Exploring Arusha – Twiga Lodge 20 June 2021

Paul an Erika are from Shaw in UK (near Bath). Paul travelled through Africa in his mid 20s and returned some years later with Erika. They bought the property now known as Twiga Shaw Lodge and started a safari company called Shaw Safaris https://shawsafaris.co.tz/

This is Paul and Erika with their Masaai friend & guide – Lanjoo – who lives near Lake Natron

The lodge sleeps 12 people and is really special their staff are happy and consist of cooks, cleaners gardeners, general maintenance, guides, car mechanics and apprentices. During 2020 when Covid impact closed down tourism the staff went on to half wages and were all kept on. business is still slow to return and the staff loyalty is palpable.

This is a pic of the front of the lodge from the delightful garden

Paul is an excellent welder as well as safari guide, nature lover and twitcher of note.

Paul also has a great reputation for being able to repair landrovers – there are 10 landrover discos in his fleet.

Paul was recently visited by the well known Kingsley Holgate – who left his mark on Paul’s workshop wall

The quote from Kingsley reads: “Life in a Landie – what an adventure”

Paul repairs not only his own landrovers but also other Overlanders vehicles like this landrover disco that was driven by a young Uk guy ( mid 20s) who drove on tyres at 3.5bar and drove very fast over corrugations – not only did the young man shear the back of the disco off the chassis but he trashed most of his tinned food – only one bolt out of 4 was holding the back section onto the vehicle the other three had completely sheared through the chassis.

This is Paul and his team manhandling the back of the vehicle off and welding

Twiga Shaw Lodge also has a viewing deck which looks out over the Arusha National Park – we saw elephant, giraffe and a variety of birds from the deck – great place for sunset or early morning viewing

We were fortunate that Paul had some time and he drove us in his safari viewing landie for a day in Arusha National park

More details of our day in Arusha NP in the next post