Endurance or Enjoyment?
It can sometimes be difficult, especially right after
getting back home, to find the right words to sum-up and reach a conclusion
about a trip. This trip is no exception, having been one of those strange mixes
of endurance and enjoyment.
In my eight previous trips to Africa, we’ve always been very
lucky with travel arrangements and transportation in general. When your luck
finally runs out – and it did here – you can only hope to get back on track
with the minimum of disruption and, in that sense, we were once more fairly
lucky.
Actually, there are lessons to be learned here – we should
have flown to Mikumi and also possibly even down to Ruaha or Iringa and simply
avoided the crazy traffic conditions on the main highway.
That being said, I really like to be driven from place to
place – you get a far better impression of the country from down on the ground
than you ever can from up in the air. That doesn’t mean I have a problem with
Cessna Caravans – turns out I really like them, even if there’s not enough leg
room for me when it’s full!
My final vote is for enjoyment. Of course, I enjoyed it!
Nothing is better than having elephants walk past your tent when you are
writing in the heat of an African afternoon. Every wildlife encounter of this
whole trip was superb, some of the best views we’ve ever had as a group and
worth any amount of endurance.
Each camp and lodge were unique, but they all looked after
us well; they kept us fed and the beer was always cold!
I think Fred was a little disappointed that we didn’t see a
few more bird species, but “We are not birding” was mentioned at the start of
the trip and I tried – pretty unsuccessfully – to keep us on track with plenty
of elephants to distract him. Truthfully, the birds simply weren’t there –
probably another consequence of the time of the year and the weather.
So, we finish like we started. Another enjoyable African adventure under our belts and a few words already having been spoken about the possibility of another trip in 2024.