Tonight we will sleep at The Retreat at Ngorongoro really close to Gibb’s Farm where we ate lunch about a week ago. Staying there was too expensive and after comparing against our cabin at The Retreat this is winning hands down. At a quarter of the price it provides us a huge private cabin and beautiful garden to walk into. Plus a souvenir store and to our surprise they upgrade also to full board instead of bed and breakfast, not that we complain of course.
The room inside is as spacious as it looks from the outside, it feels like we are in a King’s house. The bathroom is also quite spacious and modern, overall this resort is probably the most pleasant surprise we had on our trip.
it even has a maintained pool that we don’t use as it is too cold for us. But we see other people using it of course, when there are tourists and a pool someone will enter it for certain.
A lot of the artwork both outside and inside are bird focused which we appreciate and enjoy as we explore the grounds.
However priorities first, we are quite hungry at this point. So we decide to go back to the car and pick our lunch boxes from Ndutu to eat on our balcony. If there is a drawback to the Lodge it is that the cabin is a bit far from parking and at a slope, not an issue for us but it could be depending on the weather.
So we now sit outside and relax enjoying the good food, drinking tea and coffee and enjoying the birds in our garden.
And there are some interesting birds here. The top bird for us is the Black-backed Puffback but every bird is cool to see as a goodbye present.
The most courageous of all is the local White-browed Robin-Chat who seems to be eyeing our food. In contrast the sunbirds do not really care one way or the other, they really only care for the flowers in the garden.
After our lunch it is time to explore the gardens, we are especially curious about the lake. Unfortunately it is quite a maintained pond so while beautiful it is not very birdy. And there is also a very talkative grounds person there that cannot leave us alone so on we go towards the forest to escape him.
There are some fun birds in the small forest like an African Paradise-Flycatcher, always a bonus to see, and a Purple Grenadier, the first one we see up close.
And then there are a lots of common birds that we can enjoy here up close as they eat seeds or just enjoy the poolside area. Then we play some table tennis and relax until the unexpected dinner.
Initially we planned not to eat here but if it is included how can we refuse? To our surprise there is also a tour group here that seems to have returned from Ngorongoro as they discuss about it quite excitedly.
The food here is buffet style and there are quite a few options from which we can choose. That is true both for mains and desserts, the only thing that we have to order are tea and coffee and the like. And then we go to our cabin to pack as tomorrow we continue on towards Arusha.
In the morning we eat breakfast and afterwards go to the gift shop and buy some souvenirs before deciding to explore the grounds a bit more. We simply want to ensure we do not arrive to early at the next accomodation and also we really enjoy the grounds.
We go through the gardens first from where they source some of the ingredients for the meals. And also where we saw a bird eating highly protected grapes the previous day but today unfortunately we do not see a repeat of the performance.
What we see are lots of Sunbirds, mostly the ones we have seen multiple times before on our trip. Still beautiful of course.
We descend to the lake which is much more quieter today so we sit down and then take a few photos before returning to the cabin so we can call porters to pick our luggage.
It takes a bit for all the luggage to be loaded and for us to get our lunch boxes, something that we use to enjoy the nature in the parking lot which includes a mammal lifer, a Ochre Bush Squirrel. And then it is time to leave this little slice of heaven and make our way to Arusha with a couple stops planned on the way.
