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Sept. 13, Kenya & Tanzania
Hi,
My wife and I are on the Kenya & Tanzania safari beginning on Sept. 13th. Anyone else? We are actually leaving NY on the 10th, spending a day in Istanbul on the 11th, and arriving in Arusha early AM (flight arrives 1:10 AM) on the 12th. So we will have Friday the 12th (if not too tired) and the 13th (waiting for the other arrivals) to spend time touring the area. Anyone else interested?
Arnie and Ellen
My wife and I are on the Kenya & Tanzania safari beginning on Sept. 13th. Anyone else? We are actually leaving NY on the 10th, spending a day in Istanbul on the 11th, and arriving in Arusha early AM (flight arrives 1:10 AM) on the 12th. So we will have Friday the 12th (if not too tired) and the 13th (waiting for the other arrivals) to spend time touring the area. Anyone else interested?
Arnie and Ellen
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Gary and Linda
Geneva, IL
The Duluti hotel is quite A way from Arusha down a dirt road. You can't just go out for a stroll. Arusha itself is not particularly special and you will be traveling through the town to see it by road which will be sufficient when the tour begins. I suggest the best tour would be to hire a vehicle and guide to take you to Arusha National Park for the day. It costs around $200 CASH however many people hire it and however long you want the tour to be. The entrance is about a half hour drive from the hotel. Then you pay $35 each entrance fee ( you can use a credit cars here if the machine is working) and extra if you want to do the two hour walking safari too, which we did and it was excellent. We were gone for 7 hours total, the hotel can provide you with a packed lunch. By the way, this park is like no other you will see on your tour and in my opinion second in beauty to Tarangire Park, neither of which are included in the Kenya and Tanzania tour. If you are feeling tired and need a lie in the first day,I suggest a guided walk round lake Duluti about two hours. It is a dirt trail, lots of tree roots and the like to negotiate but the chance to see two types of monkey, some birds, maybe a snake, large monitor lizards and lots of vegetation to identify. We enjoyed it. We arrived two days early, before anyone else on the tour and were nicely switched over time wise by the time the tour began.
Your suggestions for Arusha sound great. We'll arrive 2 days early and the Lake walk sounds like a not-too-ambitious goal for the first day with the national park the second (which is the starting day of the tour, but according to the web site there are no activities planned for that day...even the welcome dinner is the next day).
Did you arrange both trips through the hotel? In advance of arrival? Thanks.
As I mentioned in my initial post, we will be arriving early AM on the 12th. I had previously read British' inspiring posts about both the walk around the lake and Arusha Park. If we are able to get enough sleep after arrival I was considering taking it easy and doing the Lake walk Friday afternoon, the 12th, and then doing the whole day Arusha Park tour on the 13th. I saw Gary and Linda's post last night but it was too late to reply, so I planned on copying British' post here, but she saved me the trouble this morning. Thank you British. So Portolan, maybe we can join you on the lake walk and maybe Gary and Linda will join us for the Arusha Park tour.
British, when you take the tour, do you know how many people each guide can accomodate. Do they take you in a car, van, Land Rover? Do you know if it makes sense to contact the hotel in advance, or do you just show up? Thanks, for all your posts. They are really helpful.
So it was a safari vehicle that was used. I would not want more than 4 people in it for a trip to the park, I think it was smaller than the Tauck one. Don't be lulled by a false sense of security when you first get on the road and drive through the center of Arusha, the roads are pretty good for a while, in fact the roads had literally just been re-paved before we arrived---smoother than any roads I've been on since last winter's potholes. As a soon as you get to the park the paved road becomes a bumpy park road.
If you decide to go on the walking safari while at Arusha park, you will need good closed shoes, your shoes will get dusty/dirty and you walk quite a steep stoney hill for a while before you get to the waterfall. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Bare in mind we went on the Tanzania Zanzibar tour this time, it's really your only chance of a true walking safari, not sure about the K and T tour, I did that in 2007 but don't think there was a walking opportunity then. And be sure to dodge the buffalo poop, especially if it is fresh! Oh, you need good shoes for the lake walk too with good non-slip soles. We tipped the guide well, we were not sure if the $200 included anything for him.
So I would risk not booking anything before you arrive, this is Africa, if you want a guided walk or tour, they will find someone for you! You just want to be sure you don't feel terrible and push yourself too hard before the real tour begins. Even though there was a K and T tour and a Tanzania/Zanzibar tour that began the same day when we were there, it was not busy, our tour was 3 short of capacity and the K and T tour only had sixteen people, even though it had previously been full, so many people must have cancelled because of the terrorist activity. I am sure people are canceling now because they worry about Ebola, they need to get educated about these things!
There was a brief meeting the evening before the tour with our guide, I think it began about 5pm, so we made sure we were back for that, I would not have wanted to miss it. There was a more detailed briefing the morning of the tour. By the way, we went straight from the jeep to the meeting with not much time to spare, looking pretty dirty and sweaty and I am not sure whether we impressed the others on the tour by how we looked or they thought we just grubby people. We did shower before dinner!