Safari day 3

Our camp is divided into four tents, one of the guide and cook, two for the girls, and in spite of Mayhem’s suggestion to bunk up together with the girls for warmth and own protection, a separate tent for the guys

We rose at 6am, all quite bleary eyed due to spending too much of the previous night excited and marvelling at the various noises floating through the Savannah night, to a breakfast of tea biscuits and hot chocolate before setting off for an early morning safari.

Certainly for myself the highlight of that day was seeing a hippo, which must have certainly been morbidly obese, waddling across the savannah and crossing the road right in front of our vehicle before sliding into its muddy pool to cool off.

Although I personally considered the hippo to be the highlight of the day, possibly due to their odd image and body, another sight which must certainly rank as one of the more unexpected sights was that of two mating lions. Certainly this event took up a huge amount of space on Mayhems memory card, his camera managing 6 frames a second, sufficient that he was able to display for the girls, at length, essentially a movie of the event – combined with his own unique commentary

This romantic tryst between the lions sealed an overall theme for one of Mayhems photography portfolios, apparently focusing exclusively upon pictures of animal’s bottoms and the genitalia – including various episodes of monkeys interfering with themselves much to the elation of the girls. This certainly prove to provide a stark contrast to his other portfolios of truly artistic wild life shots, fashion/catalogue photograph sessions with the girls against a magnificent African sunrise, and Oakley pseudo-promotional photographs of both of ourselves “Looking good even in the brightness of an early morning sunrise”. The next question is can he manage to convince them that a swimsuit photo session is a good idea? - Doubtful

We survived the day with only a few minor lurches towards the vehicles grab handles, not that the vehicle became truly unsteady again, but that our confidence was still sorely bruised, and frankly did not recover for the remainder of the trip

We arrived at the Ngorogororororo crater (that’s a terrible word, its like Banana, it never ends), where we were to pitch camp that evening. We arrived for about 5pm, just as the sun was beginning its descent towards the horizon, providing us with sufficient light to see the crater spread out below us. While the lions the previous night had provided an exciting night in the tents, certainly this view was far far superior, especially with the giant African tree sitting in the middle of the camp which we loosely grouped our tents around.

On this site, there were two toilets, one near to the tents, but frankly quite grotty, and newly built toilet blocks on the far side of the camp, separated from the main camp by a small field. It was that field that was to provide the most fun that night. We were advised to pay attention to noises that night around our tents, as it was quite likely that we would have wild pigs entering that camp, and for that reason we should ensure that all our tents were secured, that there was no food left in the tents and no shoes etc left outside. Shortly after we had been given this warning, as we sat around our dining table under the stars, a dark shape shot between the tents signalling the first pig to enter the camp – and associated with much girls screaming – mainly from Mayhem!

The anxiety level was raised amongst the girls during walks to the toilet, were torches were used to scan into the darkness, not to find our way – for the toilet block provided a sufficient beacon to aim for – but to locate eyes glinting back in the darkness, which we would then endeavour to give a wide birth. Our final journey to the toilets that night was cut short by a pair of eyes about 20ft away, close enough to show the outline of a large animal, which the girls were convinced was a lion, however our guide reassured them that it was most probably a buffalo, but that they themselves are quite dangerous, and that we should be wary during the night of any other trips to the loo – this was reinforced by a disclosure that the camp, unlike the previous night had guards, ARMED guards. Now the previous night we slept out with lions, and there were no armed guards, so this admission did really make us wonder what might be lurking in the forest fringes around the edge of the camp.

Again we arouse early in the morning, just as dawn was breaking, even before sunrise. This gave us the chance to properly wake, and get breakfast underway before witnessing the most magnificent sunrise to date. At least a third of the camp seemed to be sitting out on the slopes, cameras in hand, filming the sun as it climbed from a golden sliver to a burnished disc of fire rising above the crater, casting a magnificent early morning light across the camp, providing the impetus for Mayhem’s morning catalogue shoot. Certainly on return to our house in Arusha, the girls general, low level displeasure at Mayhem’s constant photography of them, waned as they crowded round to see on his computer how flattering a picture he had been able to take in that morning light.

After Mayhem had finished his shoot, the camp was broken and we set of for the final day of Safari. No longer would we be scouting around the edge of the crater, and viewing it at a distance, but actually descending the steep 2000ft walls into the crater itself.