Travel stories

It couldn’t get more beautiful!

Our daughter works in a village 2 hours west of Mwanza. We wanted to visit her but were not sure how to handle it logistically. Especially since we wanted to combine this visit with a safari.
Explore Tanzania has set up a nice travel plan for us, listening carefully to our wishes. This has resulted in a wonderful journey.

The first week was a great journey of discovery through Africa for us. There was hardly any tourism here and because our daughter speaks the language, we got a nice insight into daily African life.

After a week we were picked up in Mwanza by Emmanuel, our guide for the coming safari week. Pretty exciting beforehand whether it would click, but we needn’t have worried about that! Emmanuel was a very good driver which came in handy on our first day in the Serengeti. Due to the heavy rain, the path had turned into a mud puddle where we slid and slid eventually ended up in our Green Camp Naabi Hill. What a warm welcome that was after such a long day.

We have been here for three nights and at our first breakfast we were surprised by 10 elephants that unperturbedly found their way, close to our breakfast table. It couldn’t get more beautiful!
We have seen a lot in the Serengeti, especially thanks to the hawk eyes of our guide. Very nice to exchange experiences with other visitors of the camp in the evening.

We drove through the Ngorongoro crater to Mto wa Mbu where we did a mountain bike tour. Very nice to not be in the jeep for a while as a change. We would spend the afternoon in Lake Manyara national park. A park that I actually wanted to delete because I had heard from a number of people that it would be very busy here with jeeps. But whether it was because it was already in the afternoon and it was January 1st I don’t know, but the fact is that we hardly saw another car. And that makes it even more special. Especially when a group of elephants walked right past our car. We could almost touch them. So special and touching!

After that it was exciting which accommodation we would get in Tarangire. That really topped everything! A lodge on stilts so that you could look far over the national park and see a fantastic sunset. And really around the corner from the park entrance. It seemed as if we had this park to ourselves, so quiet. Beautiful animals seen and Baobab trees. This was a very nice park.

The next day it was really over and we were dropped off at Arusha airport by Emmanuel. He really made sure that we had a wonderful safari, an ultimate experience.

Our flight to Zanzibar was short and our accommodation in Bwejuu was beautiful.

Right on the sea, but a very quiet, cozy atmosphere. You could walk across the beach to Paje at low tide (6 km) for a little more entertainment. We mostly had a relaxed time here. And finally after 3 weeks we had to fly back to the Netherlands. Sorting out the photos was a hell of a job, but making a photo book brought back the memories.

It was really a wonderful trip!