Serengeti

Today has been a veritable curate's egg. It's been a strange one, it has, and I've not really felt totally comfortable all day. We loaded up into nine-seater Land Rovers yesterday, and drove for several hours up on to the rim of the Ngorogo Crater. We've left the Oasis truck and Rob and Boyo behind, and we're in the hands of an independent safari company. Upon reaching camp, they already had our tents pitched, so everyone piled in. Unfortunately, no-one told the newbies that we've been keeping to the same tents every night (they're numbered) – and I do mean in a logistical sense. This wasn't really a huge deal, on the face of it. However, I've been a bit 'cross-party' recently, spending a lot of time with the new guys, and they were later letting off a bit of steam about how stroppy everyone had seemed about the fact that they'd taken the 'wrong' tents. Storm in a teacup, I know, but I don't like conflict or any sort of bad feeling.

The next morning we were up at 5am to game drive into the crater.

It was around 10am that things took a turn for the uncomfortable. Vicky (she of the broken vibrators) was in our truck, together with six of the other new guys – all young. She has a different background to many of the others – she left school at fifteen, works at Debenhams, but has plans to train as a nurse. Bluntly, she's just not on the same wavelength. So, yet again she was trying to make some point which, though eminently sensible to her, came across as utterly hilarious. It was something to do with how lions know that they're pregant. Anyway, everyone was laughing and making jokes but she somehow missed this and assumed (okay, perhaps with a smidge of justification) that everyone was laughing at her rather than with her. Tears were shed.

(At one point I did ask no-one in particular, 'do lions shoot blanks, then?' That had nothing to do with it, though)

Apologies were dished out, explanations were fired around, the driver got quite agitated about the whole thing. Twenty minutes later, it was all dealt with and everyone was fine. Twenty minutes later, on stopping at a hippo pool, the leader decided to jump out of his land rover, check everyone was okay, and try to swap her out of our landy onto one of the others. Of course, he had the best of intentions, but this was absolutely the worst thing he could have done. After everything had been sorted, he dragged it all up again and put her on the spot in front of our truck and the eight people on one of the other trucks. She protested everything was fine but, of course, burst into tears again. It took some talking to get the leader to go back to his landy, and of course he didn't realise she was now specifically crying because of his actions. What a palarva.

After lunch, everything was fine. We saw plenty of buffalo and a pool of hippos, but nothing really different or spectacular. It was pretty cold and misty. Immediately after we'd eaten, we loaded up and headed out of the crater again. We left four of the group at the top, since they'd elected not to pay the extra to 'do' the serengetti. They were to be picked up and driven back to Arusha. It was another few hours to the Serengetti, along a sandy-gravel road – possibly the dustiest drive we've done, and we were all soon a sandy-brown colour.

Once we reached the entrance, we parked up for half an hour. I know I should expect it by now, but it always amazes me and annoys me just how many tourists are doing this sort of thing. The carpark was full of landrovers, with white tourists everywhere. The first game drive was a whistle-stop affair. We hurtled through the landscape, our heads out of the open roof. To be honest, we were in too much of a hurry for my liking. The driver wasn't overly-communicative, and we were left scratching our heads and saying 'couldn't we just...' every time we whizzed by, say, a juggling elephant or a leopard in slacks. This seemed to be the pattern for the evening – us arriving just in time to miss the action. We came round a corner to see a hippo in mid-yawn, five metres from one of the other landys. A money shot, if ever there was one.

After more hard driving, the reason for our headlong rush became apparent – we parked in front of a tree in which a leopard was sitting together with a dead impala. Quite difficult to see, but very cool. We only lingered ten minutes, though, before we sped off towards the camp. I also managed to catch some acacia thorns in my head and hands. I was standing looking backwards caught some acacia thorns in the head and hand, which was nice. It drew an utter lack of sympathy from the kids on my landy – and that was more than fine by me.

The camp is in the middle of nowhere, with practically no facilities apart from the shortest long drop I've yet to see, It was practically overflowing. Dinner was cooked for us and so we're were in bed early for another early start. The camp has no fences, and we've been told not to keep any food in our tents. There are some basic cooking 'cages', and two of the shortest long drops I've seen so far – either they're only a metre or two deep, or they're very, very old...

Early start tomorrow, for a game drive.