After two long years of Covid lockdown and two postponed dates for my youngest daughter’s wedding in the Seychelles we finally received the news we had been waiting for, the ceremony was all arranged and confirmed and at long last we could book our holiday; the 2nd of May 2022 was to be our departure date.

Retirement for us had landed just perfectly and so we started to plan our four week trip of a life-time, the Seychelles and somewhere…

After copious amounts of researching and planning ultimately the flight schedules and cost gave us the answer – Tanzania! But what to do when we got there? There was only one thing we knew about Tanzania, you can go on safari!

Searching the internet came up with loads of suggestions for safaris, information about what animals you would see and where you would be staying during your safari, however it all seemed very tailored to what the safari companies wanted you to see and do. Everything was scheduled in for you, from what time you would get up to what time you would go to bed – definitely not for us.

The Big Five also loomed large in the hard sell, but we didn’t want spoon-feeding, we didn’t want someone dictating our itinerary for us, we wanted choice, after all it was supposed to be our holiday.

My partner Ron has stage 3 emphysema and that was a big worry too, if we were in a group would it hold the group back, would they stop and wait for him?

Lots of quotes and emails later no one seemed to be taking into account our requirements, what we wanted from our holiday and we were still none the wiser about what to really expect; we just couldn’t find anything that appealed to us.

March arrived and by this time we had booked all our flights so it was a done deal and we had to come to a decision, but what on earth were we going to do with 2 weeks in Tanzania?

All the safaris to the National Parks we had decided we would like to visit seemed to depart from Arusha so what the heck, we settled on booking 3 nights in Arusha and just sorting it all out when we arrived.

After hours of searching Airbnb we found the perfect private villa, on the outskirts of Arusha, really reasonably priced with the option of paying an additional $5 per person a day for breakfast, lunch and tea, all freshly cooked by the owner with a choice of eating with family or having your food delivered to the villa, it sounded idyllic, and it was available, so we took a punt and booked it.

Confirmation of our booking duly landed in my in-box and with it came a list – we can arrange the following for you:

Airport transfers, Serengeti, Lake Manyara, Arusha National Park and town visit, Tarangire, Ngorongoro Crater, Hot Springs, Waterfalls, volunteering/visit to the orphanage.

That was it, no hard sell, no times to get up and go to bed, no itinerary, just this is where you can go, you choose. Four emails later everything was arranged, it was exactly what we wanted. Kenny had assured us that Ron’s emphysema wouldn’t be a problem and as it was to be a private safari and days out we could go as slowly as we wanted, it was just for the two of us, our trip of a life-time was all confirmed.

It was a leap of faith, after all you hear all the time about people being scammed, but we just went for it, after all what could possibly go wrong? As it transpired absolutely nothing at all, it really did turn out to be the trip of life-time, and it was so amazing we went back again this year.

Even if you can’t visit Tanzania, you can live Tanzania, enjoy.

Hakuna matata!