Saturday, Nov.18- Camp Manze to Dar Es Salaam and home tomorrow. Last chance for a safari.

About 15 minutes before leaving Kamkumba leaves the kitchen with our packed lunches. He places them in the jeep and goes to chat with some other guys. Not long after he’s running and yelling at the jeep. Monkeys have gotten in and they took some of our food. So funny. He had to go back and refill one of the bags.

During breakfast we see about 30 elephants passing in front of us. So cool.

The Masai and one driver.

We say our goodbyes to the staff and head out at 7:45 after trying to check-in on Millie’s computer. Never did work.

 We see lots of giraffe on our drive as we are in Acacia land and this is their favourite food/tree.  We also see a Savannah Monitor Lizard walking around and a Blue Glossy Starling at the same time. I take a few videos today something I should have doing all along, but I do have the ones that Wendy has taken. We see some European Rollers, an African Hawk Eagle in a tree. Might be a kill in the area as there are also vultures. Our guide finds the cache. It’s a Cape Hare under a bush; well covered to try to prevent other prey to get it.

Savannah Monitor Lizard

Glossy Blue Starling

African Hawk Eagle

Dead Hare

African Hawk Eagle

We see our first Tawny-Flanked Prinia which is a very small bird. The giraffe keep showing up as we see about 40 or 50 of them. There is a Red-Billed Buffalo Weaver and some Combrita flowers (Burning Bush)

Tawny Flanked Prinia

Giraffes and Wildebeest

Love this head

Cute family picture

Lots of giraffes running

Red-Billed Buffalo Weaver

Combratum paniculatum (Burning bush)

A Lilac Breasted Roller

About 5-6 minutes from the airport our guys are still offroading. I spot a few wild dogs. It’s the same pack as the other times. It’s very apt to see them one last time before we leave. We loved seeing them interact. They are 15 km away from when we saw them 3 days ago. They are constantly on the move.

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Cooling off but still tired

They were scattered under the trees

The plane is already there when we arrive. We have a female pilot today. The Swiss couple from our camp is taking the same flight to Dar. We are waiting for one more passenger and he arrives shortly after us. We leave about 15 minutes early and have a good flight into Dar Es Salaam. 

Clouds way up from plane

A look at Dar es Salaam

Driving to our hotel

A market seems to be up every day.

It's says Barber Shop

It’s easy to get our luggage as they lug it on a dolly right beside us. Our driver is waiting to take us to the hotel. We booked a room before flying out at 11:30 tonight to take a shower and hang out as it would be a long day at the airport. We thought that we might get out to visit a market or something but there is so much traffic and anything could happen out there. We need to go early to the airport as Wendy and Andre are unable to check in. We were lucky that it worked for us. 

The hotel in Dar is making supper for us. It is served at 6pm. This place also has a public pool where people come and hang out. There’s a bball hoop, some weights. Also around 6 pm, a wedding party arrives to take pictures. Lots happening here. We arrive at the airport around 7:15. The Swiss Air desk is not open yet as we are 4 hours early. We are first in line for economy. Agents open up around 7:45 and W & A find out there’s a glitch in their booking. A call is made with Swissair’s headquarter. It takes about 30 min. to sort things out but finally they are given boarding passes for our 3 flights. We go off and wait at our gate. There isn’t any real air conditioning in the airport so it is quite sticky. It’s finally time to board the plane. We are tired and look forward to sleeping. About 1h into the flight they serve a meal. We actually sleep for about 5 hours or more. Only time to watch one movie. In Zurich it is still early. We have close to 3 hours wait. Our flight to Toronto is on time so we leave at approx. 9:30. It is a 9h flight again but this time it is daylight so we watch movies but also doze off from time to time. In Toronto we have a 2:30 hr wait. It goes pretty quickly. Unfortunately, our plane to Moncton is over weight so they have to take luggage off. It might have something to do with the high winds. Ron says they need more fuel under these conditions. We leave about 50 minutes late and arrive in Moncton at around 6:10. People still don’t know that their luggage might not have made it. We are lucky and find our luggage and leave. The car is parked at the airport and we pack up and are home around 7 pm. The house if freezing, but it’s nice to be back.

What an amazing trip. A place we will never forget. Thanks Andre and Wendy for the “invite”.