Tanzania Safari with Private Island

We reluctantly vacated our room and enjoyed a leisurely breakfast before beginning the long journey home.

One of the highlights of the entire trip was taking a short boat ride to a small fishing village. Unchanged for hundreds of years, they had only recently begun receiving visitors from Lupita Island. They were very friendly, especially the children, who immediately swarmed us. Begging for money? No! They were fascinated with our digital cameras. We spent a good hour taking dozens of photos of them, then showing them on their camera screen. They just couldn’t get enough of this! I showed them pictures of animals from the Serengeti and they would call out their names in Swahili. They knew them all! Then our liaison brought out a soccer ball and they went nuts, running around the village, kicking around the ball. It was so much fun to watch.

They sang and danced for us, then took us on a tour of their village. We got to meet the witch doctor and see the table of stuff he uses in his practice. He has a large roofing nail embedded under the skin in his arm which protects the village from attackers. I am pretty sure he put a funk on me that makes me want to go back to Africa.

That evening at dinner, we dined outside by the pool, and a local group was brought in to sing and dance for us. It was a very special event.

The next day we were taken to a beach on the lakeshore, where we swam, snorkeled and sunned while enjoying drinks and snacks. Lake Tanganyika is home to hundreds of cichlids, many of which are unique to this lake. There were also otters, water cobra and tiny freshwater jellyfish. Some of the others fished, kayaked, and went water skiing. Yet another group took advantage of a side helicopter trip to nearby Kalambo Falls on the Zambian border.

I headed back early via complimentary golf cart for my scheduled massage. Perched high on the island, it was a breezy balmy open-air affair with an excellent view of the lake. One of my best massages ever, and I’ve had a lot! In the afternoon the kids played at the pool, or in the game room, where there was ping pong, pool, foosball, and darts. I managed to get to the gift shop.

Before dinner, as usual, the campfire was the gathering point of choice, and a terrific vantage from which to view the spectacular night sky full of stars while sipping Amarula.

The next morning we left the Serengeti for Lupita Island on Lake Tanganyika in western Tanzania. It would be a three-hour flight from Seronera to the airstrip at Kipili. We really hated to leave the Serengeti, especially since we never found a black rhino, or even a white one, but we looked forward to relaxing in luxury at Lupita. We flew for over an hour, then stopped to refuel in Tabora. Once we landed at Kipili, we had a ten-minute walk to the shore, then a ten-minute boat ride across to the island.

Remote, private and exclusive, the resort at Lupita Island was truly amazing. All open-air African style with a bar, dining room, pool area, campfire, spa, gym, game room and decks for taking in the beautiful lake views. Each area was decorated with local African art and furniture, and there were many places to lounge and lots of big coffee table books to peruse.

Our room… wow. We were three and so we scored one of the two large suites. 2400 square feet, two bedrooms, completely open-air without even a front door to bother with! We would awaken in the morning to a magnificent sunrise over the lake, then doze off again to the sound of singing birds.

The first evening, we were treated to a sundowner’s cruise aboard the Windsor Rose, the owner’s boat. There were snacks and beverages as well as swimming. Lake Tanganyika is the second oldest and second deepest freshwater lake in the world, and holds 18% of the world’s fresh water. We took turns jumping off the boat into water that was over 4200 feet deep! We were promised that the sunsets were particularly stunning, and they were right as the blood-red sun settled over the water.

On our last day in the Serengeti, we did a game drive in the morning, then another one in the afternoon. We saw elephants, giraffes, a pair of lionesses hunting, a dung beetle pushing around his little ball of excrement, vervet monkeys, banded mongoose and lots of birds. The ostrich tickled me the most; you would always see one, maybe two, just wandering around out in the middle of nowhere. We did get mock charged by an elephant, but our experienced guide shut that down and he lumbered off. An archaeologist spoke to us about early man and his rudimentary tools as we searched the ground for them amidst the rocks.

We took a break in the afternoon and scrambled atop Ngong Rock in the Moru Kopjes near our camp. We saw rock hyrax, dik dik and colorful agama lizards, and we marveled at the beautiful but very poisonous candelabra trees. And what a great view! The ever-changing scenery and all the many hues of landscape, foliage, and sky, the iconic acacia trees - it just never got old. In the late afternoon we stopped near our camp for our last happy hour on the Serengeti and watched the sun set. It was so beautiful!