I quickly got undressed when I heard him call out. "I'm here! Are you ready?" I hurriedly kicked off my socks and the rest of my clothes, slipping on my flip flops. I didn't want to make him wait; after all he was doing me a favor. "One second please," I begged. I pulled the curtain back and stepped in the shower, nervously proclaiming "OK, I'm ready!" and he let me have it.
I waited a few seconds in the chilly air, until the hot water finally started pouring down on me. I lathered up quickly, not knowing how long it would last. I shouted back to the nice man "OK, you can stop for now. But I need to rinse still, so don't go away yet!" He couldn't hear me. "How much hot water do I have left?" I had to repeat a couple times, loud enough for everyone in the camp to hear. "10 liters," came the response finally. I realized I asked the wrong question, because I had no idea how much shower you can take with 10 liters of water. Is that enough to savor the warm feeling, to let the water run down your face and the back of your neck for a few seconds? Or did I have to hurry and risk being left with soapy hair? After another minute, I shouted back to him "OK, hot water, please!" I didn't take any chances. I rinsed as fast as I could, but still felt as good as new. After a day long game drive in the hot Serengeti, I was happy to be clean.
"Thank you, I'm done! But now can you do my wife?"
I guess I should explain that the guy was standing OUTSIDE of the tent. Every time we'd ask for hot water, he'd pour some in a small bucket, use a pulley to raise the bucket high enough so gravity would force the water down a tube and into the shower stall which was a separate part of our tent. He couldn't see inside (I hope), so it wasn't as creepy as it might sound. But it also wasn't the least awkward thing I've ever done, shouting to a stranger to "give me more" while naked in a shower.
********************************************************************************
We learned a lot on our recent safari in Tanzania, visiting Arusha NP, Serengeti NP, and Ngorongoro Crater, so we thought we’d share a few tips. Not only on how to make your shower the least awkward as possible, but generally the best way to survive a safari.
The first assumption is that you actually want to survive a safari. If you prefer to get chewed up by a pack of hyenas, trampled by a disgruntled buffalo, or gored in the face by a rhino, all for an awesome viral video, that's also understandable.
The most important thing is to hire a guide to whom you can ask stupid questions and bother with things he/she has heard a thousand times already. They will do their best to act interested when you excitedly tell them you saw a monkey scratching his butt or an elephant rolling in the mud. Or a gazelle just standing there. Imagine if someone started yelling to you how they just saw a Polish guy eating pierogi. I see this every day, but they don't see it often in Africa. A POLISH GUY! HE WAS WITH HIS BABY AND DRINKING WATER!!!!! AND THEN HE LAID DOWN AND IT WAS SO CUTE!!!!! Now YOU try to act interested when someone says that. Not easy. That's how hard they work to make you feel special.
Guides are also important because somehow they have GPS in their brains to get around the parks without any signs or directions. I felt like we were driving in circles the whole time, but Ben (from Shemeji Safari Tours) always knew exactly where we were, where the animals were, and how much fuel we had left in the car to get home. Actually, maybe we WERE driving in circles.
Now that the obvious point is out of the way, here are our tips.
Swahili language
Here are a few words you need to know:
-Jambo means "hello", and everyone will say it to you. They are not calling you fat (jumbo), nor offering you a fruit smoothie (Jamba juice). Smile and offer an awkward “heyyyy” like I always do.
-Mambo is the plural of jambo and used interchangeably. I laughed about 50 times thinking that "mambo jambo" are real words. I also enjoyed the 5th time someone said “mambo” to us. “That was Mambo number 5!” I giggling to myself.
-Simba is the Swahili word for "lion". This leaves me with mixed feelings since it means our favorite Disney hero had a pretty boring name. Is that the best that Mufasa could think of? It's like if we called our kids "child" and "human". Are they gonna tell me now that Sebastian is French for “worrisome crab” and Mulan is Mandarin for “awesome warrior princess who sometimes dresses like a boy”?
-Safari refers to any kind of "journey"; not only for animal watching. So I decided to call my daily walks to work "safaris".
-Asante is “thank you”. Asante for reading this far.
-Shilling is the local currency. No wonder the waiter ran away when I offered to give him 10,000 “shingles”
-Karibu means “welcome”. You will hear this a lot because the people (in Tanzania at least) are incredibly welcoming
-Rafiki means “friend”. I like this reference because I loved Rafiki in the Lion King. I got the warm and fuzzies the first time I watched the opening scene when he walked thru the crowd all serious and important, and gave Mufasa a warm hug.
-Pumbaa doesn’t mean anything but everyone calls warthogs “pumbaas”. This is fun, but why don’t they call any other animals from Lion King their character’s names? Timon? Nala? Zazu?
Clothing and shelter
When you're on safari, you are obviously spending a lot of time in nature. Wear clothes you don’t mind getting dirty or stained by the pen you used filling out the immigration form at the airport but lost the cap and put it in your pocket. Also, safari trucks have tops or sides that open up so the dirt is always coming into the car. You’ll have a nice brown or red layer on everything. Please also cover your camera and phone to prevent damage.
Obviously you want to wear stylish and breathable khaki hiking pants, which can convert into shorts. They look cool, are temperature cool, cover your legs when necessary, and are easy to wash and dry overnight. Don’t worry if they’re too long because I can show you how to use rubber bands around your ankles to prevent them from dragging on the ground. This also prevents mosquitoes from sneaking up your pant legs. Maybe consider a bigger size because you will eat a lot and get no exercise because you’re sitting in the car for 10 hours a day. You will probably get fat.
A light weight, breathable long sleeve safari shirt is optional if you want to look even cooler. I'm still not sure if it's better to have the same exact color as your pants, or to have some variety. You could actually survive with just t-shirts in the day and a sweatshirt or light jacket at night. But please also consider if your arms might get sunburned, and if so, having sleeves could be useful. I prefer technical running race shirts, to show off achievements from my past, but also because they’re easier than cotton to wash, dry and reuse.
If staying in a tented lodge (a huge tent with a bathroom and bed), you might need long sleeves when sleeping. It gets cold at night in the bush and if a hyena or buffalo comes into your tent, you might need to run outside to save yourself while your wife is still trying to find her jacket. This didn’t happen to us, but I was prepared.
Alternatively you can buy a full safari brimmed hat that you will probably never wear again after the trip, because you're self conscious that people would ask you why you are wearing that stupid hat to a baseball game or to the shopping mall. If you don’t have a full brimmed hat, bring a scarf or something to cover your neck in the sun. Obviously sunblock is also important, unless you don’t like the feeling of sunblock on your skin, in which case you can just get burned and complain about it later. Not that this happened to anyone on our trip whose name starts with a Z.
We saw people wearing hiking boots, but we just wore running shoes. Unless you plan some hard core hiking (or it's really wet), you don't need anything special. And bring flip flops for inside your tent or your room, as well as in the showers. They aren’t dirty, but they don’t feel super clean either. Ideally, steal some house slippers from the hotel where you have a layover (I recommend Doha) and use those.
Protection of self and property
If you go in the winter, the shops in your home town might not be selling mosquito spray, so you should definitely pay a lot of money to buy at least four different types of spray online, because you’re not sure if 50% DEET, 25% DEET or non DEET is more effective and better for your skin and clothes. It's better to just buy everything, and pay a crap ton for fast shipping. A pro tip is to spray repellent on old strips of cloth and wrap these around your ankles and wrists (seriously). It's good to overreact because in the end you might only use 1/3 of one bottle, so now you have several unused bottles of spray to use for the next several exotic trips.
Every hotel and rest area we came across had western toilets and stocked toilet paper, but you never know when you might have to squat in the literal bush. I actually peed when staring a lion in the face. Not in my pants though, I'm just saying that you never know when you might have to go. You might want to carry some extra TP around to not recreate problems from previous trips, in case you’ve ever had such problems on the side of a hill next to a highway in Georgia (the country). Also bring wet wipes to wash up before and after eating picnic lunches in the middle of the park.
And chocolate melts in your pocket when it’s hot out. Oops.
Preparation of your mind and body
Do some squats to train before the trip. You will stand up from your seat to look out of the top of the car at least 50,000 times.
Get your vaccinations and bring malaria pills. It turns out that nobody in Tanzania or Zanzibar checked our vaccinations, but apparently they could have. Nothing is actually required unless you come from a place that has yellow fever. You usually have to take malaria pills for a week after the trip is over, so that's fun. Luckily we didn't have any stomach problems during the trip, but after we got home, the malarone pills were beating up our stomachs.
You might not always have high water pressure and hot water. To prepare for this, you should practice taking showers with cold water from slow dripping faucets just so you won’t be disappointed. Or just don’t wash your hair for 5 days, like some people in our group of two, and see what happens. Practice pouring hot water on each other from a bucket, just like they did to us in the Serengeti.
Research the animals, country and culture a little bit before you go. Be prepared for intelligent conversations with the guide, not assuming his country is the same as every other country in Africa. For example, if you tell a story that starts with “when I was in South Africa....” your guide might be thinking “who cares, this is not South Africa”. He also probably doesn’t have any thoughts on vacations to the Egyptian seaside. We know, because we asked.
Be prepared to be humbled if you think you’ll see animals before your guide does. I tried to be competitive and announce animals first, but usually it ended with him saying “there’s a leopard”, me pretending to see it at first, then him knowing from my voice that I lied when I said “oh ya I see it”. So he’d take a photo with my camera, zoom in on the picture and he’d show me the spot where it was. Sometimes I still didn’t see it.
And don't call out “lion!” until you're reasonably sure it's not a termite hill.
What else to bring
You’ll need a UK power adapter, and I suggest one with multiple USB ports to be able to charge many things at once. Some lodges may have limited hours on when you can charge stuff, but the safari truck should have an outlet you can use on the road.
Bring the longest zoom lens for your camera that a friend will give you. We got a 70-300mm lens from Philippe and it was awesome. I also think that this size is the limit of when you are still cool, but not a jackass. If your camera lens is so long that when hanging from your neck it hits you in the balls when you walk, you deserve it.
Your guide might have binoculars, but if you have some laying around at home, bring them (ya right, who has binoculars at home?)
Bring a flashlight if staying in the bush. It's creepy to see all of the glowing eyes staring at you when you shine your light into the bushes at night. But addicting.
You'll need cash for souvenirs and tips for the guide and hotel staff. This is important, as the staff are SUPER helpful and they work hard for these tips. Usually there is a shared tip box, which the staff splits so you don’t have to tip each individual. Each person should plan on giving $10-15 per day for the hotels and guide, each. It's worth it!
An alarm clock for when you have to wake up at 5 am will come in handy. It will happen more often than you want.
Your favorite wife or friend can make the experience more fun, and consider a stuffed animal because they also have feelings and appreciate being around other animals.
Practical tips
Ask for the WiFi password so you can upload photos and everyone at home will be annoyed at the constant posting to social media. Though the WiFi doesn’t always work so well, and sometimes not at all. But don’t worry, there’s plenty of other stuff to do, like spending 30 minutes trying to get the WiFi to work.
Stay awake in the car when driving. You don’t wanna miss a thing. Unless you like naps more than watching humping zebras.
Tell the hotel chefs if you have any dietary restrictions so they can make something for dinner and for your boxed lunch (the food was really good). Lactose intolerance plus eating milk and cheese in the car does not equal a happy 8 hour game drive.
Your safari guide will provide you with water, so make sure you drink it. It’s easy to get dehydrated, and seeing millions of animals can distract you from drinking.
Consider the time of year you are going. Ask the local tour companies if you aren't sure. We went at the end of rainy season which meant chance of rain, but also meant everything was super green. It was gorgeous. We even brought ponchos but luckily didn’t need them.
Animal observations
Don’t leave food where baboons can get to them (like in your tent), and be careful when eating outside as they can run up and steal your stuff from right in front of you. And don’t feed animals on purpose, even cute little birds that look at you with sweet eyes while you eat a piece of chicken on your picnic. Don’t even think about touching the animals (ahem, Zosia)
Lions don’t respond to “here kitty kitty."
It's worth planning a visit to correspond with the wildebeest migration, and where most of them will be during that time of year. In the right places, you can look anywhere and see hundreds, if not thousands of them without even trying. In fact, we saw so many that they were burned into our corneas....I still saw them when closing my eyes for bed.
Practice touching and being around creepy bugs and spiders so you don’t get scared when they land on your shoulder, your dinner plate, or your bed. Or in the shower. And practice sleeping next to a heavy snorer to prepare you for the noises that come from outside your tent at night.
On the first day you will ask the driver to stop so you can take pictures of every antelope, zebra and monkey that you see. After that you won’t even notice them and will scoff at other “first-day safari tourists” who keep pulling over to spend 5 minutes taking photos of a gazelle. Nobody cares about gazelles after the first day.
Leopards are shy - they are usually laying high up in the trees and are hard to see.
Hippos are assholes - they twirl their tail when pooping so it sprays all over everyone nearby.
Giraffes are elegant - I couldn't stop starting, no matter how we saw. But you still can’t ride them.
Buffalo are dangerous - they attack people because we don’t respect them enough. They are the “nobody cares about seeing them” animal from the Big 5 (the Big 5 being lion, leopard, elephant, rhino and buffalo). See, all of them get you excited except buffalo. But when there were a bunch sleeping outside the balcony of our hotel room in Ngorongoro, that was cool.
All baby animals are the cutest thing ever. Especially pumbaas.
Wildebeest and zebras are a good pair - the reason they migrate together is that wildebeest know how to follow the rain, and Zebras are better at remembering the way back. Every year, 2 million wildebeest travel from Tanzania to Kenya and back, chasing the good grass, as they say in Washington and Colorado. The migration also affects predators like lions, because they face a shortage of food when the wildebeest disappear. At least that's what David Attenborough said on the Nature's Great Events documentary (not to be confused with Richard Attenborough from Jurassic Park). They showed video of some really skinny lions, so it must be true. The wildebeest are still finding ways to screw over the lions ever since they trampled Mufasa.
The last tip is to head to the beach for some relaxation after several days on the go. I mean, why wouldn't you?
I waited a few seconds in the chilly air, until the hot water finally started pouring down on me. I lathered up quickly, not knowing how long it would last. I shouted back to the nice man "OK, you can stop for now. But I need to rinse still, so don't go away yet!" He couldn't hear me. "How much hot water do I have left?" I had to repeat a couple times, loud enough for everyone in the camp to hear. "10 liters," came the response finally. I realized I asked the wrong question, because I had no idea how much shower you can take with 10 liters of water. Is that enough to savor the warm feeling, to let the water run down your face and the back of your neck for a few seconds? Or did I have to hurry and risk being left with soapy hair? After another minute, I shouted back to him "OK, hot water, please!" I didn't take any chances. I rinsed as fast as I could, but still felt as good as new. After a day long game drive in the hot Serengeti, I was happy to be clean.
"Thank you, I'm done! But now can you do my wife?"
I guess I should explain that the guy was standing OUTSIDE of the tent. Every time we'd ask for hot water, he'd pour some in a small bucket, use a pulley to raise the bucket high enough so gravity would force the water down a tube and into the shower stall which was a separate part of our tent. He couldn't see inside (I hope), so it wasn't as creepy as it might sound. But it also wasn't the least awkward thing I've ever done, shouting to a stranger to "give me more" while naked in a shower.
The black tank is for toilet/sink water, while the small bucket on a pulley was used to deliver hot water for the shower in the tent
********************************************************************************
We learned a lot on our recent safari in Tanzania, visiting Arusha NP, Serengeti NP, and Ngorongoro Crater, so we thought we’d share a few tips. Not only on how to make your shower the least awkward as possible, but generally the best way to survive a safari.
The first assumption is that you actually want to survive a safari. If you prefer to get chewed up by a pack of hyenas, trampled by a disgruntled buffalo, or gored in the face by a rhino, all for an awesome viral video, that's also understandable.
The most important thing is to hire a guide to whom you can ask stupid questions and bother with things he/she has heard a thousand times already. They will do their best to act interested when you excitedly tell them you saw a monkey scratching his butt or an elephant rolling in the mud. Or a gazelle just standing there. Imagine if someone started yelling to you how they just saw a Polish guy eating pierogi. I see this every day, but they don't see it often in Africa. A POLISH GUY! HE WAS WITH HIS BABY AND DRINKING WATER!!!!! AND THEN HE LAID DOWN AND IT WAS SO CUTE!!!!! Now YOU try to act interested when someone says that. Not easy. That's how hard they work to make you feel special.
Guides are also important because somehow they have GPS in their brains to get around the parks without any signs or directions. I felt like we were driving in circles the whole time, but Ben (from Shemeji Safari Tours) always knew exactly where we were, where the animals were, and how much fuel we had left in the car to get home. Actually, maybe we WERE driving in circles.
Cheers to our guide, Ben!
Now that the obvious point is out of the way, here are our tips.
Swahili language
Here are a few words you need to know:
-Jambo means "hello", and everyone will say it to you. They are not calling you fat (jumbo), nor offering you a fruit smoothie (Jamba juice). Smile and offer an awkward “heyyyy” like I always do.
-Mambo is the plural of jambo and used interchangeably. I laughed about 50 times thinking that "mambo jambo" are real words. I also enjoyed the 5th time someone said “mambo” to us. “That was Mambo number 5!” I giggling to myself.
-Simba is the Swahili word for "lion". This leaves me with mixed feelings since it means our favorite Disney hero had a pretty boring name. Is that the best that Mufasa could think of? It's like if we called our kids "child" and "human". Are they gonna tell me now that Sebastian is French for “worrisome crab” and Mulan is Mandarin for “awesome warrior princess who sometimes dresses like a boy”?
-Safari refers to any kind of "journey"; not only for animal watching. So I decided to call my daily walks to work "safaris".
-Asante is “thank you”. Asante for reading this far.
-Shilling is the local currency. No wonder the waiter ran away when I offered to give him 10,000 “shingles”
-Karibu means “welcome”. You will hear this a lot because the people (in Tanzania at least) are incredibly welcoming
-Rafiki means “friend”. I like this reference because I loved Rafiki in the Lion King. I got the warm and fuzzies the first time I watched the opening scene when he walked thru the crowd all serious and important, and gave Mufasa a warm hug.
-Pumbaa doesn’t mean anything but everyone calls warthogs “pumbaas”. This is fun, but why don’t they call any other animals from Lion King their character’s names? Timon? Nala? Zazu?
The little pumbaas were so adorable!
Clothing and shelter
When you're on safari, you are obviously spending a lot of time in nature. Wear clothes you don’t mind getting dirty or stained by the pen you used filling out the immigration form at the airport but lost the cap and put it in your pocket. Also, safari trucks have tops or sides that open up so the dirt is always coming into the car. You’ll have a nice brown or red layer on everything. Please also cover your camera and phone to prevent damage.
Obviously you want to wear stylish and breathable khaki hiking pants, which can convert into shorts. They look cool, are temperature cool, cover your legs when necessary, and are easy to wash and dry overnight. Don’t worry if they’re too long because I can show you how to use rubber bands around your ankles to prevent them from dragging on the ground. This also prevents mosquitoes from sneaking up your pant legs. Maybe consider a bigger size because you will eat a lot and get no exercise because you’re sitting in the car for 10 hours a day. You will probably get fat.
How cool do we look?
My own brilliant invention. You're welcome. Except wear long socks.
A light weight, breathable long sleeve safari shirt is optional if you want to look even cooler. I'm still not sure if it's better to have the same exact color as your pants, or to have some variety. You could actually survive with just t-shirts in the day and a sweatshirt or light jacket at night. But please also consider if your arms might get sunburned, and if so, having sleeves could be useful. I prefer technical running race shirts, to show off achievements from my past, but also because they’re easier than cotton to wash, dry and reuse.
If staying in a tented lodge (a huge tent with a bathroom and bed), you might need long sleeves when sleeping. It gets cold at night in the bush and if a hyena or buffalo comes into your tent, you might need to run outside to save yourself while your wife is still trying to find her jacket. This didn’t happen to us, but I was prepared.
Sunglasses and a hat from your favorite sports team are important, just in case someone notices it and you can talk about your favorite sports. But we wouldn’t know because nobody wanted to talk to me about the Huskies, nor Zosia about the Mariners.
Go local sports teams!
Alternatively you can buy a full safari brimmed hat that you will probably never wear again after the trip, because you're self conscious that people would ask you why you are wearing that stupid hat to a baseball game or to the shopping mall. If you don’t have a full brimmed hat, bring a scarf or something to cover your neck in the sun. Obviously sunblock is also important, unless you don’t like the feeling of sunblock on your skin, in which case you can just get burned and complain about it later. Not that this happened to anyone on our trip whose name starts with a Z.
We saw people wearing hiking boots, but we just wore running shoes. Unless you plan some hard core hiking (or it's really wet), you don't need anything special. And bring flip flops for inside your tent or your room, as well as in the showers. They aren’t dirty, but they don’t feel super clean either. Ideally, steal some house slippers from the hotel where you have a layover (I recommend Doha) and use those.
Protection of self and property
If you go in the winter, the shops in your home town might not be selling mosquito spray, so you should definitely pay a lot of money to buy at least four different types of spray online, because you’re not sure if 50% DEET, 25% DEET or non DEET is more effective and better for your skin and clothes. It's better to just buy everything, and pay a crap ton for fast shipping. A pro tip is to spray repellent on old strips of cloth and wrap these around your ankles and wrists (seriously). It's good to overreact because in the end you might only use 1/3 of one bottle, so now you have several unused bottles of spray to use for the next several exotic trips.
We actually have a fifth unused bottle as well. SMH.
Every hotel and rest area we came across had western toilets and stocked toilet paper, but you never know when you might have to squat in the literal bush. I actually peed when staring a lion in the face. Not in my pants though, I'm just saying that you never know when you might have to go. You might want to carry some extra TP around to not recreate problems from previous trips, in case you’ve ever had such problems on the side of a hill next to a highway in Georgia (the country). Also bring wet wipes to wash up before and after eating picnic lunches in the middle of the park.
And chocolate melts in your pocket when it’s hot out. Oops.
Preparation of your mind and body
Do some squats to train before the trip. You will stand up from your seat to look out of the top of the car at least 50,000 times.
You'll stand up a lot to look out of the open roof and pretend you're petting a lion
Get your vaccinations and bring malaria pills. It turns out that nobody in Tanzania or Zanzibar checked our vaccinations, but apparently they could have. Nothing is actually required unless you come from a place that has yellow fever. You usually have to take malaria pills for a week after the trip is over, so that's fun. Luckily we didn't have any stomach problems during the trip, but after we got home, the malarone pills were beating up our stomachs.
You might not always have high water pressure and hot water. To prepare for this, you should practice taking showers with cold water from slow dripping faucets just so you won’t be disappointed. Or just don’t wash your hair for 5 days, like some people in our group of two, and see what happens. Practice pouring hot water on each other from a bucket, just like they did to us in the Serengeti.
Research the animals, country and culture a little bit before you go. Be prepared for intelligent conversations with the guide, not assuming his country is the same as every other country in Africa. For example, if you tell a story that starts with “when I was in South Africa....” your guide might be thinking “who cares, this is not South Africa”. He also probably doesn’t have any thoughts on vacations to the Egyptian seaside. We know, because we asked.
Be prepared to be humbled if you think you’ll see animals before your guide does. I tried to be competitive and announce animals first, but usually it ended with him saying “there’s a leopard”, me pretending to see it at first, then him knowing from my voice that I lied when I said “oh ya I see it”. So he’d take a photo with my camera, zoom in on the picture and he’d show me the spot where it was. Sometimes I still didn’t see it.
Ben saw this leopard from a kilometer away, and when we got close, I still couldn't see it. Can you?
And don't call out “lion!” until you're reasonably sure it's not a termite hill.
What else to bring
You’ll need a UK power adapter, and I suggest one with multiple USB ports to be able to charge many things at once. Some lodges may have limited hours on when you can charge stuff, but the safari truck should have an outlet you can use on the road.
Bring the longest zoom lens for your camera that a friend will give you. We got a 70-300mm lens from Philippe and it was awesome. I also think that this size is the limit of when you are still cool, but not a jackass. If your camera lens is so long that when hanging from your neck it hits you in the balls when you walk, you deserve it.
With a big zoom, you will see this...
...instead of this.
Your guide might have binoculars, but if you have some laying around at home, bring them (ya right, who has binoculars at home?)
Bring a flashlight if staying in the bush. It's creepy to see all of the glowing eyes staring at you when you shine your light into the bushes at night. But addicting.
You'll need cash for souvenirs and tips for the guide and hotel staff. This is important, as the staff are SUPER helpful and they work hard for these tips. Usually there is a shared tip box, which the staff splits so you don’t have to tip each individual. Each person should plan on giving $10-15 per day for the hotels and guide, each. It's worth it!
An alarm clock for when you have to wake up at 5 am will come in handy. It will happen more often than you want.
Your favorite wife or friend can make the experience more fun, and consider a stuffed animal because they also have feelings and appreciate being around other animals.
Your animals want to meet new friends
Practical tips
Ask for the WiFi password so you can upload photos and everyone at home will be annoyed at the constant posting to social media. Though the WiFi doesn’t always work so well, and sometimes not at all. But don’t worry, there’s plenty of other stuff to do, like spending 30 minutes trying to get the WiFi to work.
Stay awake in the car when driving. You don’t wanna miss a thing. Unless you like naps more than watching humping zebras.
Tell the hotel chefs if you have any dietary restrictions so they can make something for dinner and for your boxed lunch (the food was really good). Lactose intolerance plus eating milk and cheese in the car does not equal a happy 8 hour game drive.
Your safari guide will provide you with water, so make sure you drink it. It’s easy to get dehydrated, and seeing millions of animals can distract you from drinking.
Consider the time of year you are going. Ask the local tour companies if you aren't sure. We went at the end of rainy season which meant chance of rain, but also meant everything was super green. It was gorgeous. We even brought ponchos but luckily didn’t need them.
You might need to bring a guy with a gun if you're walking around the bush
Animal observations
Don’t leave food where baboons can get to them (like in your tent), and be careful when eating outside as they can run up and steal your stuff from right in front of you. And don’t feed animals on purpose, even cute little birds that look at you with sweet eyes while you eat a piece of chicken on your picnic. Don’t even think about touching the animals (ahem, Zosia)
Lions don’t respond to “here kitty kitty."
It's worth planning a visit to correspond with the wildebeest migration, and where most of them will be during that time of year. In the right places, you can look anywhere and see hundreds, if not thousands of them without even trying. In fact, we saw so many that they were burned into our corneas....I still saw them when closing my eyes for bed.
Practice touching and being around creepy bugs and spiders so you don’t get scared when they land on your shoulder, your dinner plate, or your bed. Or in the shower. And practice sleeping next to a heavy snorer to prepare you for the noises that come from outside your tent at night.
On the first day you will ask the driver to stop so you can take pictures of every antelope, zebra and monkey that you see. After that you won’t even notice them and will scoff at other “first-day safari tourists” who keep pulling over to spend 5 minutes taking photos of a gazelle. Nobody cares about gazelles after the first day.
Frolicking lion cubs are more interesting than watching an antelope eating grass
Leopards are shy - they are usually laying high up in the trees and are hard to see.
Hippos are assholes - they twirl their tail when pooping so it sprays all over everyone nearby.
Giraffes are elegant - I couldn't stop starting, no matter how we saw. But you still can’t ride them.
Buffalo are dangerous - they attack people because we don’t respect them enough. They are the “nobody cares about seeing them” animal from the Big 5 (the Big 5 being lion, leopard, elephant, rhino and buffalo). See, all of them get you excited except buffalo. But when there were a bunch sleeping outside the balcony of our hotel room in Ngorongoro, that was cool.
All baby animals are the cutest thing ever. Especially pumbaas.
Wildebeest and zebras are a good pair - the reason they migrate together is that wildebeest know how to follow the rain, and Zebras are better at remembering the way back. Every year, 2 million wildebeest travel from Tanzania to Kenya and back, chasing the good grass, as they say in Washington and Colorado. The migration also affects predators like lions, because they face a shortage of food when the wildebeest disappear. At least that's what David Attenborough said on the Nature's Great Events documentary (not to be confused with Richard Attenborough from Jurassic Park). They showed video of some really skinny lions, so it must be true. The wildebeest are still finding ways to screw over the lions ever since they trampled Mufasa.
The last tip is to head to the beach for some relaxation after several days on the go. I mean, why wouldn't you?
Zanzibar is waiting...
And if you haven't seen it yet, here's the music video from our trip:
Andy's Tanzanian dream
