Day 8: Serval Wildlife Reserve (Clare)

Wednesday is officially excursion day at the Esperanto conference, which means that everyone is out on a day trip rather than sitting in lectures. Tim was taking advantage of the day off to go on the Lake Manyara trip which I did yesterday. I, meanwhile, had signed up to an excursion called "View of Kilimanjaro". Tim's excursion had the early start of 07.30, but mine didn't require me to arrive until 09.45 so I had a nice relaxed start to the morning.

I'd taken a lot of photos of animals at Lake Manyara yesterday, but Tim did a better job of capturing in photo what it's like driving out of Arusha. In a word: chaotic!

The traffic is an experience in itself. There are a surprising number of buses with religious slogans.

Then there are the people carrying all manner of improbable things on the back of motorbikes...

...and the women balancing what look like incredibly heavy loads on their heads.

Once you get further out of town there are people driving herds of cattle...

...and some of them are in incredible outfits.

At the point at which my excursion set off at 09.45 it was very cloudy in Arusha. As I queued for the minibus that was going to take me on the excursion, there was even a light drizzle. The excursion might have been called "View of Kilimanjaro", but unless there was a significant improvement in the weather then it felt unlikely that I was going to see any of Kilimanjaro at all.

The excursion set off, with the organisers reassuring us that it would take at least two hours to get there and that the weather was likely to improve by then. In the end it took closer to three hours, with a combination of rather rickety buses and unpaved roads, but even after all that time there was still no sign of Kilimanjaro. Given the level of cloud it wasn't even worth us going to the viewpoint.

When I signed up to the excursion, the itinerary had been that we would go to the Kilimanjaro viewpoint and have a picnic lunch. There was then some mention of a visit to a nature reserve in the afternoon, which I hadn't really given much thought to. We ended up driving straight there.

Once we arrived we left the bus and walked through an area with some traditional Maasai houses.

Apparently it's possible to pay to stay overnight in some of these.

I could faintly see a mountain in the background, but it wasn't Kilimanjaro.

My group was taken in a large circular building for a safety briefing.

We were given instructions like "Don't stand behind the giraffes in case they kick you" and I started to feel a little bit confused about what was going on.

Slightly perplexed, we all followed the guide down a path and into the main part of the nature reserve.

It wasn't long before I saw my first animals; a group of wildebeest.

Just past the wildebeest I caught sight of my first zebra...

...and there was a giraffe too!

Actually, several giraffes.

Wow!

It turned out this was a nature reserve with a difference. There were no fences between the tourists and the animals and a few minutes later we were all invited to feed the zebras, while the guides took photos of us.

The zebras were very placid and obviously quite used to being fed.

After that we were invited to feed the giraffes, but I opted out of that one. They were so tall and it seemed a bit unpredictable as to whether they were going to swing their heads down and get the food or your hat. Some of the other participants managed it though.

I managed to get some great photos of the giraffes regardless.

Definitely much closer than the giraffe shots I got yesterday!

After the giraffe feeding we moved on to a group of giraffes who were lying down. They were a bit less intimidating at this height

We were able to watching some of them eating from the trees in the nature reserve.

There were also some antelope-type creatures sitting under the shade of the trees.

The guide offered everyone the opportunity to hold a monkey, but I opted out of that one.

When we'd finished admiring the animals we went back to the toilets by the entrance to do some hand-washing, and then we were served lunch.

Lunch was in the big circular building where we'd been briefed earlier.

Everyone was hoping that by the time lunch was over, the clouds would have moved just a little bit more and we'd be able to see Kilimanjaro. The guide pointed out where it ought to be, but we could still barely see anything at all.

There was a bit of a delay with the buses coming to pick us up, so we had to wait around for a while. It was after 5pm by the time we finally left the wildlife sanctuary behind. As we were driving down the road back towards Arusha, one of the excursion members realised he could just make out the top of Kilimanjaro. He petitioned the driver to pull over by the side of the road so we could get out and take a picture.

We thought that was the best we were going to do, but then 10 minutes later...

The bus was crawling along a road that was in the process of being resurfaced. The driver pulled over in a random spot and we all climbed over a heap of gravel to get these shots