Hugo’s First Blog Entry

Rushing backwards and forth. Packing, unpacking, packing, unpacking, setting off and stopping. It’s fun. We’ve visited Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Tanzania. We also went to the island of Zanzibar. My favourite thing we’ve done is go into the Ngorongora Crater because we saw so many animals. We only needed to see two more animals until we’d have seen the BIg Five. There were giraffes, lions (hiding in bushes, some of them were sleeping by the side of the road and some of them were walking by the side of the road). And in total we saw 9 lions from three prides in one morning in the crater. We also saw 6 hyenas and 5 elephants. And over 18 hippos.

We met a Maasai and gave him a lift around the crater rim. He was dressed in red clothes like cloth round him and had a big long stick in his hand. He also had a cell phone. His job was to take the cows into the crater to get water and keep them safe. It took him 12 hours to walk down into the crater with his cows to get water and back to his house. In don’t think I could do that walk. No way. It was seriously steep to get into the crater and when you stopped to pay to get in, Maasai would come and sell things to you. It was fun. I bought a necklace, which the Maasai told me was a lions tooth. It’s really, really awesome.

Then when we were having breakfast in Simba camp at the top of the crater an elephant walked up and just started to snack on all our things – out of the back of the truck. I hid in the roof tent with daddy and my brothers. Mummy was downstairs calling for help! It ate my dads coffee, peri peri sauce and all our breakfast cereal. It almost smashed my new Kilimanjaro mug.

The men in the camp were clapping their hands and my mum shouted “Help! My three boys are still in the car.” One of the safari guides shouted “get the car” and another guide drove his truck up to the big bull elephant and revved his engine and after that the elephant ran away. We found elephant goober all over our food and milk. And we found my dad’s Kilimanjaro coffee lying on the ground with elephant goober on it!

We drove back down the crater and went to the Shifting Sands. Which are black, magnetic sand dunes. And they’re really hot. I burnt my feet climbing up them.