Traveling with the Stanfords 2025

  After spending the morning with the Suri face painting by the river we packed up camp and left for our next location - an arduous hot long 2-day drive south east of the Omo river. It had rained in the night and the forecast was for more rain so Fitsum wanted to get out of the mountain area since the trails become impassable in the mud. He mentioned having a vehicle stuck in the mud for three days with clients once.  The drive started out on bumpy mountain dirt roads that included a fairly precarious river crossing. Our driver, Israel, was an absolute expert at navigating any difficult backcountry road or river and the scenery was beautiful. We stopped for a late lunch in the tiny town of Tum - which consisted of one paved road for about a mile and dirt roads either side continuing on through the mountains. Fitsum said we would stay the night as there wasn't anywhere safe to camp between Tum and the next stop. We had a very basic hotel room with a bucket of water ou...

Thursday September 22nd was a long day of travel. We left Arusha for the drive to Kilimanjaro airport for the flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. For many of the airports in Africa your luggage has to be put through the x-ray scanner before you can enter the terminal and check-in. This leads to a somewhat chaotic scene, with people throwing bags on the conveyer and then picking them off the floor on the other side as the bags get pushed through. Our flight and arrival in Addis was fairly uneventful until we tried to leave the airport. All luggage had to once again be scanned and Sara's carry-on caused some consternation with customs. Barry's binoculars were given a lot of scrutiny and we were informed they were not allowed in Ethiopia due to national security rules - likely related to the civil war that has been simmering off and on since November 2020. After passing over my passport to a number of people and getting a bunch of paperwork filled out we were all...

Sunday September 18th started very early when Sara heard a strange munching noise outside at 4:30am. She very quietly unzipped the bottom of the tent flap and stuck her head outside to see a hippo peacefully grazing 30 feet away! Startled John a bit since it was dark and he didn't know if someone or something was unzipping the tent to come inside!  We headed out after breakfast with a stop at a local creek to video the sounds of the frogs. Sara particularly enjoyed the sounds of Africa whether it was the very loud frogs, the very loud morning birds or the lions we heard roaring every night. If you see a video with no real movement make sure the audio is turned up as it will be a sound recording.  After the frog stop we found a pride of lions on the remains of a zebra meal, and right after that a herd of understandably very agitated zebras. Listen to their barking sounds which we often mistook for hyenas. We really enjoyed watching the zebra and managed to g...

Thursday 15th September we left at 8:30am for a long day of driving. We stopped for gas and had both tanks filled up. The Toyota land cruisers used for safari are amazing. They are a standard land cruiser that has been heavily modified by cutting and extending the chassis to add an extra row, a pop up top for the entire length and larger windows. The vehicle is very rugged and reliable which is good because as we learned the roads are very bumpy and dusty - we saw a lot of broken down vehicles and Ben stopped to help a few folks get up and running again. To get to Serengeti National Park you first pass through the Ngorongoro conservation area that surrounds the actual crater. This area has less restrictions than a national park and the Maasai tribe are allowed to live and graze their cattle in the area, this was a compromise when the Serengeti park was created and the Maasai had to leave the area. There is a drought in the area and we drove through a lot of...

Sunday September 11th we left Arusha and drove for about 3 hours to Tarangire National Park. We ate lunch at the park gate picnic area since once inside the park there are limited options for getting out of the vehicle - wild animals and picnicking tourists don't work well together.   We immediately started seeing a lot of animals. Zebras, impalas and wart hogs grazing. Elephants digging for water in the dried river bed which was fascinating. There were some very large bulls and also tiny baby elephants. We saw a lot of brightly colored birds which were delightful. Around 5pm we started to head for the camp, which was a bit hard to find since the mobile tented camps move around. The tented camp was considered fairly basic, but was far above our normal camping experiences, with a king sized bed, a flush toilet and hot/cold shower! Since it had been a hot and dusty day we enjoyed a cold shower and then joined everyone in the main dining tent. We had...