I was fed up of not getting paid and needed to escape Dar for cooler climes so I got a flight to next day out of the hot house to the north.
I had contacted a recommended guide and he was able to sort me out with a safari with a couple of other Ukrainians.
Luckily there were very tourists around which meant that we not caught in huge lines of Land Cruisers. Ngorongoro Crater was especially impressive and we got there about 9am and descended to the crater floor.
Below us were herds of wildebeest, buffalo, elephants, zebra and the occasional giraffe. Of course all the smaller animals were there in abundance like the jackals, hyenas, warthogs, marmots and plenty of colourful birds.
The large flock of flamingoes at the crater lake with their white and pink plummage was a bright contrast to the grey misty crater walls.
Of course all I wanted to see on safari was lions. No safari is complete with lions. I though I would never see one and then suddenly as we were driving through some long grass I saw to my left two round ears poking up briefly from the grass.
I shouted ‘STOP’ and we ground to a halt. There about 100 metres away on a small hump was a female lion. As I sat at my open window in awe of this beast I saw something moving in the long grass below my window and then to my horror and amazement there was another lion in almost touching distance.
In fact it was so close I wound up my window for fear it might reach out and claw me.
I am not so excited by rhino but we managed to get quite close to one as it crossed the road ahead of us. Apparently it’s rare to get so close.
But I was still hunting lions and eventually we came across a group of young lion cubs on the right hand side of the track and a large old male to the left of us. The experience would have been better had the driver not driven into a rock and punctured a tyre while looking at this mobile phone.
What a place to have a puncture – surrounded by lions. He managed to drive on a little way and did a quick tyre change without getting mauled.
I am lucky to live in a country were you can pop up-country and see such magnificent beasts. For most people this is a holiday of a lifetime. But what’s the point of living in Tanzania if you’re not going to see the best of it.