2017/09 Part 4 Serengeti - Fri am Leaving |
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We thanked Ayoub for an outstanding day and arranged for yet another early start; he would be driving us to catch our plane to the Masai Mara.
For once we were back early enough to have time after dinner to drink some beer on our balcony and gaze out over the Serengeti. It was dark but we could hear the sounds. We must have left the door open as this spider came visiting while I was processing the day’s pictures. It looked like a wolf spider, a bit bigger than those I had in my flat in England, but probably harmless. I tried to wrestle it outside but it was faster than me, so I just made sure that the mosquito net around our bed was snug.
Friday September 22
We were up well before dawn again. The dining room opens at 6.30 am to accommodate early game drives. Unfortunately, it was cool and breezy enough to blow the flames out on the food warmers, so breakfast was tasty but cold and we didn’t have enough time to get it warmed.
This picture gives some idea of how our mornings would start, with the safari guides coming up to reception to pick up the clients. That’s me with Ayoub.
Ayoub said we had about an hour’s drive, bouncing over some of the same roads we’d used the previous day to get to the airfield. We said we wanted to leave some time to rearrange our luggage if we were exceeding the weight limits. He laughed “The airlines don’t even have scales. They quote those limits to make sure you don’t show up with a massive amount of luggage.”
The buffalo calf was gone and nearby we saw this rack of ribs. The savannah’s recyclers had done their job.
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We didn’t stop very often as we had a plane to catch but we had to have this close up view of some topis. We’d seen topis at a distance the previous afternoon, marching up a distant hillside.
The airfield is called Seronera, same as the river. It was more comfortable than I expected, with a 
waiting room and someone making coffee to order. Security was casual; if you wanted to go outside and walk into a propeller nobody would stop you. We passengers were all confused but somehow everything worked.
We said goodbye to Ayoub and gave him a memory stick with some of the lions and crocodiles pictures. He’d looked after us very well and we’d had a great four days in Tanzania.
We were flying on Coastal Air in a 12 passenger single prop Cessna. This plane would hop around the Serengeti picking up passengers at various airfields and then take us to Tarime where we’d be driving across the border in a van into Kenya to pick up another flight to the Masai Mara. We’ll describe that trip in Part 5 of this journal.
PS
That evening I got an email from Elvira at Tano Safaris, asking how we were 
doing and asking us to say hello to the lions for her. I replied that we’d lost count of how many lions we’d seen, and I sent her one of our lions and crocodile pictures. Along with some of the files I gave to Ayoub, these pictures are now on TANO’s website.