Jambo!! My wife and I celebrated 40 years of marriage in June 2016. To celebrate our milestone, we booked our ADS Safari and looked forward to this great lifetime experience! Our 10 day ADS Safari was April 2nd 2017 to April 12th 2017. We arrived in Arusha where we were met at the airport by Mathias and our wonderful Safari Guide, Russell. We spent two nights at the Mount Meru Hotel for a much needed rest and city tour of Arusha before venturing out into the Serengeti on our Safari!

We flew out on a bush plane the morning of April 4th to Central Serengeti where Russell met us at the air strip and from there we embarked on our wonderful Safari! Upon leaving the air strip, we immediately saw elephants and within the first hour Russell spotted a leopard lounging in a large Acacia tree. We observed that there were three leopards in the tree, a male, female and a cub. We watched and photographed these beautiful animals! What a great start to our Safari and each day thereafter only got better!

We toured a new area every day on our Safari and overnighted in three different locations. The first two locations were tent camps in Mbuzi Mawe and Lake Masek where we spent three nights at each camp. Our final two nights were at the Ngorongoro Serena Lodge located on the rim of the beautiful Ngorongoro Crater!

We found all of our accommodations to be very nice and comfortable and the staff at each location were superb hosts! Within hours at each camp we felt like we were part of the staff’s family and enjoyed our time getting to know each of them! Sitting on the deck overlooking Lake Masek while enjoying dinner and a drink was a most wonderful experience!

In the first two days of our Safari we had already seen four of the “Big Five” (Cape Buffalo, Elephant, Leopard and Lion) and countless other animals and birds! Russell, our ADS Guide, is a human encyclopedia that has a vast knowledge of all the animals, birds, plant life and the Maasai people and their language and culture. We were very impressed with Russell’s ability to not only spot animals and birds, but to tell us their name and their characteristics without hesitation! We learned so much from Russell in our short 10-days together.

In our first few days and throughout our Safari, we saw many different animals and beautifully colored birds. Russell has the eye of an eagle for spotting wildlife and he did a remarkable job in positioning our vehicle for the best photo opportunities of each animal, bird or scenic landscape.

Some of our memorable highlights were seeing cheetahs and leopards scouting for their next dinner, watching hundreds to thousands of wildebeests and zebras on the move together and then crossing a watering hole with a sense of urgency as if crossing the crocodile infested Mara River in the northern Serengeti! We spotted many lions on our Safari, but seeing several young lion cubs was most memorable. Watching four cubs nurse and then play together and spotting our first male lions lounging on a rock outcrop were beyond belief!

Seeing and driving into the Ngorongoro Crater was absolutely beautiful! The crater has its own environment and eco system and an abundance of wildlife in this beautiful caldera. Of course this was our opportunity to see the Black Rhino and fulfill our goal of seeing all of the “Big Five”. Russell came through with flying colors! We not only got to see the Black Rhino, but we spotted and photographed six Black Rhinos!

Our ADS Safari was a perfect vacation to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary and to fulfill a lifetime dream! Asante-Sana to Russell (our Guide) and Dawn, our ADS Coordinator for working diligently to make our Safari an adventure never to be forgotten and one which we may never top! Our Safari far exceeded our expectations and Asante to all the people at ADS and at our tent camps and lodges for making our trip so very memorable!

Jerry and Kathy G.
Montgomery, Texas
April 2, 2017 to April 12, 2017