July 10, 2025: Back in Austin, back to real life. Film photos from Tanzania are rolling in to keep the stories flowing. But it’s weird how fast the memories fade. Three week trip of a lifetime, but on to the next, so quick. Enjoying putting words to photos and videos, but damn these take forever. A few more African stories coming up.

​About: Every week I write about living a great story: mostly personal stories, adventure recaps, links to coolness and analog photos that most likely have nothing to do with what you’re reading. They are random, but I love shooting film, so the photos are snippets of my photography craft.

Quote for the Week: "It's not an adventure until something goes wrong." - Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia.

Read time: 9 min but this could have been a 20 min story

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A Handshake Reveals Everything

At 6:15am, I ducked my head to step out of the oddly small metal door and looked at the two safari cars in front of me. The one directly in front was newer, cleaner and almost certainly the car that I was looking for since Abdul had told me that we had a brand new for this trip. Eyeing it as I walked up and peered into the windows, the car looked pretty good. Maybe not brand new, but still in great condition.

Turns out, not our car.

“This is our car,” a man said, pointing to the older, dirtier, more busted Toyota Land Cruiser. Chipped paint on top of a dented frame, frayed seats, exposed wiring and missing hardware proved this was far from the brand-new car we were promised. Not a great sunrise surprise.

Giving our driver the benefit of the doubt, I excitedly introduce myself, extending my hand with an optimistic outlook for the upcoming road trip to the iconic East African savanna. But as soon as we shook hands, I felt something was off. I’ve traveled around the world, shaking hands with people of all races. I’ve met with businessmen in suits, farmers in dirt huts, people who own jets and locals who never left their small island, in the process honing a finely tuned sensor for who’s on the other side of my handshake. Maybe it was the lack of eye contact, the emotionless disinterest, the rushed greeting or just the intuitive feeling cultivated from traversing the globe, but in a split second of meeting, I knew with almost certainty that our driver was a piece of shit.

Kilimanjaro to Serengeti

The drive from Moshi, the Kilimanjaro city, to the Seronera public campsite takes about 7 hours through villages, national parks, first paved then very dusty and bumpy dirt roads. They call safari driving the “African Massage”. The goal is to leave Moshi early morning to trek the whole distance in time to see a sunset game drive on the first night.

At some point during the drive, I started calculating and realized that the math wasn’t mathing. After three coffee/bathroom breaks, a Lake Manara lookout stop and too long of a lunch, museum and Tanzanite tour, it was already 3:23 and we hadn’t even made it to the Ngorongoro National Park Gate from which it was still at least another 4 hour drive.

Ok, partially, I contributed to the delay because I wanted to make a stop at a special place where I didn’t last year: the camera store where I bought my Handycam the year before. Long story short: in ‘23 I stumbled onto this camera store at the Arusha Bus Stop and ended up negotiating a good price on a 2005 Sony Handycam. A sucker for nostalgia, I love shooting with this camera that gives late 90’s home-movie vibes. It was an outrageous Africa purchase and I love it. (This video and this video give the vibes). But I don’t have any footage of where I bought it from, so I was intent on swinging by because I love all of my “here’s where I bought this” photos of jewelry, clothes and souvenir purchases from around the world.

I was stoked for the camera store stop, everybody else wasn’t. While I was slicing my way through the crowded central bus station to snap the photos and talk to the owner, the others were stuck in the hectic traffic of huge buses backing up into crowded streets, vendors packing the sidewalks and thousands of people flowing through the mayhem.

After finally maneuviring our way out of town, the driver stopped for three more coffee breaks, a lookout over Lake Manara, to pick up our lunch for the day and the Tanzanite Experience store for a way too long lunch stop. At this point, the driver starts worrying about timing, kind of rushing us to hurry. The group energy is slowly fading as it’s now been about six hours since our 6 AM departure.

“We need to pick up our chef? Where is he going to sit?”

Turns out there had been some miscommunication, or disorganization, or both, and our chef, who was supposed to meet us at the Serengeti camp, was actually waiting for us to pick him up in Karatu, the city closest to Ngorongoro. We pull over to the side of the road as a group swarms the car to load all of our food and cooking essentials to the top of the car. Notice the driver hardly contributes. POS for real.

Tension is high. We’re rushing. The chef is agitated, understandably, because this wasn’t the plan, the right way of doing what he’s done for years, and now the 55-year-old large African man is sitting on a metal propane cannister on the ground in the aisle. All of us mzungu (the Swahili word for gringo) are confused. I’m doing the math in my head, knowing that after Ngorongoro Gate is another four hours of driving… and we haven’t even reached that gate yet.

Almost the End of the Safari, 3 Days Early

The usual 7-minute, show-the-paper-and-keep-driving through the gate routine is not what’s happening. I get out of the car to investigate. The driver has no answers, barely talking to me. “Just wait, five minutes.” Nothing. I’m frustrated because I have no answers and obviously, something is very wrong. The driver, the chef and the three National Park Rangers are heatedly discussing the situation. Eventually, Lucia jumps out of the car, putting on her “La Jefe, boss Colombian chica” hat that only really emerges on international trips, and the tensions rise across the board as we’re pressing our mute driver for answers, who mumbles that the permit is missing one number. The guards aren’t really giving us answers either, just telling us to wait. The chef is heated, debating with the guards.

After way too long of repeatedly requesting an update, the coolest and most helpful ranger explains the situation.

“You’re too late. The park gates closes in 15 minutes and you still have a three-hour drive to the Serengeti Gate. We are waiting to confirm with their rangers if they will let you through after hours but if they don’t, then you will have to drive back here because you only have a day use permit. If they tell us that you can’t come, you will have to turn around and spend the night back in Karatu.”

WTF

Our POS driver’s multiple stops put us hours behind schedule, and now at 5:45, we’re facing the very real possibility that the guards will deny us entry, forcing us to stay the night in Karatu, creating a ripple effect of safari timeline destruction.

“We need to talk,” the chef tells Lucia and I. “This is entirely your driver’s fault. When you talk to Abdul about this, you need to tell him this is not my problem. I’ve been a safari chef for over 10 years and before this I worked on the mountain with Chuku, your Kilimanjaro chef. You have to trust me, your driver is the problem.”

We’ve been at the gate for almost an hour and I’m still not sure the guards will let us through. If we don’t make it, our safari is ruined. We won’t arrive to Serengeti until late the next morning, meaning we will miss the dawn game drive, one of the best times to see animal activity. We won’t have two nights in Serengeti which will make it feel rushed, throwing off the flow of the next few days.

I’m pissed, messaging our Safari coordinator to replace our driver ASAP. I don’t have data, so I’m using the guard station’s wifi to first understand what’s happening and second, fix it. This is my tour, I’m the host, people paid me money to make this an epic trip and it’s already falling apart, so I have to fix it. This is where I learned a big lesson in leadership: communicate early and often. While I was at the gate for nearly an hour trying to figure out the problem with Lucia, the other five were stuck in the safari car looking through the windows at us from a hundred feet away with no idea what was happening. Only once did I go back to the car to explain, near the end of the ordeal. I should have been checking in and updating them more frequently, a small but significant gesture that would have overall eased the current and upcoming situations.

They let us through the gate, after hours, against the rules, luckily, and we’re on our way to Serengeti with a four-hour drive on an unpaved, rough road that they call the African Massage because everything in the car is rattling so loud that you can barely talk. Then one edge of the step up side rail falls off, audibly dragging along the road. The driver and the chef secure the dangling metal to the car with their belts. At some point the driver stops to check on the incredible amount of chef-ing gear and food strapped to the roof and turns out, it’s come undone, too. Eventually, we make it to Serengeti Gate where there is more light to fix both problems, for now. Finally, we make it to our campsite only five hours after when we should have, opting out of dinner to go straight to bed.

Well, everyone else went to bed. Now that I had wifi, I was now in touch with our coordinator to figure out the driver situation. Using our driver’s phone to talk with Florence, I learned that a replacement guide was on the way. Unfortunately, there was no way he could arrive in time for our 6 am departure, so the the swap would be delayed until midday. We were stuck with our POS guide.

Handing back the phone, I square up with Benson. Not aggressive, not mad. Firm, intentional, curious. Even though I was pissed, I wanted to give him the chance to explain himself, reserving a bit of compassion and understanding despite the fact that he deserved none of it, considering the long string of fuck ups, obvious lack of remorse and incredibly low standards for safari guide behavior.

“Come on, man. How did this happen? My group traveled from across the world for the dream of a Serengeti safari. You almost ruined our trip. Why?”

No eye contact, not even facing me directly, clearly unapologetic, he barely mumbles a response, not even a “sorry”.

My little remaining empathy drained. My dwindling willingness to be understanding dissolved into full-scale vengeance. There was no letting this slide. It was now a war, and I was going to crush him and everyone on his side.

Benson’s fuck ups were not limited to Day 1. The next day, he continued to prove his incompetence and carelessness. Through communicating with Florence and Abdul, I knew the guide switch would happen around noon, which meant we were at the mercy of this dipshit for the next few hours. Would he try to make up for his mistakes from yesterday or purposefully sabotage today? I held my breath. And to start, things didn’t look good. Besides a lucky find of a lion casually strolling in front of a blood red sunrise, barely a quarter mile outside of our camp, we saw hardly any animals for the first few hours. I was sweating. Was he intentionally taking us to the worst areas? Or was he just the worst? Finally, we stumbled onto a herd of 17 elephants. A beautiful sight and a wonderful sigh of relief. Animals, at last.

There’s so much more to this story. And I have so much more to say. I could go into details about Benson’s complete unwillingness to share any information about the animals, which is one of a guide’s main jobs. On my last three safaris, the guides are constantly explained animal life comlexities, sharing interesting facts, painting a complete scene of life on the savannah. Benson hardly said a word. Then there was the urgent bathroom situation. It had been 30 minutes since the first “I really need to pee” and now we were lost, having taken the wrong route to our destination. “Pull the fuck over right now!” I yelled at him, banging on his chair, absolutely fed up with his “five more minutes” that had been the extent of his communication over the last 36 hours.

There’s more but right now it’s almost noon on a beautiful ATX saturday and I’m minutes away from jumping in the Carpenter Hotel Pool for a Labor Day staycation. And I’m just over this story that has been two weeks in the making.

Long story short, we swap out drivers only a few minutes after the bathroom incident when we finally found the Serengeti airport hub. Exit Benson (peace, I’m pressing charges so good luck on your career, I’m going after your guide license). Enter Amani, a totally rad homie who thankfully elevated our trip into a completely awesome experience… despite the multiple flat tires, broken side step and eventually busted radiator all due to the owner of the car, another POS.

More parts I’m leaving out, because I’m ready for the pool: more flat tires due to a shitty car. The busted radiator that luckily happened a few hundred meters from the Serengeti Gate where luckily the mechanics were able to fix it. The Maasai Village stop. The confusion about how to get back to Moshi. A great experience in Ngorongoro Crater, despite the failing breaks. Overall, it was a complete mess that somehow was salvaged.

When we arrived back to Arusha, I was livid. I’m going after everyone. Emergency meeting with Abdul, Hamadi, Amani and Florence to figure out our course of action on how to resolve this shitshow. We collectively realize, after a multi-language, heavily emotional conversation, that all of this is the owner of the car’s fault. We get him on the phone to schedule a meeting, but he’s out of town. “I want a full refund,” but he doesn’t want to give it to us. “Well, we have his keys” Amani says with a smile. Within minutes, we’re piled in the safari car headed to the police station. I file a formal report, my burning wrath slightly quenched. Eventually, we’re on our way back to Moshi.

Lots of things went wrong. But it could have been way worse. Luckily, our safari was salvaged and we hardly missed any key parts. But damn, what a mess.

Ok, now it’s time for the pool.

But first, (just a few) safari photos: