Final credits and information
I would first like to thank Timothy Parenti for his help in setting up this blog and his parents, Helen and Mike for watching over our home and keeping the fish and plants alive for two weeks.
Special thanks also goes to our local travel agent Terry Sage who helped to set up our itinerary. Terry worked with "Absolute Travel", who worked with "CC Africa Safaris & Tours Arusha", who worked out the itinerary and set us up with "Ranger Safaris ltd." which supplied the vehicle and expert driver/guide Eustace. I would recommend Ranger Safaris to anyone planning a tour of Tanzania.
Things to take on the trip
I was surprised to see some people on safari who didn't have binoculars with them. Many things are seen quite close to the vehicle but many aren't ,take a good pair with you. Almost everyone had a camera. Mine is a Cannon S1-IS. They now have an S2-IS, etc. This camera has a 10X optical zoom and the IS stands for "image stabilization" which is important to reduce blurring at high zoom. Set the camera at high resolution and take plenty of memory with you. This way if the 10X zoom isn't enough you can enlarge the picture with "digital zoom" on the computer. (see the pictures of the flamingos in the crater) Most of the pictures I took used the automatic setting. Which means it was mostly "point and shoot mode" except for using the zoom feature. Most of the pictures were down loaded to the web site at 30% of the total resolution the picture allowed. This greatly reduced the amount of time that it took to download them and still gives a little enlargement when you click on a picture.
Using sunscreen seems like a no-brainer, but we saw many people with quite red faces after a day under the sun that close to the equator. Our vehicle had a pop up sunroof (Toyota Land Cruiser), most of the Land Rovers didn't. This is an advantage or disadvantage depending if you want to look at any soaring birds directly over head. Our sunscreen had an insect repellant built in, "Sun & Bug". We ended up with a few bites, mostly around our ankles by biting flies, we saw and heard few mosquitoes.
The tour companies will sent you a list of things to take. You can take more clothes if you are not planning on including any local, small planes in your itinerary(ours didn't).
If you have any other questions about a safari trip comment on the blog and I will try to answer.
Jim
Using sunscreen seems like a no-brainer, but we saw many people with quite red faces after a day under the sun that close to the equator. Our vehicle had a pop up sunroof (Toyota Land Cruiser), most of the Land Rovers didn't. This is an advantage or disadvantage depending if you want to look at any soaring birds directly over head. Our sunscreen had an insect repellant built in, "Sun & Bug". We ended up with a few bites, mostly around our ankles by biting flies, we saw and heard few mosquitoes.
The tour companies will sent you a list of things to take. You can take more clothes if you are not planning on including any local, small planes in your itinerary(ours didn't).
If you have any other questions about a safari trip comment on the blog and I will try to answer.
Jim
1 comment:
Sounds like you had a fantastic time in one of my favorite places in the world!!!! Just wanted to clarify that it is quite common in Africa to subcontract services and although your final recommendation was for Rangers Safaris, it takes quite a few people to put together the logistics that a trip such as yours required. Terry & I worked very closely together and I'm happy we succeeded in making this dream come true. Daniela- Absolute Travel.
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