Musoma Tanzania to End at Nairobi

(Ed and Edith Gray)



Wwe went to Speke Bay the origin of the Nile River. This CG is run by a Dutch farmer with two other partners and is used by the safari companies and others if you can find it as it is poorly signed. It is a great CG with great toilets and hot showers right on the shore of Lake Victoria and you can sit right on the Lake and have a Coke. There is lots of shade and lots of birds. The buildings are very nice with beautiful wood and everything is spotless. Definitely an oasis in the wild! This is the best CG we have seen in Africa. It had one quirk in that it had European power plugs and not the standard British plug and I had left my European adaptor in Nairobi but they finally found a European to British adaptor so I got my camera batteries charged for the Serengeti, wow what a relief! We visited a fishing village from here, boy are they poor! The manager here also speaks perfect English.



People working in the area only get $1 a day and get paid once a month so you see why they are poor! Lake Victoria is the largest lake in Aftrica and the second largest fresh water lake in the world and is 100 meters deep in some places and would be like one our our Great Lakes in size. We are right at the edge of the Serengeti NP. We entered the park and at first it was burned off but eventually we got past that and even though the famous migration of the wilderbeasts and zebra's have taken them north there is still animals as far as the eye can see in many of the open areas. There is be far the most animals and the greatest variety of anyplace we have been in Africa. The short rainy season is just beginning and the long season will be in March and April. We stayed right among the animals so at night you need to stay in your; tent or very close by. We had a big male lion about 300 yards from our tents.



We seen so many different animals and got many pictures. If you want to go to Africa and see animals this is the place to go! We spent 2 half

days and a full day here, definitely a highlight of the trip. We seen Cheetah's. Gazelles, Topi's for new animals and seen almost everything we had seen before. Next was the Ngoronngoro Crater. Here we seen a leopard to complete the so called big 5 of elephants, rhino's, cape buffalo and lions. Pretty much the only animals we never did see on our

Africa trip was the Caracal, Serval, wild dog, Tesssebe, Bontebock, and Nyala. Our pictures are absolutely so much better than I ever dreamed so you HAVE to CHECK out the web site in a month or so! The only thing that we don't have a good picture of is the Leopard! Everything else is so close up you can not believe it!!! The final highlight was climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro to 2750 meters on a 16 kilometer long day hike! No time to try the peak as that is a 5 day trip, 3 up and two down but we talked to lots of people coming down. On the way back to our CG the peak cleared and we got pictures and seen all the snow, quite a sight being nearly on the equator. The peak is 5895 meters or 19335 feet and the major problem in climbing is altitude sickness!



We are now in Nairobi at the Silver Springs Hotel in Nairobi and had our first decent shower and bathroom and have slept in the tent on the ground with a so so mat for 20 nights straight. Not really all the bad but don't miss the final travelogue from here which I will send from home on the Toilet Guide to Kenya and Tanzania. We tour Nairobi tomorrow on our own with the help of our tour leader Treece and then fly to Amsterdam tomorrow night and on Saturday will go to the center of Amsterdam for a few hours and then fly from 4:30 to 6:30 pm to Minneapolis, MN USA, ie fly with the sun so actually about 9 hours.



It has been a fantastic experience, we have seen thousands of animals as far as the eye can see in the Serengeti and seen many more elsewhere. We have visited about 10 wildlife parks! We seen 3 leopards, 19 lions,; 5 cheetahs and as far as the other species 1000's other than maybe just 20 or so Rhino's. We seen at least 500 Hippo's. We have seen some great scenery as well. Africa is colder than you would every believe at night especially even though we are getting into spring here. Also Africa is much more arid than I would of ever believed but it is somewhat because this is the dry season but it definitely is not tropical in most areas. Kenya is the greenest and wettest but varies a lot but has corn like you would not believe but the yield is poor. The people are so friendly but most are terribly poor and the same goes for the housing. Our pictures will tell more than pages of words so check out the web site in a month or so. We took about 2000 pictures so we have a lot of selecting to do! We have been in eight countries in Africa



Ed and Edith