Northern Tanzania family diary
Tanzania, In the Quiet Between Tracks
A first safari with Mira, Ben, Brandon, Valence, one accident, many lions, and the beginning of a love for Africa.
We arrived in Tanzania carrying the usual mix of expectation and imagination. I had travelled quite a lot before, but this was different. It was our first safari as a family: my wife Mira, our eldest son Ben, our youngest son Brandon, and me. We landed at Kilimanjaro International Airport after a long journey, tired but strangely awake, the way one becomes awake when something long imagined is finally real.
The first thing I noticed was cleanliness and no chaos. I do not know exactly what I had expected, but the airport and the arrival area felt calmer and cleaner than the lazy cliches one can carry without wanting to. Outside, though, the safari machinery was already waiting: rows of jeeps, drivers, names, luggage, people being collected for their dream. It felt exciting, a little touristy, and at the same time exactly what I wanted. The adventure was no longer an idea. It was parked outside.
Our guide was called Valence. He was tall, young, polite, and spoke very good English. My first impression, if I am honest, was that he seemed maybe a little inexperienced. Not unfriendly at all, just young. It took time to break the ice, also from our side. We did not want to impose too much. It was our first safari, and we did not yet know how much one can ask, how strongly one should say what one wants, or how the rhythm between guide and family is supposed to work. Later we would learn that Valence was patient, well connected with other guides, and good at getting tips from colleagues on the road. We would also learn that he drove too fast :-)
Arusha: The First Contrast
The drive toward Arusha gave us our first real images of Tanzania. It felt like a big town, busy and dense, with rough streets, potholes, small vendors, garages repairing broken cars and safari jeeps, and cables running everywhere, for phones or electricity or both. There were people everywhere, often standing, waiting, watching, hanging around in a way that made me wonder what daily work and daily patience meant there.
There was poverty, but not the extreme image I have seen in other places. What surprised me most was the green. I had imagined Africa drier, more sandy, almost desert-like. Instead there was vegetation, life, gardens, humidity, trees. I remember looking out and wondering how, inside this busy and densely populated place, there could possibly be a lodge hidden like a green oasis.
Then Tumbili Lodge appeared, and it was a dream-like first shock. The garden, the welcome, the cold drinks after the long trip, the sudden quiet: it felt like a mix of mind games and reality. We had moved from potholes and cables into a place that seemed almost unreal in its comfort. Mira was at least as excited as I was, maybe even more ;-) Ben and Brandon were already in adventure mode, probably scanning the trees for monkeys and the ground for snakes before the safari had even started.
That first evening was gentle. A hot shower after the long journey gave us the kickstart we needed. Dinner was lovely, and we went to bed relatively early, the boys in one bungalow and us in another. I remember being surprised that the bungalow did not have windows everywhere, and also how chilly it became at night. There were dogs barking and music somewhere from a local party, and for a moment I feared a sleepless night. But nothing like that happened. We slept well. Still, we gave the boys the kind of parental instructions that come naturally in a new place: do not go out at night, close the doors properly, prepare the mosquito nets, even if we were taking malaria pills. Comfort and alertness lived together from the first night.
Lake Manyara: Safari Begins, Almost
On the morning of 25 August 2025, there was no tiredness left. We were excited, camera-ready, and probably looking too hard already, expecting animals to appear at any minute.
At the gate of Lake Manyara National Park, it did feel official. We were entering a park, and our minds wanted that gate to be the beginning of wilderness. The first hours, though, were more complicated. They were not disappointing, but they felt more like a tourist ride than the immense freedom I had imagined. Because we followed a regular road, the park sometimes felt closer to an animal park than to overwhelming nature. The openness, the endlessness, that feeling of being swallowed by landscape, had not yet arrived.
But the picnic was wonderful. Getting out of the jeep changed everything. Suddenly we were standing there, eating, knowing that animals were somewhere around us. There was an armed guard watching the place, which made me feel both amused and protected. The boys, of course, liked his rifle. For them it was security, but also a little bit of action cinema.
Our first elephant was a highlight. It passed so close to the jeep that the whole idea of safari became physical. The animal was not on a screen, not in a book, not safely distant inside imagination. It was there, huge and calm, crossing our day. We also saw an impressive number of monkeys, especially olive baboons and vervet monkeys, busy in the trees and along the road. Lake Manyara may not have given me the vastness we were looking for, but it gave us proximity.
Map view
Browse the Journey on a Satellite Map
Click the numbered map markers to browse broader GPS-based photo regions. In the photo viewer, animal frames are labelled like natural-history specimens; non-animal frames are left uncaptioned.
The Plantation Lodge
The Plantation Lodge in Karatu felt like another step up. More colonial in atmosphere, more refined, more settled into its own world. It belonged to a German lady, and I had the opportunity to speak with her. She told me how many royals had stopped there, including our Grand Duke, and she also told me the story of how they had started: living in a container, working in the coffee business, and eventually building this huge lodge with its own organic plantation.
During our stroll, we met workers on the property. One of them, the landscape or garden chief, had been there from the beginning. He told me stories about the place and the owners, even a few private things that may or may not be true and have no place in this blog. Mira was taken aside by a woman who had also worked there for years. Later, back in the room, Mira told me that this woman had done well for herself: she had managed to build a few houses and now rented them out to tourists.
There was also a small comic moment. At one point, as we were walking back toward our room, the gardener tried to hold my hand. I still do not know exactly why. To guide me, I like to tell myself. He wanted to show me a small market the next day after safari. That visit never happened, because the next day would become the day of our accident. Luckily or not, we will never know.
That evening before Ngorongoro was beautiful and safe. We had a private table on a mezzanine and delicious food. Everything felt calm, almost protected. We went to sleep looking forward to the next day, expecting more animals, more wilderness, and the pleasure of being surprised.
Ngorongoro And The Accident
On the morning of 26 August 2025, the air was chilly. The excitement was there again, as it had been every morning. We hoped Ngorongoro would feel wilder than Lake Manyara. The road toward the crater had its own texture: asphalt, a downhill approach, then a long narrow secondary road toward the lodge area, reddish soil, workers, and what looked like future fencing, with concrete pillars stretching for hundreds of meters.
The accident happened on the way back, still inside the park, only a few hundred meters from the entrance or exit. Valence had always driven fast. That day he did not see a stationary jeep in time. He could not brake enough and hit it hard from behind.
The first thing I remember after the impact is checking Ben, Brandon and Mira. Was everyone okay? Ben had a bloody elbow, but I quickly saw that it was only a scratch. He and Mira had broken the wooden board that served as a shelf for goggles or other things. Mira's knee was badly hurt and began swelling quickly. Brandon had hit his face and nose on the seat in front of him. I had a whiplash movement, my head thrown forward and back, and my back hit hard plastic.
Valence was overwhelmed. He later said so himself. Other drivers came around, and one of the first things that happened was not medical care, but concern for the safari company names printed on spare tire covers. Image seemed to arrive before health, which was sad to see. I gave Mira cold water bottles from the little fridge box in the car for her knee. We spent a good thirty or forty minutes before somebody really came to ask about us.
In the end we left after Valence paid the others, for whatever amount and reason. It felt like a local way of settling things that I did not fully understand. We lost close to two hours. Mira was in pain, but not to the point where we wanted to lose more hours in a hospital. We thought nothing was broken. What we did not know was that her knee would take close to a year to fully heal. The damaged jeep just managed to reach the lodge, then broke down twenty or fifty meters before the parking area with an overheated engine. The cooling system had broken.
Back at the lodge, the main feeling was sadness for Mira. This was a trip she had been so excited for, and now the rest of it would be filtered through pain. The lodge may not have understood at first what had happened. If my memory is correct, the owner offered painkillers. Valence apologized again and again. The company phoned to ask if we were okay and assured us that a new car would drive through the night so the safari could continue as planned. In the evening, we even laughed and said that now we had, for sure, a memory for life. Not the one we ordered, but one that would stay.
The accident changed our relationship with Valence. In a strange way, it made him more human. We saw his shame and his youth. But we were still scared, especially because he continued to drive fast, and the next stage was the long dusty road toward Serengeti, full of potential accidents.
Oldupai And The Road To Serengeti
Before Serengeti, we stopped at Oldupai Gorge, often known as Olduvai Gorge, one of the great sites connected to early human history. I am almost ashamed to admit that I had never really heard of it. For me, human origins were names like Homo erectus and Neanderthals, but Oldupai had never been part of my mental map.
I was impressed by its importance, and at the same time disappointed by how lost it felt in the middle of nowhere. For such a historical and paleontological site, it felt almost too modest, too quiet, too easy to miss. That contrast stayed with me: a place of immense human meaning, standing under a hard sky, surrounded by dust and distance.
After that, the landscape changed again. No more lush green, no more mist. The road became dust and gravel. We passed Maasai villages and herds of cattle. The Serengeti gate itself was surprisingly disappointing: small, almost insignificant compared with the more impressive entrances of Ngorongoro or Lake Manyara. For a name as enormous as Serengeti, the entrance felt too modest. The landscape would have to announce itself later.
Nyumbani Serengeti: Sleeping Inside The Bush
The vastness and beauty of Serengeti fully reached us when we arrived at Nyumbani Serengeti. Sleeping in tents in the middle of the bush was exciting in a way that no gate could have prepared us for. Being escorted to the tents by a Maasai or ranger was exciting and a little scary. The instructions were simple and unforgettable: do not leave the tent alone at night; use the walkie-talkie if you want someone to come and pick you up. Suddenly the wilderness was not just scenery outside the vehicle. It was around the bed.
Before the night, there was what they called bush TV. Sitting at the campfire, with a Maasai watching over us, no one else around, a cold drink in hand, listening to pure silence and the small noise of the flames, was magnificent. There were a few distant roars and animal noises, not much at first, but enough to make the dark feel alive. Up to that date, it was the most vivid moment in nature I had ever experienced.
Then the night came. First, it got really cold. Then the sounds were all around us. We could not tell what they were. They seemed huge, just walking by the tent. The canvas suddenly felt very thin, and some part of the mind begins to imagine it being ripped open at any moment. In the morning we discovered lion prints only centimeters from the tent walls. Lions had walked all around us. They had killed a buffalo and dragged it a few dozen meters from our tent to eat it. After one day, only a skeleton was left. One of the photographs in the gallery shows it. The night was rough, freezing, frightening, and unforgettable. I would repeat it anytime. The cold mornings made me look forward to my tangawizi tea.
Mira, Ben, and Brandon reacted exactly as one should react after such a night: thrilled, scared, tired, overhyped, and happy. That is probably the Serengeti doing its job properly.
Lions, Leopard, And The Work Of Survival
The big memories from Serengeti were lions, without a doubt, and a leopard resting in a tree after a kill. The leopard scene impressed me because it was not only beautiful. The kill was still at the bottom of the tree, and the leopard seemed too tired to drag it up. It was recovering, breathing heavily. That made the hunt feel physical. You suddenly understand that survival is not an elegant documentary sequence. It is effort, exhaustion, risk, and hunger.
The lions stayed with us in many forms. A cub, then cubs playing together while their mothers watched, gave us tenderness and family life. On a night drive, we saw a majestic male lion caught in the headlights near a kill. We knew he was there because of the kill, and then the light found him lying in the dark. It was impressive, but the animal sightings were not always the highest moments. Sometimes the landscape itself was stronger.
One of those stronger moments was a drink on a kopje in the middle of the bush. Sitting there at sunset, looking across the plains, feeling the beauty and vastness of the place, was above almost everything. I felt lucky. I felt sad that we humans destroy so much of this beautiful earth. I felt blessed to be fortunate enough to witness such things, and happy that Mira, Ben, and Brandon could witness them with me. I also felt an urge that has not left me: one day, perhaps when retired, to give back, maybe through volunteering, and to do more than simply pass through places like this.
What Safari Taught Us
When the safari part ended and we prepared to leave from Seronera toward Zanzibar, we were ready to leave and not ready at the same time. We were grateful, tired, looking forward to the relaxing part, and feeling heartache at leaving this beautiful place. We also knew there would be a next time.
What would we do differently? We would take more time to observe. We would not rush from one spot to another in a desperate hunt for the Big Five. We would try to blend in with nature, learn, study, document, and wind down. The first safari teaches you how easy it is to chase sightings. The deeper lesson is to slow down enough to understand what you are seeing.
The accident remains part of our souvenirs, a sad side note and still one of the major memories of the trip. But it is not the main lesson. The main lesson is the love for Africa that started burning inside us. The kindness of the people. The beauty of nature, pure, raw, tough, sometimes brutal, but honest. The feeling that the people are worth knowing better, not just meeting briefly through tourism.
After my Kilimanjaro climb the following year, I stayed in touch with some people I met, with Valence who is a great person and whom I would love to meet again in near future, and some I support financially. That matters to me. Giving back cannot remain only a beautiful sentence. And as a photographer, documenting is also part of my way of giving attention. The camera is not only there to collect images. It is there to help me look longer, remember better, and maybe make others care a little more.
Source Notes
- Photo source: Olivier Pirrotte, Tanzania gallery
- Trip route and accommodation context: Wetu daily itinerary and Wetu accommodation itinerary
- Background context: UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Ngorongoro Conservation Area
- Background context: UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Serengeti National Park