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Nothing went as planned, but everything was fine

December 23rd, 2021 – January 5th, 2022

We had a wonderful, if non traditional, Christmas dinner at Capricorn of curry and chapatis. There also was a flurry of logistics and planning to sort out while at Peponi. Our friends that planned to join us in Arusha had suffered a family emergency and understandably couldn’t come to meet us.  The vehicle they’d reserved was well past the refund window, so we undertook a last minute search to see if a friend was willing to take their spot.

This all consisted of frequent WhatsApp texting and calls while at the warm, humid beaches of Peponi. This is how long term travel gets organized, under swaying palms and spotty mobile signal. 

Miraculously some friends did have time and wanted to join us for a last minute trip to the Serengeti, hooray!  Then the specter of covid struck, and they both tested positive for their pre-flight tests, boo. Thankfully they were asymptomatic, but this squashed the last of our post holiday plans to meet up with someone. Staying flexible is a key part of travel, especially on a long trip. 

Peponi was fairly busy for the holiday and it was nice to meet some other travelers instead of being the only ones in camp. We met Lilli Mixich, an impressive German woman, getting on in years and intrepidly traveling alone around Africa in her old Toyota. She drove across the Sahara in the 80s and has had all kinds of adventures. We met another solo female traveler, a Polish writer who had been traveling in Tanzania on public transport for several months, and has now bought a motorcycle to continue her trip. Motorcycling here, she is much braver than I am.

To Arusha

Leaving Peoponi on Boxing Day, we made the drive to Arusha while mulling over our plans. There had been rain, and just north of Peponi we encountered slick mud even on the well maintained roads. After slipping and sliding a bit, we arrived at tarmac and sped on towards Arusha amongst the sisal plantations and the dramatic Usambra mountains to the northeast.

Arusha is a small city, busy with frenetic energy supporting the safari industry. Bajajs and pikipis zip in and out of traffic while the ubiquitous large modified safari Land Cruisers lumber about, hauling tourists to and fro. Heavy clouds obscured the conical peak of Mount Meru, which looms over the city. Kilimanjaro was also shrouded by clouds somewhere off in the northeast.

We’ve been to Arusha before, in 2018, and it is not a city that I particularly enjoy. It has all the things we might need, workshops and supermarkets and whatever else, but it’s all tied up in busyness and single minded focus on organized safari tours. As a mzungu you cannot set foot outside your vehicle, on the street without being accosted a moment later and pressured to buy this or get help with that. No one is unfriendly, but the insistent offering of services I find suffocating. 

When I explain that we don’t need anything, which usually takes repeating multiple times as they probe for a chink in my armor, there is occasionally a mystified acceptance that perhaps this mzungu doesn’t need anything. A tourist that doesn’t need something is a rare thing, and they don’t quite know where to place us in the order of things.

All this in mind, our plan was to be in and out of Arusha as quickly as practical. We’d sort out our plans, get some provisions and be off. We elected to stay at the Mesarani Snake Park, a campsite 20 km or so west of Arusha.

The Snake Park is an unusual campsite. It’s campsite, a small snake and reptile zoo and has a clinic specializing in snake bites. When we arrived, it was incredibly busy, lots of Arusha locals taking their kids out to see the snakes, turtles and crocodiles for the holiday. 

The campsite was empty. In the pre-covid days this was a regular stop on the overland truck route. Overland trucks being big heavy duty trucks converted to haul a dozen or so backpacker type travelers, typically on long, multi-week trips around Africa. When they arrive at a campsite, passengers pour out and erect numerous little olive green dome tents. This different sort of overlanding is a good low budget way to see Africa. Frequently the camps that cater to this type of tourist are set up with big lawns to handle all the tents, as opposed to the individual pitches for private vehicles. From our kind of traveler there is sometimes a bit of animosity towards these trucks, that, at times, come with late night parties, noise and loud music. We’ve never had an issue, but I see the potential.

Ma, the proprietor of the Snake Park, said that covid has killed the overland truck business for now, and she hardly sees any campers these days. So we were solo in a simple but completely adequate campsite. I thought maybe a bus of other campers would liven the place up a bit. 

Heading out for errands, we were stopped by the police before we could pull onto the main road. He told us we must wait. The road we empty of traffic, and a few people were lining the roadway. Then a long string of land cruisers began to whip by us at high speed. What was going on? We asked a passerby, and he explained that it was President Hassan’s convoy. Then another flock of large, fancy Land Cruisers, including two stretched land cruiser 300s, zoomed by. I presume that was the president.

Jenny posited that perhaps she was on a PR visit to the Serengeti, in which case they must have graded that dreaded road before she went. There is no way President Hassan would put up with that awful road. Later it occurred to us that if she was heading to the Serengeti, she probably would have flown, so no luck there.

Our Arusha chores were nothing special, but still it is a city that drains me disproportionately to it’s size. Fortunately Jenny kept us on track. These sorts of chores can be tedious and challenging, but figuring out all the various puzzles is part of traveling like this.

We toured the various supermarkets catering to upper middle class locals and expats to stock up on specialty items. We found tortillas again. What luck! We got our gas bottles refilled. In East Africa they use a different thread for their propane this is not always a given. These are the sort of small details that can occupy a disproportionate about of time while on an international overland trip. 

While we were waiting for our gas bottles to be refilled, I saw a guy having some technical difficulties on his bicycle. He was struggling to fix a stuck chain without tools. I got out the tool box. Though we had no common language, except that of bicycles, in a few minutes his ride was repaired. He was extremely grateful. 

One particular challenge was booking special campsites for the Serengeti. TANAPA, the parks authority, does not make it easy to book campsites if you are not a tour operator. The whole system is geared for guided tours, not for private visitors like us. 

Like other Tanzanian parks, there are public campsites and special campsites. The public sites are a grass lawn, typically with modest ablutions and a sort of caged enclosure for the mobile safari operators to set up a kitchen. The special campsites are just a piece of African turf, nothing else. One must be fully self sufficient. As I’ve mentioned before, we value the bush experience at night quite highly and previously have had lackluster experiences in busy public campsites, so it was special campsites for us. 

TANAPA has recently changed to an online digital booking system. I gather from one tour operator that this is in theory welcome, but as with a big change in any system, the execution has been rocky. 

We figured we’d just go to the TANAPA head office in Arusha in person and sort it out there. When we did, to our surprise they said they no longer even have the ability to make bookings. It can only be done via the online portal. They also confessed that the online portal is not set up for private visitors. The ranger that came to help us kindly called someone from the IT department to come down and guide us through the process.

The online booking portal is highly convoluted. There is absolutely no way we’d have managed without our patient tutor. In the end we managed to book four nights in the Serengeti and receive control numbers for each. Then you take the control number to the bank and pay against that number. After receiving a receipt then the booking is confirmed. Yes, this is the improved system.

One catch, you cannot pay by credit card. It is cash or mobile money only, and the only way for a foreigner to load mobile money is cash. We were told by several people that some banks can take payment on a control number by credit card, but we tried several and they all said no. So basically, cash only. And we’re talking a lot of cash, well over $1000 USD. The whole process is totally frustrating. By reading about it in this tedious detail I suppose you are getting a sense of it.

A few hours later we felt mildly victorious, bookings made, but not yet paid. They have credit card readers at the gate, and we hypothesized that perhaps we could pay for our bookings there. 

To Lake Manyara National Park

After a few other odds and ends it was finally time to depart Arusha. We made the roughly two hour drive to Lake Manyara National Park. On the way I got pulled over for speeding, which I was. There is a 50 kph zone in the middle of nowhere, no villages in sight, and I had missed the sign. The police officer was very friendly though, and after a chat about what a nice time we were having visiting Tanzania he let me off with a warning. We have heard all these tales of corrupt cops extorting bribes, but our experience is mostly the opposite. Even on the few occasions someone has asked for something, it has typically been half hearted and easy to parry.

Lake Manyara sits at the bottom of an escarpment. Immediately west of the park are dramatic cliffs that form the eastern edge of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Note that Ngorongoro is not managed by TANAPA, but instead by the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA).

Manyara is a soda lake, and at times it hosts thousands of flamingos. It also has reportedly very good bird life as well as the usual African wildlife that we’ve come to expect in national parks, elephants, antelope, predators, etc.

The gate at Manyara is well sign posted and very organized. Park permits are single entry for 24 hours, so our midday arrival would allow us an afternoon game drive and a morning game drive the following day.

Stepping up to the kiosk, to save our funds a bit, we asked to stay at the public campsite. The officer was very professional, but told us regretfully that the Endebash public campsite toilets were not working. He suggested that perhaps we could instead stay at a special campsite, though it would cost more. He said nothing about the campsite at the gate, which we were not that interested in anyway, so we didn’t ask. 

I entered negotiation mode. After some chit chat I politely asked if perhaps, since we had planned to stay at the public campsite, we might be given a special campsite for the public campsite price. Never mind there are no toilets at the special campsites, so I’m not sure why the toilets not working at Endebash should make any difference.

Nevertheless my proposal appealed to his sense of fairness since we hadn’t expressed any desire for the special campsites from the outset. If we had, I’m sure we’d be paying full price. He said he thought this seemed like a good idea, but we would have to ask his supervisor. 

We were shown to an office where a business-like women dressed in a ranger uniform sat doing paperwork. As always in Africa, we were given seats. Even for the shortest conversation it is impossible to decline a seat for this sort of thing. We’ve tried in the past and failed. We sat and exchanged our habaris and mzuris, the standard pleasantries of Swahili Africa. She looked at us expectantly, and we looked at our ranger from the kiosk. We hoped he might make our case for us.

He came up with a quick explanation in Swahili. She looked at us, then him, and her face was like, “thats it?” eyebrows raised. Sawa. Request granted. Alright! How nice is that, a special campsite for the public campsite price. We were pleased.

After the tiresome errands of Arusha and the stomach churning knowledge of how much a visit to the Serengeti was going to cost, it was really nice to have these kindnesses from the Tanzanian authorities.

Into the park we went. The forest in the north of the park is really impressive, massive towering trees hang overhead forming a dense green canopy. There were creepers and vines, and the roots of the big fig trees formed large buttresses on the jungle floor. We zigged and zagged around the northern tracks but did not see much in the way of wildlife, some baboons and bushbuck, however the forest really impressed. 

The first track that went down to the lake came to an early end, flooded. Lake Manyara has risen due to the tremendous rains this part of East Africa has received the last two years. These are the same rains that have raised Tanganyika and Victoria as well. The forest thins as it gets closer to the lake, and we saw huge stands of dead fever trees, drowned by the flood waters. The water has receded a bit, but still has a ways to go to reach normal. 

We’d chatted with a guide at the gate, who had told us about some lions sleeping in trees further south in the park, at maji moto ndogo. Though never when I choose, occasionally my subconscious delivers useful fragments of my paltry Swahili, learned working in Kenya over a decade ago. Maji moto ndogo translates to the small hot spring, which was conveniently marked on our map. 

The lions of Lake Manyara are famous for their tree climbing tendencies. Though any lion is capable of climbing trees and might do so from time to time, some lions are known to have made a habit of it. In particular these include the lions of Lake Manyara, some prides in the Serengeti and also those in Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda. 

If you can count on lions for anything it’s to lie about and do nothing more or less all day, so we wandered about the game tracks of Manyara without haste, slowly working our way down to the small hot springs. We found the springs, small indeed, just a tiny puddle by the side of the road. 

Now on high alert looking in trees for our lions, sure enough we found them. And no other vehicles were present. This is travel during covid, even in this normally busy park we had the star attractions to ourselves for a little while. It was getting to be late afternoon now and we guessed that most of the guests staying outside the park were on their way to their respective lodges, missing out on these prime hours of game viewing.  

One vehicle did come down the track and politely thanked us for finding the lions for them. We all sat and watched as four lions dozed on stout branches, their dangling legs making them look far less fierce than their reputation. They’d get up and rearrange themselves from time to time, but otherwise were sedate. 

Our campsite was only a couple kilometers away and therefore we could postpone leaving our lions until the last possible minute. This was in hope that they might perk up and do something. With fifteen minutes to go a fifth lion hopped up into the tree and settled down for a snooze. 

Where did she come from? Likely she’d been resting at the base of the tree in the tall grass all along, just meters from the vehicle, and us unaware all the while. Yet another reminder of lions’ stealth and camouflage.

Finally it was time to go to camp, per park rules we needed to be in camp by 1900. We had been assigned Bagoyo A. The turnoff is signposted, but the track is very narrow. Tall hedges of intimidating thorns flanking the road, they drug down the side of the cruiser with a screech. A few hundred meters and it opens up, some acacia trees and clumps of bushes with a couple modest clearings to choose from.

We could see an old fire pit and set up next to this. Our site was certainly wild. We had a little bit of a view up the hillside, but otherwise we were tucked in pretty tight to the foliage. Our first concern was that we wouldn’t be able to see game approach until it was on top of us, but otherwise we were happy with our wilderness locale.

It was already getting dark so we got onto the task of making camp and starting a fire. The insects began to come out and we hoped the fire and a bit of smoke would help the situation. Miraculously we were able to marshal the ingredients of tortillas, cheese, avocado and cilantro all at the same time meant we were having deluxe quesadillas pollo tonight, very exciting. 

As Jenny worked on dinner the swarms detected us, or our lights, and we were inundated with small black insects. Some type of termite? This was fairly exasperating, a consequence of putting arriving at camp until the last possible moment. Some people get back to camp early and eat before dark to avoid this fate, but then we feel we’d miss out on prime game viewing. 

Lots of termites and melting cheese are an unfortunate combination. No doubt we consumed a fair number of the little critters in our dinner. Dinner was followed by a light rain, it was time to retire. 

Intermittent rain pattered pleasantly on the tent through the night. We had hoped to hear lions at night, but didn’t hear a peep out of them. In the morning we set off to search for them and found that it must have rained quite a bit up the escarpment. All the dry washes we had crossed the day before were either running or had clearly run at night and already dropped. One steel bridge was heaped high with debris and we had to get out to clear it. 

Working further south we came to the Endebash river, still dry. The track on the north side was blocked by fallen trees. Part way along the south bank we saw, to our surprise, a brown front of water advancing down the sandy riverbed. Here was the river entering flood, right before our eyes. 

In BBC’s Planet Earth there is a scene where they film the first water running down one of the normally dry rivers of Namibia, and remember thinking, “how the heck did they get that shot?” Here the water wasn’t moving very fast and we went back to the bridge to watch the river advance down. 

I suppose this means that the morning’s game viewing wasn’t exactly sensational, but to watch a river enter flood is pretty unique. We enjoyed our morning coffee and tea, watching rivulets of muddy brown water advance, thickening into little fingers of water, then streams and finally the steady flow of a river.

The Endebash Public Campsite was not far away and we went to see where we might have stayed. The turn is signposted, but after that the track deteriorates rapidly. Overgrown and one washed out ravine is threatening to cutoff the camp entirely. We persisted, branches dragging across the top of the vehicle and thorns scraping down the sides. 

We found the campsite, sort of. It is overgrown and would be entirely uninhabitable by anyone but the most desperate of campers. We should have known that “the toilets are not working” was a euphemism for a greater problem. I have noticed that Africans on the whole loath to deliver bad news. Any news that might be disappointing is at least dressed up with an optimistic slant, “the road is a bit good.” Or my favorite from my days at MSF, when we asked about the security situation when approaching the Somali border, “It is a bit safe.” Ah yes, how reassuring.

The directness of the statement “The toilets are not working,” should have tipped us off. No loss though. We made a many point turn in the confines of the overgrown track and went onward to explore more of Lake Manyara National Park.

We went as far south as the large hot springs, seeing giraffe, bushbuck, impala, buffalo and a few elephants. Birdlife was also very good. We had to be out of the park by midday, so we made our final explorations northward and exited with time to spare. 

That Thing Happens

Migobani Camp, lying conveniently just outside the park gate, was our destination for the night. It came highly recommended online. A rocky track takes steep and narrow switchbacks up the first steps of the escarpment, over 150m of rise in a very short time.

Cresting the steep hill we arrived, greeted by a massive green lawn, an enormous baobab and a very attractive infinity pool. Quite a spiffy setup. Around the perimeter were a few large permanent safari tents, and scattered around the lawn were the typical green dome tents used by the mobile safari tours.

Migobani caters to the mobile safari operators more than to us, but we were made very welcome. There is a nice shared camp kitchen with water for washing up, and really nice ablutions with hot water showers from solar water heaters. There is also a restaurant and bar area and almost the whole camp has a spectacular view of Lake Manyara and the flanking the escarpment. It is quite a stunning arrangement.

We were instructed to park on the lawn closest to the edge of the camp and we felt like we had the best view of the whole place. We were headed into the Serengeti soon, what a great place to spoil ourselves before some bush camping. 

After sundowner by the pool we had a fire. The camp does not allow fires on the ground, to preserve their impressive lawn I suppose. For $5, quality wood included, they’ll bring over a fire pit. We are in Maasai territory now and two askaris (guards), dressed in traditional Maasai shukas and armed with the large daggers that every Maasai carries, brought over our fire pit and wood. You could be forgiven for thinking this dress is a show for the tourists, but in the town of Mto Wa Mbu it is common to see people dressed like this. Further into the NCAA and other parts of Maasai country it is more common than western dress.

We had our fire and stared off at our spectacular view, getting excited about heading into the Serengeti.

It is a bit of a riddle to figure out all the permits for the Serengeti. We decided to forego the extra expense of Ngorongoro Crater since we had been before. It is an additional $250 dollars to go into the crater, plus it more or less necessitates camping at Simba A on the crater rim, a campsite we consider not very desirable, particularly at the price.  

Instead we would pay the fees to enter the NCAA merely to transit. It still costs a fortune, but when entering the Serengeti from the east, as most do, by a matter of geography the NCAA insulates the Serengeti and cannot be easily bypassed. We’d spend the day driving through the NCAA and arrive at the Serengeti more or less midday. Since permits are issued 24hrs from entry it is best to not arrive too early so that on the day you leave you don’t have to rush out of the park to avoid paying for an additional day. If all this seems confusing then that probably explains why most do this with an organized tour. 

We woke early, planning to head off pretty quick so we would not have to rush through the NCAA and the Serengeti. It is after all quite a long way, almost 200km, on very corrugated roads.

Shortly after the alarm went off Jenny said, “I have a confession to make.” That doesn’t sound good. “My throat feels scratchy.” Hmm. Could be nothing. Could be something. Jenny’s allergies had been acting up for the first time of the trip while in Manyara, and now a sore throat. Covid was suspected. With the great expense associated with the Serengeti we wanted to be feeling good, and naturally if it was covid we wanted to be near better health services should they be needed.

We decided to postpone to give us time to evaluate. Our friends that had joined us in Zambia had thoughtfully left four rapid covid tests, so it seemed time to try one out. With some trepidation we faithfully followed the instructions and received a disappointing result. If you squinted and looked hard, the very faintest of double lines. A double line is positive and the instructions go to great pains to tell you that any line, no matter how faint, is a positive result. Shit. Jenny felt fine. She told me that in “the before times” she wound’t have given it a second thought, that she’d had allergy attacks much worse than this. 

Of course we didn’t want her to have covid, but we are both double vaccinated and got boosters just before we flew to Africa and felt the actual health risk was low. Mostly we wanted to make sure that we didn’t get anyone else sick and we both didn’t get sick at the same time.

We sent photos of the test result back to a friend of ours that happens to work in infectious diseases, who now spends a lot of her time on covid. She said she couldn’t see the second line, but that if Jenny had any symptoms to isolate and test again in 24 hours. If her symptoms were still building she should have more viral load the next day, and thus be more likely to test positive.

Already we began the awkward practice of social distancing from each other. It is strange to social distance from your spouse, especially if you’ve been living within a foot or two for the last months. The ground tent was deployed as Jenny’s isolation house. 

Before we started this trip we talked a lot about avoiding covid, and what we would do if we contracted it. In hindsight those conversations seem very abstract, some sort of logistical problem. Dealing with it for real, making so many decisions about how and what precautions to take, was stressful. 

The next morning, New Years Eve and Jenny’s birthday, we tested her again and Jenny got a decisive positive test result from the rapid test. Covid for her birthday. Not exactly the wilderness experience we’d planned for the occasion. This was something of a trifecta of bad news, first our friends couldn’t meet up with us, then our other friends came down with coivd, and now this. It was a roller coaster and we’ll admit a blow to the psyche. The good news were very mild and she was in good spirits. What to do now?

We shifted to the very back corner of camp and settled in for isolation. A German couple on a long term overland trip was adjacent to us and we confessed our situation to them. They were comfortable and felt our precautions were appropriate. Jenny stayed in our small camp and I did the cooking and washing up. A friend back home suggested that Jenny seemed in pretty good shape, perhaps this was just a ploy to get me to do the dishes all the time? 

For her birthday I made Jenny steak over the fire and baked fresh bread in our dutch oven. I’d been promising fresh bread the whole trip this is the first time I actually did it. It came out okay, proven because Jenny ate just about the whole loaf, but not quite what it is supposed to look like.

After a couple days Jenny’s symptoms abated and we continued to wait out the isolation, following the American CDCs new guidelines of five days of isolation. During that time I cancelled our Serengeti bookings and blogged, while Jenny got very bored and read a lot. WhatsApp was great to keep in touch with friends and family who gave much moral support. Jenny told one friend that given her mild case one of the worst parts was the “covid shame,”which autocorrect changed to “covid Shane”. Our friend responded perfectly, “Covid Shane is a jerk!”. 

The totality of symptoms was a day of a scratchy throat, a day of a runny nose and a slight cough on the morning of the third day. Thats it, thank you vaccines. We are extremely grateful that her case was not more severe and we spent a lot of time thinking about those that were not so fortunate. 

In our case the isolation worked out to effectively six days, with day 0 being the first day of symptoms and going to get a PCR test in Arusha on day six. Since symptoms had abated our plan was to stop isolating from each other when we departed Migobani and to spend another five days away from everyone else, mostly in the Serengeti. This meant the few times we had to interact with people, such as at the park gate, I was on point in an N95, since Jenny was still high risk and obviously I was exposed.

Getting a PCR test in Arusha has one significant flaw. First you book the test online, no problem there. Then you get a control number to pay for your test. You take the control number to a bank to pay and the bank provides a receipt confirming payment. This means one has to stand in line at the bank inches from others (social distancing is not a thing in Tanzania) for an interminably long time. Ironically it feels like the most likely time you are going to get covid, or give it, iswhen you are waiting in line at the bank to pay for your covid test. 

Fortunately we had paid for a test already, scheduled for post Serengeti to get us into Kenya, and therefore had done this exercise pre-covid. We had also upgraded our masking to N95s or KN95s for the last week or so prior to all this, though clearly that didn’t prevent Jenny from contracting covid somewhere. We suspect the “outdoor transmission very unlikely” thing is no longer true with the Omicron variant. 

There is a rumor in Tanzania that tourists do not test positive for covid, as it’s bad for business. I don’t know how that sort of policy could be executed in practice, but at the lab we told them we wanted to be tested to confirm covid, not for travel. They proceeded, taking the sample in the quickest and most pleasant way possible, which I suspect is the reason that many might not test positive. It did not seem very thorough. 

We were wary, as even those that have recovered from covid can test positive for weeks afterwards. This would wreak havoc with or plans to go into Kenya. Here is an excellent example of why people, reasonably, do not want to travel internationally during covid. We are lucky to have the time to absorb these inefficiencies. This turned outnot to be a problem because we both tested negative. We were not entirely confident of the accuracy of this result and proceeded with our plan to continue a somewhat less aggressive isolation in the Serengeti.

I confess some trepidation about sharing the details of our covid story with the internet, but I thought a description of travelers actually experiencing this, as many I am sure have imagined, might be good to share. Certainly we took what we felt was the best balance of safety and practicality.

The Serengeti

We provisioned again in Arusha on PCR testing day and went back to Migobani, well situated to jump off into the Serengeti. It is a long haul through the Serengeti, we planned to exit via Klein’s gate and Lake Natron. Given the difficulty of getting this far and the sky high costs we also planned to make the most of our park fees with long game drives, so fuel endurance was a concern. 

With jerry cans topped up we carry 170 liters of fuel. We’ve been averaging around 7km/l recently, but we use 6km/l for planning for travel on gravel roads, and 5km/l for deep sand, though we didn’t foresee more than patches of that on this route. At 6km/l that gives us, theoretically, 1020km of range. There are two fuel stations in the central part of the park at Seronera, that deliver poor quality fuel, so we’d use those if we needed.

After all the delays to our plans we finally set off for the Big Kahuna, the Serengeti.

The Nitty Gritty

Lake Manyara National Park

Fees notwithstanding this park is fairly small and two nights would be plenty. However since TANAPA insists on it’s pound of flesh being an ample one we felt like one night in the park was enough. Park fees are as previously described, link here. They again assumed our vehicle was less than 2000kgs and we again did not dissuade them otherwise, but who knows how long until luck runs out. This kept the vehicle fee at $40 pd. Camping at the public campsite price is $30 pppn. Entry was $50 pp per 24hr period. All with an 18% VAT, sheesh. It was getting harder and harder to divorce the negative feelings of such prices with our park experience. After an hour or two in the park we forgot about it, but when entering it is painful.

Special Campsites – we were assigned Bagoyo A. We also checked out Bagoyo B, which we think was quite a bit better. It has quite few trees taht seem like they might be habitable by lions, so beware. It is also a bit more open and generally more atmospheric. There are other special campsites in Lake Manyara, but we did not inspect these. Some of the lake side ones may be flooded at this time.

PCR Testing in Arusha

PCR testing is available at Mount Meru Referral Hospital, just north of the big roundabout in the center of town. If coming from the south take the second entrance, which is much less busy. Testing is scheduled online here: https://pimacovid.moh.go.tz/#/booking The fee is $50 USD, payable in TSH. After booking you get a control number and you pay via Mpesa, at a wakala or bank. Any typos when paying are your fault and you’ll have to pay twice, there is no recouping money sent in error. Because of this and the rare report of lost payments we were advised by a travel company to pay at a bank. 

Paying at a bank is an interminably slow process. The second time we struck a compromise,  and used a wakala that was an official NMB bank agent and that was much faster.

When arriving at the lab, walk up to the front of the line and offer them your passport. They’ll call your name when they’re ready for you. I have been tested dozens of times for work and travel before this and this was the most lackadaisical test I’ve ever received, so I don’t have a lot of faith that it would be positive unless you were brimming with covid. 

We’ve since been tested twice. Results the first time came in ~40 hrs, the second time in ~30 hrs. The certificate was date/time stamped with the date the results were issued, not when the sample was taken. I believe this is incorrect, but works out in the travelers favor as it gives you extra time to use your test for border crossing.

Migobani

Migobani is great. The staff there were extremely helpful, and also happy to leave us in our corner and manage our situation. The camp is fairly busy with the comings and goings of the mobile safari operators. I saw a complaint of this on iOverlander, but I submit that people keep in mind that this camp caters to that market, not to long haul travelers like ourselves.

Ablutions were excellent. Open air with a high thatched roof, solar hot water for showers. Ablutions 4.5/5. I only withheld the coveted 5/5 rating because maybe they need one more ablution block, these became slightly overwhelmed at peak times and suffered a little, though not bad at all.

We stayed away from the bar/restaurant/pool after the first night, but the setting is lovely. Drinks and food are a bit overpriced, but not terribly. 

I think this camp makes for a perfect staging area to prepare for, or recover from, bush camping in the parks. Mto Wa Mbu is just down the hill and has lots of fresh fruits and veggies and most other staples, though specialty items we had to get in Arusha. 

I will provide some notes on Special Campsites in the Serengeti in my next post. 

We’ve been camped at Twiga Lodge for a few days, making for productive blog updating. But it is time to get off the computer for a while. Into Kenya tomorrow….