Arusha, Tanzania - May 23, 2024
Leopard, Namiri Plains, Dec 2022
As has become depressingly normal, we now begin a new travel adventure without having finished documenting the last one. When last heard from we were leaving our ship in Hokkaido and on our way to a week in Tokyo, which turned out to be the highlight of our trip. In fact, we enjoyed Tokyo so well that we are planning to go back next year. We had added it on to the end of our boat trip around Japan in a classic ‘since we’re there we might as well..’ moment but unfortunately that was as far as our thinking took us, the boat trip having captured the majority of our attention. Fortunately we had sufficient forethought to make a hotel booking but our, or at least V’s, normal research and planning for our week’s Tokyo sojourn was conspicuous by its absence. Nonetheless we had a fabulous time and unhindered as we were by any commitments, with the exception of a couple of restaurant reservations, we wandered, discovered and thoroughly enjoyed.
One of our Tokyo restaurant reservations was particularly memorable but I will follow-up at a future date with a more detailed description of our discoveries, memorable moments and thoughts on Tokyo. However, as I’m writing this on our first day in Tanzania I think I’d better focus on the here and now.
Some of you may recall that a couple of times in the last year or so I have talked about this trip Back to Africa You Say. In that post I talked about the trip and our motivation for taking it, and now the time has arrived. And in keeping with the motivation for our Tokyo trip we are now in Tanzania because, since we’re here we might as well…!
We loved our Tanzanian camp, Namiri Plains, when we spent a week there in December 2022 and we’re returning there for another week prior to the Zambian leg of our trip. Namiri Plains is located on the Serengeti in a portion of the huge National Park that is focused on supporting and rebuilding big cat populations and in particular, the cheetah population. What could be more compelling to cheetah lovers and so here we are again!
We flew in to the Kilimanjaro airport yesterday and are spending a couple of nights prior to our small plane flight to Namiri tomorrow. We are staying in a lovely lodge, Arusha Coffee Lodge, in the middle of a coffee plantation near the town of Arusha. It’s charming and relaxing and a great place to get over the jet leg of a 13 hour flight, a 4 hour layover in Addis Ababa and a 2 1/2 flight to Kilimanjaro.
We are lucky enough to be here in the off-season as we were when we first visited in December 2022. Right now the rainy season is just over, the days are warm, the nights are cool and there are very few people here. In a month or so as the weather heats up and the huge migration begins its slow progress, the Serengeti will be crawling with visitors to see the huge herds of wildebeest and antelope move north and cross rivers into Kenya and the Masai Mara for better grazing. As spectacular as this is we have always chosen to visit when visitors and jeeps are at an absolute minimum and we have the leisure to spend a quiet time watching the domestic daily life of the Serengeti and the Masai Mara play out undisturbed.
I’m really looking forward to keeping you posted on what we see and can capture on camera. Apologies for the lack of images, we have just arrived and my camera has yet to be taken out of its bag but am using a couple of shots from our 2022 trip.
More to come!
