We made the short drive from Bunda to the western entrance of the Serengeti, Ndabaka Gate. Most people enter from Arusha side via the Naabi Hill Gate after transiting or visiting the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. We’re doing it “backwards”, therefore payment and reservations for the park were not quite as straightforward, though really no matter your angle of attack I’m not sure “straightforward,” Serengeti, and Ngorongoro ever should be used in the same sentence.
Fortunately now all park fees for both parks are payable by credit card at the gates. No more convoluted bank deposit slips brought back to the park offices, or smart cards charged up for hopefully the right amount or whatever. Those are still options, but payment at the gate was much easier for us.
We wanted to stay in the so called “special camp sites” so we could camp in the complete wild, alone, as opposed to the public campsites. For this the charge goes up to $50 pppn, in stead of $30. We arrived at the gate around noon and began the lengthy check in process. We gave them our preferred areas we’d like to visit and they called the Arusha main office to see what camp sites were available in those areas.
They assigned us to Sero 4 and Grumeti camp sites. We planned to stay two nights at Sero 4 in the central Seronera region of the park, then two nights in the Western corridor, then a last night back in Sero 4 and then we would depart through the Naabi Hill Gate to the southeast. This is a little illogical, since we had to drive past Grumeti through the Western corridor to get to Sero 4, but we wanted to see the wildebeest migration in the Western corridor. The wildebeest are in no hurry this year (don’t they know we’re on a schedule?), late due to a big rainy season, so we figured even giving them a few extra days to make it to the Grumeti river would be good.
The park officials printed out our park permits with the wrong campsites and no dates on them, and just told us to not worry about it, go to Sero 4 and Grumeti. This seemed curious to us, in case anyone checked our permit. They assured us it wasn’t a problem, but we at least got them to hand correct the permit in case they were checked.
After this we also had to haggle about the car fee. The Serengeti is notorious for having high fees, particularly for foreign vehicle entry fees. This is allegedly to keep Kenyan tour operators from coming in to the Serengeti and undercutting local tour operators, but has the side effect of stinging fees for self drivers like us, who are not particularly common in the park. Technically the fee for any vehicle over 2000 kgs tare weight is $177 USD per day! Under 2000 kgs is $47 per day, so obviously we would prefer that. Several Tanzanians had assured us that even though we were over they only charged the higher rate to commercial operators. However this isn’t what happened to us, the park officials threatened to charge us for the higher weight and asked to look at our vehicle paperwork to verify the tare weight.
We were horrified, it’s already a pretty huge expense to come here, and it would push the daily cost to almost $450 USD a day to be in the park if they charged us the higher rate. This is partially because everything in Tanzania has a whopping 18% VAT. We handed them as much paperwork as we had on the vehicle hoping they would find a number that made them happy. Sifting through it all somehow they missed the tare weight on the registration and we kept our mouths shut, and after a while they gave and charged us the lower rate.
I don’t generally approve of dodging park fees, it is after all important to preserve these lands, and it is an enormous swath of land that Tanzania has set aside for conservation. But there have been a lot of recent price hikes in the park fees and we simply couldn’t stomach any more, so in this case if they missed that it’s on them.
After all that it was around 1pm we made our way into the park, with something like 100 kilometers to go to our campsite. As we went along the main road we saw a few large herds of wildebeest, it was impressive, but nothing like we would see in a few days time. Since we didn’t get into the park till 1pm we didn’t have a huge amount of time to wander, so we continued on our way towards the central Seronera region of the park. Once we got closer to our campsite we realized once again that we hadn’t asked specifically for directions to our camp. Time was running out, and I was concerned that we would waste a lot of daylight just trying to find the park office, but we didn’t have much choice.
In Seronera there is a small loose community that supports the park. A fuel station, a small garage, a staff village where some of the park support staff live, an airstrip, and for us the park headquarters, visitor center and tourist information office. We tried to find the park headquarters and couldn’t, or if we did it was a closed off compound not for the public, then made our way to the tourist information office.
We explained we didn’t know exactly where Sero 4 special campsite was, could they please direct us. It turned out that neither did they and I knew we were in trouble when he pulled out the same map we already had. After about 20 minutes of hazy directions and “It should be somewhere over here,” we decided to just take our chances and hope we saw a sign.
Casting around east of central Seronera we found a few signs pointing us east, but the track split and split again and we didn’t find it. We asked guides, a few people at a camp and each gave it some thought and said “Maybe over this way,” with some vague gesturing. To add to our concerns the sky was darkening and it was looking like it was gong to rain.
Eventually it got dark and we asked another guide, he suggested we just go to the public campsite and sort it out in the morning. Fair enough, conceding defeat he lead us to the closest public campsite and we arrived in the dark, again. And it began to rain. Sigh.
It wasn’t the best introduction to the Serengeti. Visiting such a prestigious park we had built up high exceptions and run up high expenses, so to arrive and spend two hours not finding our campsite, and to camp at the wrong camp in the rain was a bit demoralizing.
At the public campsite there was a large group of locals camped there, it almost looked like a camp for contract construction workers or something, but we found out after talking to them that they were students from a wildlife management school. We picked an out of the way spot and popped the tent in the rain, grabbed some perfunctory snacks for dinner and retreated to the tent. As we listened to the drone of their generator and the rain drops smacking against the fly we were feeling bummed, but also confident that tomorrow was a new day and we would have a fresh start.
The morning was overcast, left overs from the rain the night before, and we set out quickly for our fresh start. Almost immediately out of camp we were treated to a small pride of lions in the grass, things were looking up. The lions were mostly sleeping, so we continued on and discovered that we had been close to our designated campsite, it was about a half a kilometer further along the road. There was indeed a sign, but it was almost completely obscured in the tall grass and we probably would have missed it in the dark. We scoped out the spot for that night and were feeling good.
We headed off to the southeast towards some of the kopjes on the plains. Quickly the acacias of Seronera thinned out and we were in open savannah with only a few trees dotted here and there on the grassy plains. The Serengeti is famous for it’s rocky outcroppings, kopjes, which are also favorite lounging places for lions and incredibly beautiful. Sure enough, following the tracks wandering around the rocks we found lions sleeping off whatever they had been up to during the night. Wonderful.
We also saw elephants in the distance, and our fair share of zebra, topi, warthog, giraffe and a few wildebeest that had not joined the main migration. Also Thompson’s gazelle and impala.
Later in the morning we were heading back towards central Seronera and we heard a hissing noise from the back and discovered our first flat tire. We had let some air out of the tires to ease the pain of the corrugated roads along the western corridor, but maybe too much, as we had a small sidewall tear from the rocky conditions from this morning.
At least it happened in a convenient location. It was pretty flat and we had good visibility around us, so a quick scan to check for predators and we hopped out to change our tire. Several guide vehicles drove by as we were working and courteously checked to see if we were okay. In about 20 minutes we were done, on our way with our first flat behind us.
We carry two spare tires, so even with almost a week in the bush ahead of us we had another spare should we need it. We added getting the sidewall fixed, hopefully, to our growing Arusha list for after the park.
That night we settled into Sero 4 special campsite to enjoy the sunset. The campsite is set on a gently sloping hill with a wonderful view towards the east of a small valley, mostly yellow medium length grass around and two flat top acacias at either end of the campsite, a great spot.
At dusk just as we were starting to make dinner we saw headlights charging towards us and we thought maybe some rangers were coming to check our permit. As they came closer we saw a roof top tent on a land rover and I guessed, correctly, that this campsite was double booked. After the initial surprise we introduced ourselves and all was amiable. There was plenty of room for two without interfering with each other.
While working on our dinner we chatted a bit with our new neighbors, and we heard the whooping call of hyenas not too far away. A habit of campers in the bush is to carry a strong flashlight and occasionally scan the perimeter for the reflection of eyes. Ostensibly green eyes are harmless grazers and yellow eyes are predators, but of course sometimes the distinction is fine and yellow eyes alone do not belie the difference between a lion and a harmless small wild cat. We made our scan as the call of hyenas got closer and sure enough there was a hyena not 20 meters away edging the perimeter of our camp, no doubt investigating us.
Hyenas are often referred to as scavengers, and this is true, but they are also hunters perfectly capable of taking their own prey, often in packs. Seeing the hyena inspecting camp was disconcerting, but we watched him and he continued on his way. We kept an eye out for him for the evening, but he backed off further into the grass. Waiting to scavenge our trash we hoped, but later we talked to a guide who said the reason hyenas can be so dangerous is because we let them get close enough that when they decide to attack it is too late to do anything about it.
That night we had curried lentils and I tried my hand at making chapati, an Indian/East African flat bread. Though not perfectly round it was flaky and warm and turned out pretty well, something I’ll definitely practice some more.
Back to campsites. Trouble with special campsite bookings seems to be quite common in the Serengeti. In the few days that followed every self driver we met had either double bookings for their campsites or found that the camps they had booked were totally inaccessible, either roads were impassable or the camp was overgrown or whatever. With the incredible expense it costs to be in the park, just over $300 USD a day for us, and that isn’t including of course the cost of having your own vehicle, it is frustrating that the park doesn’t appear to know who is camping where and what roads are usable. Obviously the tour operators who are setting up large tented camps must have a better system to ensure that they aren’t double booked, and I presume that they inspect the sights before setting up and do what maintenance needs to be done so they can operate.
The next day we checked in with the park, not at the tourist office, not at the visitor center, not at park HQ, but at the airstrip, of course. As far as we could tell the park office at the airport (no sign) is the only place that either knows what is going on or can find out. It was good we checked in before heading out to the Western corridor to our Grumetti campsite, because we were told that camp too was already booked, that the officials at the Ndabaka gate had incorrectly given us that site even though they had called the main office in Arusha. We were given a new special campsite, Kira Wira Hill, but again they didn’t know exactly where it was, but assured us there was a sign. All of this was a bit exasperating, but I suppose is just part of the deal. I thought maybe we should have made more of an effort to book in advance, but since even other self drivers we met who had booked a year out had encountered similar problems perhaps it didn’t matter.
That morning we had great luck of sighting two huge male lions with regal looking manes. There weren’t up to much, but they did pose for us in the morning light, it was nice. We also spotted a mother serval, a medium size spotted cat, with a young cub. The cub was barely larger than a house cat kitten and must have been very young, and while the mother was watching us with concern the cub was playing around and seemed to be having a grand time. It was great to watch. Eventually the mother picked up her cub and ran into the grass.
In the afternoon we made our way west, towards our Kira Wira Hill special campsite. The Western corridor is more densely wooded than the central and southern plains of the Serengeti. The attraction is the Grumetti river, and that a large portion of the migrating wildebeest congregate there to cross the river before they make their way north to the Masai Mara.
Driving in we had marked on the GPS where the large herds of wildebeest were, so it was interesting to come back and see if they had moved. We found that they hadn’t moved much, but there more of them. Many many more. It is staggering to see so many animals. Even in just the two days that we had been in Seronera it was obvious that huge herds of wildebeest had moved into the area, preparing to cross the Grumetti. The herds were spread out in the plains along the main road and along the river, wildebeest numbering in the tens of thousands. It’s unbelievable that such a fantastic amount of grazing animals leaves any grass left at all, but it seems they do.
We did find our camp with relative ease that night, about two kilometers off the main road just at the tree line. We made camp and gazed at thousands of wildebeest on the plain below. As we watched the sunset there was an endless chorus of wildebeest making their curious honking noise, cavorting and grazing.
It was my birthday that night, and Jenny had attempted the impossible, to make me a proper gin and tonic. As everyone knows, a gin and tonic is just not right if you don’t also have ice and lime. A lesser drink might be consumed skimping on the details, but a G&T is all or nothing, in our opinion anyway. Lime we had managed to find in the market, a challenge in itself as all limes and lemons are all green and are all referred to as lemons. Ice was another story. Our 12v fridge has the power to freeze, as evidence by the numerous vegetables we had ruined by turning it down too far and by the milk for Jenny’s tea that is often half frozen in the morning.
She had put a few plastic containers of water in the bottom and turned it down to it’s coldest setting. Frozen vegetables, check. Frozen milk, check. Frozen water…no. Stubbornly they had refused to freeze, too much agitation on the bumpy roads I suppose. Oh the hardships we endure! I happily settled on cold beer, and Jenny made me French fries, sautéed carrots and boerwors over the fire. We could still hear the honking of a thousand wildebeest in the dark and lions calling, close enough to make us eat in a hurry, and life was good.
Logistical Notes:
In no particular order, here are a few things that might be useful if you’re visiting the Serengeti on your own.
There are no garbage facilities, it is strictly pack it in pack it out. We wished we had known this before we were a couple days into the park, we would have organized our trash differently. We ended up being able to get rid of trash once in Seronera, but I wouldn’t count on this. We burned our paper trash in our camp fire and packed out the rest, which was getting pretty rank at the end.
This is also a good reason to attempt to bring beer in cans if you can find it, as the empty bottles are heavy and take up a lot of space. We were unsuccessful at finding canned beer in Bunda. If coming from the west I suspect that Mwanza is the only place you could get it.
Provisioning from the Ndabaka side of the park, Lamadi has an well stocked open air market for vegetables, and meat I suppose for those more adventurous than us. Bunda has numerous small duka shops with haphazard selection, and I’m sure a vegetable market somewhere, but we couldn’t find it.
There is fuel in Seronera, usually. Don’t count on it if you can avoid it, and later we learned in Arusha that the fuel quality in the park is poor and can wreak havoc on a more discerning engine than our trusty 4.2, reputed to be able to burn almost anything.
Special camp sites. We think they’re worth the extra $40 USD ($20/ea) per night for the full Serengeti experience. Finding them and booking them is another story. I’d suggest doing as much research as possible on GPS coordinates for sites prior to coming, don’t count on the park being able to direct you. There are signs for most of the sites, but there are not always, and even when they exist they might be obscured by tall grass. Site 5 is not close to site 4, for example, and site 6 might be 20 kilometers away on a different road, so be sure you’re headed the right way if you can.
There are no facilities at all (i.e. no water, no toilet) at the special campsite, it’s just a place that is designated by the park that may or may not have cut grass and probably a good view. If you want during your game drives you can always stop by the visitor center, airport or public campsite to use the toilet. The public campsites also have showers.
Research special campsites here. I’ll post all GPS coordinates for the special campsites we stayed at in the next post.
There is a very small shop in the staff village, but don’t count on it for provisioning. It has a few odds and ends, but no real staples. Toothpaste, cigarettes, cookies, bottled water, maybe peanut butter and an eclectic assortment of other food, but it’s sparse and expensive. Beer is available at the bar in the staff village, but expensive.
