Meru Slopes Tours & Safaris

Fantastic 4-day safari

A work colleague and I took advantage of being in Tanzania for work to go on the Meru Slopes 4-day Tarangire - Serengeti – Ngorongoro Crater tour at the end of January, 2017.
Firstly, I have to say what great value for money the tour is. For around USD 750 each, you get picked up on arrival and dropped off for departure at Kilimanjaro airport, which is about an hour’s drive from Arusha, where the tour departs. The price also includes overnight accommodation the night before and the night after the tour (so you actually get 5-nights accommodation in total). The hotel is basic but clean and breakfast is included.
I’ll break the rest of the safari down into sections so you can read the parts you’re interested in.
Vehicle
On the tour you travel in a Toyota 4WD, which accommodates up to 6 tour passengers, the driver/guide and the cook. The vehicle has a raiseable roof so all tour passengers can stand up in the vehicle during the game drives and get great views and photographs of the wildlife. The vehicle quite roomy and provided good views of the surrounding countryside even when the roof was lowered. It was dependable for most of the tour, but developed a problem with the suspension on the penultimate day which the driver fixed for the final day.

Accommodation
Arusha. The pre/post hotel was quite basic and also quite noisy (from outside). There are other accommodation options available when booking, so if really want a good night sleep ask for other accommodation options. We picked up a couple who had stayed at a nearby guesthouse who said that they had no problem with noise at their guesthouse. Wifi is available at the hotel, but in truth it’s only really usable around reception and not in the rooms. The rooms themselves were clean and functional. There was hot running water, a flushing toilet, clean towels, mosquito net and a TV. No air-con or fan, but the windows open to let in the cooler night air, but also the early-morning noise. Extra nights should cost around USD 25. If you book as two people (like my work colleague and I did), then you’ll be allocated a twin room. You might want to pay the extra USD 25 for your own.
Safari. This was a camping safari, so we spent each night under canvas. The first night was spent at Sunbright Campsite next to the small village of Mto wa Mbu, on the north side of Lake Manyara (https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Hotel_Review-g7044962-d10357037-Reviews-Manyara_Sunbright_Lodge_and_Campsite-Mto_wa_Mbu_Lake_Manyara_National_Park_Arusha_Re.html). This was really ‘glamping’, with big two-person tents already set up, with beds inside and running hot water in the shower/toilet behind each tent.
The second night (in the Serengeti) was proper camping. Everyone helps to erect the tents. There’s one tent per two people, so even if you are travelling alone you’ll still have to share if there are other lone travellers. This shouldn’t be a problem as you’ll already have spent a full-day together having had some great experiences and become friends with the other travellers. The campsite was much better than I thought it would be. It had toilet/shower blocks with hot running water, a cookhouse, and a dining area. Spending the night camping out in the Serengeti was an absolutely top experience. For a whole hour before we went to bed, we all just lay on our jackets or blankets staring up at the crystal-clear night sky, pointing out planets, stars and constellations, with the occasional brilliant flash of a meteorite zooming across. The rest of the night was also great, I’d occasionally wake to the sound of baboons giving their alarm, groups of hyenas patrolling the savannah or the pride of lions that were stationed a few hundred yards away from the campsite! At one point in the night there was a lion just a few yards away from the tent, roaring away in response to the larger pride nearby. This was actually really exciting and not at all frightening. You’re told when you arrive to stay in your tents at night and if you really need to go for a pee in the night, just go outside the tent – good advice!
The third night is spent on the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater at the Simba campsite. The crater campsites are typically much busier (about 15 tents at the Serengeti campsites, 40 at Simba), but noise wasn’t much of a problem as everyone will be getting up at 5am to head down to the crater for sunrise. The facilities were similar to the Serengeti, although not much hot water to be had in the showers.

Safari staff
For the safari, we had a driver/guide ‘Zigi’ and our cook ‘Booga’.
I presumed that we’d be doing our own cooking, so it was a pleasant surprise to find out we had a cook of our own. Booga was a great cook and the food was very good, especially considering the basic facilities we had. Tasty soups, chicken and fish mains, banana fritters, etc for the evening meals, toast, omelettes, chapattis, tea/coffee, mango, etc for breakfast and a packed lunch for midday picnics. Booga was also a really nice guy, always smiling and helped out with setting up and bringing down the tents.
Zigi our driver and guide was obviously very experienced at both. He knew his way around all the parks we visited very well and seemed very popular amongst the other guides from other companies. His network of other guides along with his knowledge of the parks meant that he did a great job at finding us all the popular animals (e.g. in the first afternoon in the Serengeti he located lion, cheetah and leopard). As with Booga he was really nice guy, always willing to share his knowledge of the areas we were visiting. The only criticism I’d have is that although lots of effort and concentration was put into seeing the really popular species, less attention was given to other animals. For example, if I’d not pointed out an antelope species that was unfamiliar to me near the road, we would have just driven past the only Hartebeest of the trip. It would have been nice to see attention to getting us the biggest range of animals during the whole trip, not just the most popular ones. Other than that, both Zigi and Booga were excellent and we’d never have had anywhere near as good of a trip without them.

Animals
The range of birds, mammals and reptiles we saw on the trip was incredible and would warrant a separate review in itself. Other than not seeing any crocodiles (the dry season is a bad time to see them due to the lack of water) I can’t think of a single animal that I expected to see and didn’t. Massive herds of migrating Wildebeest, a leopard with two cubs feeding on an Impala, Spotted Hyenas hunting down wildebeest, the cutest baby elephants, 4 species of cat and 150+ species of bird (my speciality). The morning that we spent in the Ngorongoro was one of the best experiences of my life. Everything was really great and I can’t recommend this tour enough.

Summary
This was a very well organised tour and excellent value for money. Even though I’m in my 50s and used to a somewhat more luxurious lifestyle (gone are the days of British camping holidays for me), given the option I’d still go camping instead of staying in lodges. You get a fantastic feel of being closer to nature on a camping safari (I’ve done the safari lodges in Kenya, so feel qualified to make this remark) and I’d definitely use Meru Slopes again if (when!) I return to Tanzania.



Tips:
Download the Google Sky Map app before you leave. It came in really handy to look at the night sky in the Serengeti. I bought a Vodacom sim card to use during my trip. You can still get a pretty good signal right out in the remotest parts.
Luggage – take as little as possible and leave any suitcases at the hotel before you leave. You’ll need to keep your luggage with you in the tents and they’re not big enough to take large suitcases. We took and shared a large duffle bag with all our stuff in it. If you minimise the amount of luggage in the back of the vehicle, this also means that there will be less need to put overflow into the main passenger space of the vehicle.