Day 5 was spent relaxing. A novel experience that I may try again one day.
My only activity was hunting birds with the aid of my spotter..
... look! A bird!
Look! Erm, not a bird...
After an evening meal in a local restaurant, we readied ourselves for an early start..
It was indeed the start of many early-starts to come. The bells tolled at 5am, before the cockerel had a chance to irritate us.
The airport is close by and all goes smoothly. Except, as usual, I leave my fleece in the airport. Who needs a bloody fleece in Africa?
Four and a half hours of flights, mostly in a Cessna...
...to get us to the Nyerere National Park in the south of Tanzania. Our next eight nights are to be spent here before heading back once more to Arusha and then onto the Serengeti.
Most of the voyage was over relatively barren land with randomly dotted fields of who knows what, lots of scrub and quite a few majestic baobabs. However, after our last stop to fill up with fuel and burgers, the scenery became more rugged. As we headed east towards Nyerere, it wasn’t long before the terrain below us changed from flat and randomly farmed to mountainous. And along with mountains come clouds.
As the mountains disappeared behind us, some checker-board farming appeared as the clouds broke and flatter ground took over.
The landing-strip was basic in the extreme. Being sloped seemed a fundamental error that the pilot chose to ignore, although his plane seemed reluctant to slow down.
As you have probably surmised, we eventually stopped without blood-shed, leaving us intact for our following sundowner.
Here we are, next to Selous Grave. More of him later...
So far, little in the realm of ground-breaking photography. However, today's star prize goes to my partner in crime who snapped (sorry, artistically captured) this view from our room with her hand-held texting device.
Tomorrow, our first game drive...
Next episode here
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