After half a day in Arusha; we went into town and went to see the snakes and stuff, we were picked up by little 4x4 jeep car thingys..

We were off to the Ngorogoro Crater first and then the Serengeti!

All the singlees were in one jeep but it was so much fun as the roads were so smooth and the jeeps were so comfortable! Our guide-Victor-was a Masai and he was really good and informative.

2 hours flew by pretty quick.

We camped just outside the crater and it was amazing!

Such a cool bar and the utility block was awesome; tiles and toilet paper! We were already starting to appreciate the little things.

We also stopped at this Cultural Heritage site and saw this amazing stone only found in Tanzania called 'Tanzanite'. It was wow expensive but really pretty!

The next morning was wake up at 4.45am so we could be IN the park at opening at 6am.

In our truck we had a swap round; lost one singlee but gained the honeymooning couple! I'm glad Stacey was in our car now as she is just as excitable and snap happy as me!!

Anyway, so we were in the 'Ngorogoro Conservation Area' and basically people can live here as long as they don't harm the animals.

Ngorogoro means 'cow bell' and the crater is also shaped like a cowbell.

After descending 620m down into the crater we all just had our breaths taken away.

It was incredible.

It totally looked manmade as there were just animals EVERYWHERE, like it totally looked like they had been put there for our pleasure!

We are asking our guide what we should see and he says it's unlikely to see a cheetah which I'm sad about as they are my favorite!

But. Just as we are entering the crater, what is the first thing we see (after a million zebra and wildebeest) a cheetah! About 2 metres off the road!!! It was so exciting and definitely had us all pumped for more!

We were all hanging out of the top (as the roof pops open) and kept on getting Victor to stop so we could take photos. It was just incredible.

'It's your trip; do it your way'

We also saw a male lion-I think he was quite old-it couldn't have been more than 2metres from the road again! He was just lying there and what a perfect camera shot! When he got up, he limped away so must have been in a fight!

We basically saw everything!

We saw the big five by the end of the day (practically by lunchtime apart from the leopard who was hiding in a sausage tree 'He's just left of the sausage on the right!'). Cheetah, leopard, rhino, elephants, lions (plus adolescents), buffalo, zebra, wildebeest, giraffe (but only later), hyena, warthog, impala, gazelle, eland, so many flamingos like a sea of pink, hippos (in and out of the water), crocodiles and so many babies!! We even saw some camel on the way out! Oh and lots and lots of monkeys of course!

We even saw a kill! A lioness hunting and then she actually went for this warthog! We saw it in her mouth! That was amazing too.

The Serengeti was so so different as it was dry and more desert like than the rich Crater. But still amazing-we would go a while without seeing anything and then spot something amazing; like a group of lions lazing on a rock. Like something out of the lion king!

We slept in the serengeti and everyone was afraid of lions coming in or sleep as it wasn't closed off or anything!

We also had a flat tyre at least twice (once actually in the park).

Generally an adventurous and amazing time!

When we arrived back we had learnt a lot about Masai life on the way back too-like how girls of 16 get married to 25 year olds and they usually cost about 10 cows (he asked Ben how much he paid for Stacey!!). Also, girls get circumcised at about 15 and if they refuse then they can't get married and they have no purpose (as education is only for boys really) so they are a burden to the family..horrible hey?

Because it had been raining so much the little stream was now a raging river! water was rising so quickly and me and Justin ended up taking the bags out of the truck as it had raised so much in such a short space of time; we were wading knee deep through this muddy water!

But it was fine as soon went down and then we had to put all the bags back!

After supper we went to the bar and it was Adam (from the UK)'s last night!

So we thought we'd celebrate with a nice drinking game!

It was quite entertaining I must say!

Don't worry Mom and Dad-I was just very happy and giggly! And had a good time! I had to do a lot of pressups too as I was in 'The Game of Life' which is where you can't say the word lime but with an m if you get me..or you have to do ten push ups! I also did a springbok shot which was quite cool and a giraffe shot (just basically have to get the shot off the ground with no arms; like doing the splits!). It was a really good night anyway!