Rare Adventures

Author: Janner Boy

The Ultimate Guide to Planning Your Tanzanian Safari
Last year we decided that we should try a safari. It hadn’t really been high on my agenda as a family thing in the past but now it is just Wooksie and I, we decided it was next on the list.

My eldest lad had done a safari for his honeymoon, and explained that they sat in a lodge, silently, for hours waiting for the animals to turn up.

Quite frankly this sounded like my idea of hell, being hyper active and a very noisy person that rejoices in lots of noise and action, then this didn’t sound like my bag.

Types of safaris

So a bit of research highlighted 3 types of safaris,
1. Game lodges, these seemed to be mainly private and based around South Africa and the countries in that area.
2. Game drives. Where you belt around the countryside looking for animals in a 4×4, these seemed to be on the Serengeti so tended to be popular in Kenya and Tanzania.
3. Specialist gigs. Seemed to be for people who had done the above and wanted something more specific or rarer animals.
It is more complicated than this as there are variants and combinations of each type but hopefully you get the idea.

Type – So a quick search reveals thousands of tours and options so where the hell do we start. Deciding we wanted to go chasing animals was important and it slimmed the options down to Kenya and Tanzania.

Where – the options were Kenya or Tanzania – the safaris are either north or south of Kilimanjaro and the vast Serengeti which stretches into both countries. (nobody seems to have explained to the wildebeest the charge between them for their annual holidays). We settled on Tanzania because it sounded more exotic and we were able to fly directly into Kilimanjaro airport rather than via a smoggy capital like Nairobi.

Length – there are also loads of different options for length, from 2 days to 21 days. A chat with eldest son helped further, as they said they saw most of the animals in one particular area and their other activities were more of the same, so we focused our search on 3 to 5 days, as after discussions with Wooksie we both agreed we would probably get bored any longer.

Tour company – with one or two minor exceptions we have always planned our holidays independently, which is why we have so many adventures but a safari seemed different and risky and there are hundreds to chose from, so where do we start.

Having worked out roughly what we wanted I contacted the main specialist operators in the UK for a rough price and got wildly different pricing. So I decided I needed to better understand the pricing model and break it down so did more research.

I found this website that was a portal for the local safari companies, that basically put us in direct contact with the safari companies and took out the middle man. It was then quite easy to work out the actual prices we would pay and realised we could save a lot by doing it ourselves.

We contacted half a dozen of the companies offering the 3 day tour, specified that the accommodation needed to be decent, Wooksie insisted she wouldn’t sleep in a tent surrounded by beasts and creepy crawlies.

The companies were based in Tanzania, mostly in Moshi and eventually we settled on Joining Safaris Ltd, Erick was a really helpful guy who gave straight answers to our questions promptly, you can find them at http://www.joiningsafaris.com and I’d definately recommend them.

The second part of the adventure was some down time, if you are in Tanzania Zanzibar is a short flight away so that was simple enough, hotels booked through hotels.com and booking.com plus safari booked with Erick.

Price Breakdown

So when planning, here is the rough price breakdown in 2024 so you can discuss with an agent or book it yourself

Flight from UK to Kilimanjaro return – about £1000 with premium economy one way (KLM)

Safari – £1200 with mid range accommodation each

Flights to Zanzibar, about £200 return

6 nights Hotel on Zanzibar at TUI Zanzibar Bay Resort and Spa about £650 via Booking.com
19/04/2025
The weight loss journey – Lifestyle vs Age

I never thought of myself as being fat, I lived life fast, happy and mostly to excess, but it was catching up with me.

Click here to follow the res of My Weight Loss Journey

The reality is that getting fatter is not a natural consequence of getting older, it is a consequence of your lifestyle and choices you make.

I’ve always been active and pretty competitive and the weight crept on over my lifetime. In my mid 20s I was about 13st 4lb, playing lots of football at a good standard and training twice a week. I kept playing until I was 40 and my weight had gradually crept up to about mid 14st, mostly attributable to post match beer.

When I finished I still did other sports but the big change was starting my own business at 42, I lost control of my own time. Two babies arrived in my mid 40s and by the time I got to 50 I was heading towards 16st.

In my 50’s, the business took off, parenting two little kids and keeping an eye on two older kids mean’t I had plenty to think about other than myself, so as my late 50’s approached so did 17st.

I also believed that the weight gain was the natural cycle of life kicking in, as all my pals seemed to be spreading in the same way so I didn’t think there was much wrong. As I did less my performance declined and it was easier to focus on work than running, it hurt less for starters.

Basically, I didn’t really have much of a problem with my appearance but in my 40s I started to suffer from a lot of joint injuries, which I put down to the legacy of football. Whenever I did any sport I would suffer afterwards.

I had various blasts at getting my weight down through exercises but they would often end in pain and frustration so generally my levels of activity were dropping.

I had a hip replacement at 50 and that gave me a new lease of life and I was able to get more active again, but ultimately the other joints were hurting and the pressure of work made it easier to do work that exercise. I put all the pain down to football injuries when I was younger.

The government uses a thing called the Body Mass Index (BMI) as a way of assessing your weight, they say a BMI of 25 is healthy. Even though my BMI of 35 or something looked bad, I generally didn’t see myself as being excessively overweight, and my family thought I was fine. I always felt there was a stone to lose, but I was always quite well built so could carry it off and being hyper active, I never lacked energy so all looked well.

Even now, I don’t think I’ve been under BMI 25 since my teens, so it doesn’t hold much cred in my view. That BMI number is rubbish, it takes no account of build or gender.

If you want to check yours, this is the link – Calculate your body mass index (BMI) – NHS – NHS

I’ll pick the story up about the change in the next blog, I don’t want you guys getting bored.

19/04/2025
From Overwork to Adventure: My Retirement Story starts here.

I’d never really thought of retirement other than to make sure I was putting away pension contributions but one day I was in the doctors surgery about something minor and the nurse said “When do you retire?”

I was only in my mid fifties, working flat out on my business with 2 young kids and adventures to enjoy – “WTF retirement, are you joking”.

I was totally appalled, gave her a dirty look and went on my way, but strangely the thought stuck. A few months later I ended up in hospital with an blood infection, only a couple of days but it gave me a bit of time to think, and one of those thoughts was “What would happen to the company and my family if this was serious”.

So the first thing I did when I got out was to get BUPA, so at least if something happened, it would get fixed quickly. I also made a promise to myself that I would be finishing at 65 and wouldn’t become one of those people that worked till they dropped.

As the company reached a stable state I cut out working at weekends as a habit, and made time for the gym during the week and Friday afternoons became mountain biking or a run so slowly took control of my life.

The moment arrived

A couple of years ago we had a mega year, work, we were overloaded with work and had a very profitable year, and I remember thinking that I might not ever see this money in my pocket unless I paid best part of 70% tax, I was working hard for my family and staff, but what was in it for me.

My eldest daughter was getting married in May and I was worrying a lot about the speech. I wasn’t really enjoying the client assignments, I always have such high hopes for the organisations we work with but in the end they rarely grasp the opportunity and just carry on being what they have always have been, but at least we are normally richer.

That was the big moment. I was 63 and a couple months off 64 and realised that I wasn’t handling the pressure quite so well, the adrenalin was diminishing and I realised I was ready to change, it happened almost overnight.

The announcement

I sat down with my wife (who runs the company with me) and said “I’m done”, and after the wedding, I’ll be getting in my camper and heading off to Scotland with the dog. I’m pretty sure she didn’t believe me, but that’s what happened.

The journey from there wasn’t quite so simple, but the lesson here is, when you are ready you will know, its then about making it happen which brings challenges of it’s own.

17/04/2025