Safari – Meserani & Mtowambu – Saturday 28 April

We arrived a bit later than expected so instead of going through the snake park yesterday we did it today. It was a bit creepy – massive snakes, lots of them highly venomous or ready to crush you to death. Bit icky really. Fortunately they were behind really really thick glass. Still looked icky though.

One of the snake park employees, a snake park ranger maybe?, well he gave us a tour, explained to us about the different snakes, and then took us to look at the other animals. There were crocodiles (nile crocodiles I think) plus leopard tortoises and many other creatures – some much cuter than others.

Then he kindly offered to let us hold one of the snakes. I wasn’t too excited by this prospect! Anyways, the guy went to get the snake and I was standing there talking to someone waiting for him to come back. Aidan and Colin were about 3m further up the path than me and they saw the snake man coming up behind me. The thought it quite funny when I jumped 3 feet in the air when I realised the snake was all of 3cm from my arm! I quickly scurried down the path so I was behind Aidan etc.

Matt held the snake straight away – not a care in the world. Then Heidi held it and Hugo. I decided if they could hold the snake and not freak out then I could too. So I walked to the front and Hugo handed the snake to me. I was a bit concerned to start with – gross idea holding a snake, but it wasn’t slimy at all. Felt like rubber, not hot, not cold, not slimy. Not at all as you’d expect them to be. So I’ve held a live snake – even if it was just a tree snake. I think nearly everyone had a go in the end... it was only a little snake, maybe a metre long and about as fat as a 20c piece.

The tour all done we piled back into the truck and drove to Lake Manyara at Mtowambu. Here we stayed at a proper camp site with showers etc. We could have upgraded to a cabin for USD$30, but we thought everyone was going to stay camping so we stayed camping. In the end Aubrey and Dee upgraded and so did Fiona & Hugo. Showering and going to the loo on crutches is challenging enough but camp sight showers really don’t lend themselves to people with physical issues :)

It wasn’t until after we’d set up the tents that Alex advised us that Mtowambu basically means mosquito river!! So we all dosed up heavily with Rid and made sure we had long clothes on so we didn’t get too eaten alive.

Once we’d got the tents set up we decided to brave the stalls outside the camp site. It was a trade off really – were we interested enough in the prospect of souvenirs to put up with the harassment? We decided to give it a go. We were only about 500m from the campsite gate so we could always turn back. We wandered round looking at all the stuff. There was lots of nice stuff but as we were only at the beginning of the trip we were all a bit concerned about stuff not surviving the journey so no one really bought anything.

There wasn’t much to do between our shopping excursion and the game drive we were going on so we went to the bar in the camp site. It was really funny – we were sitting there having a drink and chatting and then two employees came and sat on the couch near the TV and turned it on. Then they turned the volume right up. We got a bit louder so we could hear each other and they cranked the volume some more to drown us out. It was extra funny because they were watching some sort of soapie – it was so incredibly pathetic – the storyline (and that’s being generous) was worse than anything Days of Our Lives could dream up, but add to that it was really badly dubbed. We think it might have been Spanish or something originally but dubbed in English it was very hillarious.

Anyways, next we went on a game drive through the Mtowambu game park.

It was so cool. This was our first real look at the wild animals. We drove into the game park and had to go quite a ways before we saw any animals but then we got to a little lake and there were Hippos. We were a little way from the edge of the water but I think that’s because the road is set so when it’s been raining you’re not driving through the water! We got some awesome photos though. My camera is tops. I went to full 10x zoom and managed to get a picture with the Hippo out of the water and its mouth wide open. Looks so cool.

Then Hungry Man drove us to a viewing area. It was kinda on top of a big hill so you could see all across the game range. We took some nice pictures from there and then we got Alex to take one of us all together. We wanted one with Alex in it too but both Solo and Hungry Man had wandered off so we just got one of the rest of us.

On the drive out of the game range we saw an elephant. It was only about a meter away from the truck, but he kept hiding behind the bushes and pointing his bum at us. We got a couple of good pics, but not too many.

When we got back to the campsite we had another fantastic meal. I can’t believe how good the food it. We were all saying that we were expecting a sausage in a bun and instead we’re getting two course masterpieces! I guess the further we get from civilization the less fancy the meals will get.

After dinner we all re-dosed ourselves with Rid and went to the bar to play cards. Last night at the snake park we’d gone to bed pretty early but Colin had stayed up and introduced himself to another tour group and they taught him to play a card game called asshole. So tonight we got my cards and Hugo’s and Colin taught us how to play. It was really funny. The whole 11 of us played and we played until they kicked us out of the pub at 10:30pm. The basic premise is that you try to get rid of all your cards as soon as possible. The last player left with cards is called the asshole. The cards get dealt out so everyone has the same number of card. Then the person to the left of the dealer for the first round puts down a card or a pair of cards and the person to the left of them either puts down a higher card, or passes. This goes round and round until someone is out of cards. The first person out of cards is the President, the second is Vice President then the second last is the vice bum and the person left holding the last cards is the bum. The next round the bum has to give the president their two best cards and the president gives the bum the two worst cards they have. The vice’s exchange one card. After the first round the bum always leads – which is lucky coz it’s the only chance you’ve got to not always end up as the bum!

It was so funny – Dee would always say Bum not Asshole and everyone kept saying there was sibling collusion coz Aidan and I were sitting next to each other. But then Aidan was the first Asshole. It was very funny. A great game coz everyone got into it. But I think it was better because there were so many of us no one got stuck as the asshole round after round so no one got sick of the game. We must have played for over 2 hours. It was great fun.