to use the Masi Warrior guards whenever we walk around the camp after sunset. They carry spears! But have not had to use them ?  our accomidation is a very comfortable tent, will take a few photos tomorrow to show you.

We had a drink around the camp fire then a bbq dinner before heading off to bed.

Tomorrow we have an early start and head out around 8am for a full day safari.