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Date: 12 Apr 2006
Time: 17:10:21 +0200
Remote Name: 66.36.212.253
The TDA organisers had built in a three day rest day at Arusha for the first time (previously a two day rest day). This was to enable riders to have the opportunity to go on safari at both the Ngorogoro crater and the Serengiti, which were very close by. About 24 of us did a three day trip - half a days driving to the Ngorogoro crater where we had a brief lunch stop and then another half day driving across to the Serengeti. The journey from Ngorogoro to the Serengiti itself was almost like a safari drive, this was the migration period for the wildebeest and all 1.5 million of them were strolling around that day. Not to mention the cheetah family chewing on some prey, the giraffes chomping on their trees, the hippos wallowing in their water and the elephants gliding through the grass. After overnighting at the Serengiti campsite, the four land cruisers we were in headed out onto the Serengeti plan for the morning. Our land cruiser was lucky enough to see a cheetah bring down a small gazelle in the distance, and we saw more than we ever anticipated seeing; not some wildlife documentary on the TV but the real thing in the wild. Plenty lions lounging, leapord snoozing on it's rock, hyenas (ugly looking devils) and jackals, elephants and wildebeest and buffalo everywhere. My land cruiser crew were Monty, Joan, and Lyle in the back, Christa and I in the middle row and Kevin with the ring side view in the front. The back row passengers had come prepared with several bike water bottles full of rum and coke. The afternoon after the Serengeti safari drive were back-tracked to the Ngorogoro crater where we camped overnight before the safari drive there the following morning. The crater is a huge leftover from an exploded volcano millions of years ago, and has a unique concentration of various species of wildlife within a relatively small area because of it's geography. The route through these nature reserves takes the land cruisers up to the rim of the crater and then around the crater to get to the Serengeti. The safari drive into the Ngorogoro crater is about a 600m descent down the crater face - with dramatic views all the way. On the way out to the Serengiti on day one of our trip, we stopped briefly at the crater rim to take photos of the spectacular view. It is here that I went into injury time - stepping down from the land cruiser, I must had put my foot on a stone and managed to go over on it completely to one side. I knew immediatley it was bad news and sixty seconds later my whole ankle had swelled to twice its normal size. I took some photos and limped back into the land cruiser wondering whether I had broken it, ripped a ligament or had a very bad sprain. Fortunately Kevin had some painkillers and I wolfed them down for the afternoon, and Toby (a surgeon in real life) took a look that evening, bandaged me up, said get an X-ray and told me I might be off my bike for up to six weeks. The following evening, back again to camp at the Ngorogoro crater, we were warned that there were bush-hogs close to the campsite (wild pigs) and not to leave any food in our tent as they would try to get into the tents and get it. So, all food wrapped up out of the way, I limped into my tent for what I thought would be a nice peaceful nights sleep snuggled up in my sleeping bag. This illusion was shattered at about three o'clock in the morning, when I woke up to the sounds of a pig snorting and the unexpected sight of a rather large pig head about two feet away from mine doing its best to rip its way into the inner tent. As soon as I heard the grunting and saw the little beady eyes and huge snout I realized what was happening, gave my best Hollywood scream, but the little bugger kept on coming into the tent. As its head was so close to mine, the only thing I could think of doing to stop it getting in was to lean over and give it a left hook on the snout (it had tusks and had it got in, blood could have been shed, some of it mine). To conserve energy while I was punching, I obviously had to stop screaming for a short while. I'm not sure how many punches I landed before it decided to go away (I'm guessing it was three or four) but the soundtrack for the incident went something like "Aaaaarh", "Pow!", "Aaaaarh", "Pow!, "Aaaaarh", "Pow" etc. The whole camp had obviously woken up by now, and Mike Coo, in the tent next to me, called over to find out what was going on, to which I replied (once the beast had been dispatched) "it's one of those pig things". All I could hear then was laughter coming from his tent, which set me off and several other people too. I crawled out to see what damage it had done; a ripped fly, a 15 inch rip in the inner tent, luckily along the seam so I could later sew it up, and a broken tent pole. So all in all it was quite an eventful safari trip for me - almost crippled myself stepping out of the car and then locked in mortal combat with a wild bush hog. When the safari was over and I limped back into the main camp, I obviously could not ride for at least a couple of weeks and decided to stay in Arusha the day the main group left on their bikes and get an X ray done, then rejoin the group a week later in Iringa. Fortunately the foot was not broken and I was advised to stay off it for two weeks, so I decided to head off to Zanzibar and lounge on a beach for a short while to recover.