Zanzibar is a place hard to leave, but the idea of having in front of us a great animal experience is compensating the pain of getting into the ferry back to Dar es Salaam. It has been a long time now since we were in Chobe. The sea is a bit rough on the way back, and there are several people nauseous or throwing up, but fortunately none of us! We have one night back at the camping site in town before we leave tomorrow to Arusha. This town is the starting point for many adventures in western Tanzania, from the Kilimanjaro tracking, to the National Parks of Ngorongoro, Serengeti and Tarangire. It has also been chosen to host the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where crimes committed during the Rwanda Genocide in 1994 were judged, and after that it kept its important international relevance hosting the African Court on Human and People’s rights.
Our base camp in Arusha will be the Meserani snake park, from where we’ll start our 2-day trip to the Serengeti park and Ngorongoro crater. Meserani is an interesting location. Apart from the snake and crocodile park on the camping site there is the Maasai cultural museum, the crafts market and the medical clinic which is specialized in snakes and spiders’ bites. Around here it is indeed common to encounter snakes, in particular in the spring when the kids are playing in the grass they get bites of all sorts, and can then receive free treatment at the clinic, even if the antidotes are extremely expensive. We leave our antibiotics and pain killers here, since we are confident that from now to the end of the trip we’ll not need them! We are brought through the museum by a local Maasai who tells us about their habits and culture; it’s a great pleasure to listen to this man, he is so proud of his heritage, and at the same time he has made a step into a more modern world (of earning money and sending kids to school). Around the park we visit a small village and Andreas takes the chance to get a camel ride together with Jenny all the way there!
Tomorrow we’ll be leaving with a day pack and our sleeping bags on 4-wheel-drives which are the best vehicles for safaris. I and Andreas will be on preparing breakfast duty tomorrow which as usual includes boiling water, making porridge, set the table with cups, bread and jams. Since the site is also home to a huge crocodile they have decided to put the water tap exactly 20 cm away from the small fence, so in the dark, early African morning, with my head lamp on, I’ll be filling the kettle watching out not to be eaten alive! 
After breakfast, the cleaning team is up for a quick wash and we are ready to leave on 2 jeeps. On the way to Serengeti we get to see the Manyara lake from the road and we buy some red bananas which taste the same, but are still truly awesome!
The Serengeti is world famous for the migrations of its animals following the alternating seasons from the south to the Maasai Mara National Reserve across the border to Kenya. To get to our campsite we first need to enter the Ngorongoro park where we can look down into the crater which we’ll be exploring in 2 days. The Tanzanian government allows the Maasai people to live and walk their herds in this region, but not inside the crater. They are not hunters, just cattle farmers, and therefore represent no harm for the park itself, and they are actually are the only people who really belongs to these lands. The camping site is in the open space, and not much further away there are plenty of buffaloes just browsing around, but there is a fenced room in case of emergency. Compared to Etosha and Chobe, the Serengeti gives a very different feeling, first of all it’s huge and gives a sense of immensity in all directions, but at the same time it’s full of bushes ad trees, small ponds and amazing fields of dry grass in which you can spot animals of all kinds.
We drive around and every meter is different, all of a sudden air balloons ascending into the sky, quiet antelopes waving their short tails, hippos sleeping in the dirty water, a leopard sleeping in a tree with his kill (pic of Matt!). I’m not sure if I am sitting in the jeep or on the sofa at home, watching national geographic! Hyenas are sleeping on the road and we try not do disturb them, but they really look like they don’t care, they look at us, and slowly move a few steps to the side, in the middle of a muddy hole. We spend the whole day enjoying the safari and get back to the tents as it’s getting dark.
The excitement of nature is limitless, you can just imagine what you can see in the next kilometer, but you will probably never be right! It can be anything, it could also be that a monkey jumps in through the roof hatch of the car to steal your apple!