RealHoneymoons.com» good earth tours |

Watching the cubs in Serengeti

Allyson — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 17:20:49 +0000

RH Note: This week’s posts are written by guest blogger Greg Saitz, an incredibly talented writer and pet photographer. He chronicles the honeymoon he and his wife Kim took in Tanzania.

Serengeti National Park. Yeah, this is the mother of all safari parks and it didn’t disappoint. Lions, hyenas, dead zebras (lions seem to prefer a bit more protein for breakfast than the dry Weetabix we ate), jousting juvenile elephants, stampeding wildebeest, gazillions of Thomson’s gazelles and pooping hippos.

Within an hour of arriving in the Serengeti, we were mesmerized by the antics of a group of lion cubs playing on and around a kopje (a rocky outcrop) while the females and a male dozed in the high grass. Despite being there with half a dozen other safari trucks, it wasn’t hard to get lost in the moment.

The vastness of the Serengeti means you can’t see it all in a couple of days. We spent about 2 1/2 days there and just scratched the surface. After our first full day, we drove to the northern Serengeti where we had the best stay of our trip. More on that this afternoon.

First sightings in Arusha

Allyson — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 14:00:00 +0000

RH Note: This week’s posts are written by guest blogger Greg Saitz, an incredibly talented writer and pet photographer. He chronicles the honeymoon he and his wife Kim took in Tanzania.

Arusha National Park is smaller than some of the better-known parks but that means it usually has fewer crowds. We hit this reserve the morning after arriving in Africa and the rush of our first sightings of zebra, cape buffalo, warthogs, giraffes and other creatures actually in the wild as opposed to a zoo enclosure was incredible.

The highlight here definitely was getting out of our Land Cruiser and going on a hike with one of the park rangers. (He carried an AK-47 in case any buffalo took exception to our jaunt through their grazing pastures.) Watching lumbering giraffe from a car window is one thing; standing in the grass while nearby these long-necked herbivores dined on lunch is quite another.

This point is probably obvious, but having a good, knowledgeable guide can be the difference between an okay trip and a spectacular one. Do some research to ensure you get an experienced one.

Wild Kingdom honeymoon in Tanzania

Allyson — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 14:02:01 +0000

RH Note: This week’s posts are written by guest blogger Greg Saitz, an incredibly talented writer and pet photographer. He chronicles the honeymoon he and his wife Kim took in Tanzania.

Going to Africa for our honeymoon was one of the smartest things my wife and I have done so far as a married couple. Well, that and buying matching pink Snuggies. (Stop judging us.)

There are plenty of people whose idea of honeymoon bliss is sitting on a beach at an all-inclusive resort sucking down fruity drinks while watching other newly married couples suck down fruity drinks. Nothing wrong with that, but not our scene.

When considering where to go for our honeymoon, we thought about the arc of a typical marriage: a house, kids, commitments, responsibilities. Looking ahead, we saw lots of excuses we could make for not shelling out a good deal of cash and flying more than 15,000 miles to take a vacation.

In that sense, the decision was easy. But we spent a good deal of time researching our trip, from picking the country – Tanzania – to the tour company that took us on safari, Good Earth Tours. Make sure you’re getting involved with a reputable operator, because once you’re sitting in the middle of the Serengeti, making changes is not as easy as calling the front desk.

We knew we didn’t want to rough it too much, so we were booked into mostly mid- to upper-range lodges with the exception of one night in a luxury tent camp when we really got spoiled. More on that later this week.

We also arranged for a private safari, meaning Kim and I were the only people in the Land Cruiser with the guide/driver. The cost wasn’t that much more than a group tour, and the benefits of being able to go wherever you wanted whenever you wanted were enormous.

During the trip, we played the honeymoon card a few times. My wife used it to try to get upgrades to first class on our flights from Newark to Amsterdam and an 8 1/2- hour backbreaker to Kilimanjaro International Airport in Tanzania. It didn’t work, but the flight attendants did give us glasses of champagne and a collectable ceramic house we later discovered had whiskey in it.

I had better luck with “we’re on our honeymoon” at one of the lodges where we stayed after our first room had a bug issue. (I even brought the remains of a large but squished creature to the front desk to help plea my case.) The next night, they upgraded us to a magnificent, two-floor suite with sweeping views of the Serengeti.