One of my most vivid childhood memories was watching two nature shows on TV with my family: "The Undersea World With Jacques Cousteau," and "Mutual Of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. I'm sure everyone knows the French diving legend, but the other show (What was Mutual of Omaha anyway? A bank? An insurance company? Why Omaha? Did they do business outside of Nebraska? And what is so Mutual about it?) was as memorable for the amazing wildlife footage as for its host's wacky upswept hair. Every week, they brought new exotic wildlife right into my suburban home from all over the world, sparking a boy's imagination and generating an interest in animals and exotic destinations that has at least partially led to my present adventures.
Wild Kingdom and Jacques Cousteau eventually gave way to cable and my love of National Geographic and The Discovery Channel so it should be no surprise that the first thing I did on arrival in Arusha, Tanzinia, was to book a safari. I soon found a six day safari group that was looking to cut their price by adding a fourth member - that meant a good price for me, and since their plan included many of the parks I wanted to see, it was an easy decision to make.
The next morning I arrived at the safari company to find that things had changed a bit - for the better. Two of the other clients were held up by the violence in Kenya, so it was just myself and an Aussie named Libby to start and the others would try to catch up later.
Our first stop was Tarangiri National Park, and I could tell it was going to be great when we spotted impala from the entrance and an elephant only 500m inside the gate!! We spent the rest of the day riding around the park, standing on the seats for a great view out the open-topped Land Cruiser as our guide and driver, Bekka, described all the wildlife he was finding for us. We enjoyed close encounters with several herds of elephants, troops of baboons, some ostrich, giraffes, warthogs, waterbok, velvet monkeys, dik-diks, and even a lioness snoozing near her kill.
Next to a stream full of impala and a about 20 elephants drinking and tossing mud around with their trunks, I looked over at another approaching safari truck and one of the pasengers looked sorta familiar...
"Annette!" I called out, and sure enough, it was my friend - also fresh from dorm three and The Seychelles Experience - now enjoying Africa with her husband, Tim and we shouted updates to each other as our vehicles passed. Of course it's such a small world that when we camped for the night in a Maasai village, they were in the very next row of tents.
The next day we visited Lake Manyara Wildlife Conservation Area for more safari action, this time less wooded and skirting the edges of a massive lake where we spotted hippos and clouds of flamingoes. We also saw our first herds of zebra, cape buffalo, and wildebeest. Two of the zebras were injured and hobbling and the harsh reality of nature meant that they were probably someone's dinner that night of the next - and judging by the white bones scattered here and there on the green grass, there were definitely predators nearby...
The Lake was definitely better than Tarangiri, and we were beginning to see the massive amounts of wildlife Mutual Of Omaha promised. Annette had said that our safari route and park order was perfect - each would be better than the next and I couldn't wait for the next day and the legendary Serengeti!
The next morning, Libby and I awoke early and rolled out of our sleeping bags and tents to find our almost private tour had grown by one - the Swedish and Dutch girls were stuck in Uganda and had to cancel, but we were joined by Petr, a Czech engineer. So three people in a seven seat Land Cruiser was a hardship we would just have to endure and we got to know each other a bit on our morning drive to the next National Park.
In Swahili, Sirengit means "endless space" and long before we even approached the park entrance, I completely understood how the Serengeti was named. Formed when huge amounts of volcanic ash covered an older mountain range so only the occasional tip pokes out, the park is a vast flat grassy surface where animals roam everywhere. Our safari truck sped down a lonely unpaved track, across the dry grasslands and gently rolling hills. We passed Maasai villages or Boma with adorable kids frantically waving and yelling "Jambo! Jambo!!" and lean tall traditionally dressed tribesmen watching their herds of goat and cattle and gently shooing away some wildebeests and zebra tagging along for protection.
All signs of man apart from the long, straight, dirt road disappeared once we crossed into the National Park and it really began to feel like the Africa in the wildlife shows. Small groups of antelopes, impala, and zebra grazed together under the scorching sun from horizon to horizon as far as the eye could see. And the wildebeest were starting to mass together for their annual migration, not yet in the millions, but definitely in clumps of thousands. We drove through this magic environment for two hours with only an occasional stand of acacia trees or a kopje interrupting the vastness. It was here on one of these rocky islands that I got to see a young male lion, dozing like a prince on the sun, his half-grown mane styled like the Beckham faux-hawk - wow!
Our campsite was in a woodland area next to a riverbed so part of Bekka's evening briefing was a little off-putting: absolutely no food in the tents, and "if you need to get up to pee, shine your flashlight all the way around in a circle and look for eyes reflecting back from the dark." He recommended gathering a small pile of rocks next to the flap of our tents to chase animals away and wondered why I had only grabbed a couple?
"If whatever is out there doesn't leave after I've thrown this many stones at it, I've already pissed myself so it won't matter any more," I explained to the group's laughter. No one was laughing later that night when we heard the coughing grunt of lions and things breathing and sniffing around the tents. It's amazing how thin the fabric of a tent gets when your imagination is running away with you. It turned out two lions did roam through in the dark but most of the noises were from some hyenas in the bush and a pack of warthogs looking for scraps. I could have sworn something huge was testing the strength of my shelter all night. It was very sobering to see those big kitty pawprints in the dust right next to your tent in the morning light... After that, I started keeping an extra empty water bottle in my tent every night and then quietly tipping it out every morning in the bushes.
We had about two full days in the Serengeti and roamed all over. We saw many prides of lions, some with cubs, a leopard snoozing on a branch, hippos, a croc, and best of all - a cheetah moving through the tall grass! They have long been my favorite animal and I was hyped to get to really see one in the wild! Everytime we passed a herd of gazelles after that, I was secretly hoping to see a blur of yellow and black spots to ruin their day, heh heh heh.
Libby, Petr and I were a pretty good spotting team by our third day in Serengeti, and had seen so much that we were barely calling out sightings to each other unless there was something unusual to see like a baby giraffe or elephant, or vultures circling some doomed animal in the distance. Our last sighting before leaving that Park was just the bottom four inches of a leopard's tail as it snoozed on a branch obscured by the leaves, and we didn't feel like hanging around for an hour to see if it moved.
We packed up the camp and were excited to be heading to the famed (and almost unpronounceable,) Ngorongoro Crater National Park. After another long dusty drive across the savannah and herds of everything barely flicking an ear in our direction as we sped by, I convinced Bekka to make a slight detour so we could visit Olduvai Gorge, where the Leakey's made their amazing Australopithecus Boisei and Homo Habilus discoveries I studied in school. The gorge is not breathtakingly pretty, but it is awe-inspiring to look in and think that our ancient ancestors, as tiny and hairy as they were, once stood up, made basic tools, and walked around on the very earth I was standing on literally millions of years ago. It gave me the pricklies, anyway, and the museum was quite good.
That evening we arrived at the scenic Crater Rim and set up a camp as the sun set and the temperature plummeted, giving me a little unpleasant preview of my coming Kilimanjaro expedition... So cold I could barely sleep as the wind whipped around, I heard the familiar sounds of hyenas sniffing through the camp and suddenly remembered the bag of trail mix I had forgotten to store in the truck. So I huddled in the dark, headlamp and leatherman pocket knife at the ready, but I guess that hyenas don't like raisins, nuts, and M&M's too much so they wandered away after a while. Not a great night's sleep...
As the sun rose, we drove around the rim of the huge volcanic crater to the entrance road and headed down. The extinct structure is almost a kilometer deep and ten across so the view was fantastic! On the floor we headed towards the lake, passing elephants, buffalo, ostrich, zebra and gnus (same as wildebeest but the word is shorter and I'm getting tired of typing the longer one,) along the way. The lake had a pink tinge to it and when we got closer, we realized it was a huge flock of flamingoes, standing on one leg, scooping food from the shallow water. We spent the rest of the day cruising around getting very close to all the animals and I had a few highlights from the day. First was a black rhino trotting towards a morning drink or mudbath in the lake - this completed our "Big Five" (lion, leopard, buffalo, elephant and rhino - basically all the stuff that can eat you or stomp you to a pulp,) and we were all pretty excited about it. Next was the lion vs. buffalo standoff we watched until the lions gave up and wandered off into the river brushes. Though I think the 15 safari trucks jockeying for the best view had as much to do with it as the group defense tactics of the buffalo... At lunch, some kind of huge eagle swooped down and snatched a big piece of food right out of Petr's hand, scaring the crap out of all of us! Last was following some vultures to a group of hyenas tearing into something they must have just brought down an hour or so before - gory but cool - a true wild kingdom moment. Ngorongoro is especially terrific because the place is so scenic and all the abundant life is concentrated on the crater floor where they roam around almost uncaring of the humans trying to get a glimpse into their lives.
Too soon, our time was up and Bekka turned the car back towards Arusha and the end of our safari. We dropped Petr on the way, and Libby and I went to dinner at a rooftop lounge right near our hostel. It was not a big night as I knew I was leaving for a six day climb to the peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro in the morning...
I'll try to get the pics up soon - they are absolutely amazing!
Usiku Mwema,
Clement
