Serengeti

I'm pretty much the luckiest person on earth. I'm in Arusha, on my own again now that Marianne has gone back to Germany, after 5 absolutely incredible days in Tanzania's national parks and conservation areas. I've realized how extremely difficult it will be to try to explain how awe-inspiring and amazing my experiences here have been and how impossible it will be to have anyone at home understand how moved I have been by the things I've already seen in Africa. I suppose I should at least give it a try...

The bus ride from Tanga to Arusha was pretty incredible in itself - public transit here is always noisy (the driver always blares Kiswahili pop) and apparently it is totally common for passengers to bring livestock on board. We watched endless plains and small mountain chains off in the distance for 8 hours and I was amazed to see the Masai people herding cattle around just as they have for the past 200-300 years. The image of the Masai in their red and blue checkered garb isn't something I imagine in the present, but rather an exociticed image of the past. But sure enough, the Masai were everywhere, albeit in their red and blue garb with Reebok runners or Vans shoes. We arrived in Arusha on Saturday and met with the Safari company to go over our itinerary and dish out loads of money to pay for the trip. We finally tried the Ugali - dish made of maize flour with the consistency of mashed potatoes and no flavour whatsoever - and sampled a few of the local beers (Kilimanjaro, Serengeti, Tusker... all of them pretty good).

The next morning we left for Lake Manyara national park. After doing a short safari in South Africa a few years ago, I was expecting to see a few animals and to be thrilled if I could see anything up close. After a few minutes we were already seeing tons of impala, giraffes, elephants and gazelle. We watched a big family of elephants roll around in a mud bath and watched a baby one get stuck trying to climb out of the slippery muck. Much of the park is covered in dense forest, where we saw baboons and all kinds of crazy-colored birds up in the trees. The forest opened up into bush and grassy savannah and here we saw all kinds of antelope, zebra and more giraffes. We had a picnic lunch up on a hill while we looked down on Lake Manyara and the vast, flat plains surrounding it. Back down near the lake we watched Buffalo, warthogs, storks, waterbuck and wildebeest grazing on the fertile grass near the lake and we briefly caught a glimpse of a lioness walking between the trees. Other safari vehicles said that she was lazing around a tree for sometime, but we had arrived late and only saw her on her return to the bush. Our campsite for the night had electricity and clean facilities and it turned out that our cook was awesome. We stayed up late chatting with our guide, Abraham, about the cultural differences between Africans and 'westerners,' and tried to understand more about the Masai tribe that Abraham belongs to.

We were up before 6am the next morning to start our drive to the Serengeti. To get there we drove through the Ngorongoro conservation area, where Masai live in (near) harmony with the wildlife around the crater. The view down to the crater from the rim was incredible and we still managed to see a lot of wildlife in the conservation area. I was amazed at all of the Masai people herding their cattle in the huge valleys around the crater and struggled with the idea that these people still do live in mud huts with grass roofs. They all waved from the roadside as they led their goats and cows to fertile pasture. The Masai have been studied closely by foreigners and I've studied them a bit in my anthropology courses at university. They still follow some very intricate systems of age division and have some interesting rites of passage that one must go through before moving into the next age category. Before the age of 19, all boys and girls are seen as children and the rite of passage at age 19 consists of circumcision, ceremony and initiation. The men become "warriors" at this age after going off on their own to survive for a certain period of time. The girls go through a circumcision rite (this is a nice way of saying 'Female genital mutilation') and must save lots of riches (cows) to go through this process. The Masai believe that every cow in the world belongs to them so they engage in war with anyone who has cows in order to keep them for themselves. If one wants to get married, he must save enough cows to give to his future wife's family as a dowry. The Masai are also polygamous (as is much of Tanzania from my understanding) and our guide, Abraham, thought it was funny that I said North American women would probably not like Polygamy too much. He didn't understand this concept and thought that it was okay for a man to have lots of girlfriends, especially if they all live in different places and don't know about each other.

Anyways, back to the Safari. The hills of Ngorongoro flattened out into the famous Serengeti plains. We timed our visit well as the great wildebeest migration occurs on these plains between February and March as the wildebeest move northwards in search of food and water. During these months the wildebeest also give birth to their young, so we were fortunate to see lots of little ones scampering around with the rest. The image of the Serengeti plains is something I will never forget. The plains stretch on forever and there are SO many wildebeest, zebra and antelope all over them. You can see thousands of black dots in the distance and each one is an animal. They run all over the plains and jump around excitedly. I've never seen so many zebra running around in one place either - they are really beautiful creatures and seeing them running free with miles and miles of space was incredible. The Serengeti park is bigger than Denmark or the state of Conneticut so we only saw a small portion, though the amount of space still seemed endless.

We did a sunset game drive in the evening in the Serengeti and spotted a Leopard lazing around in a tree. This should have been an amazing sight, however, a dozen other Safari trucks had the same idea and we had to scramble around between trucks to get a clear shot of the animal. Hopefully one of my photos turns out! We saw a leopard on the plains from a distance and watched hyenas, jackals, and a variety of antelope all throughout the park. A swampy pool near our campsite was full of hippos and egrets, who sat on the hippos, feeding on parasites. They were adorable and made tons of obnoxious noises. Our campsite in the Serengeti had no fences and was totally exposed to any animals who came by. Abraham thought we were crazy for putting our tent near the edge of the campground with the door facing towards the plains, but we managed to survive without any animal encounters.

The next morning we were up at dawn and in the truck for a sunrise drive. Watching the glowing red sun come up over acacia trees and flat endless savannah is another once-in-a-lifetime experience that I'll never forget. Elephants wandered by slowly and giraffes fed on the trees in the foreground while the sun crept up and turned the sky into a glowing orange and pink haze of colour. We drove onwards to the famous kopjes (Think "pride rock" in the Lion King movie), where I spotted a lioness basking in the sun. Our guide failed to spot it so I was left in the back seat shouting "simba simba simba!!!" until he finally got the message and backed up for us to watch her. A male lion walked over to her and we drove around for a better view. We watched the two lions interact with each other and watched the male try to mate with the female. She wouldn't have any of it and wandered off, and he roared loudly in disapproval as she wandered away. That roar gave me shivers, it was so loud! We could hear him purring as he laid down to bask in the sun - he was as loud as the engine of our truck. We moved onwards and saw a plethora of animals. I saw every animal in my guidebook and then some. I was sure that I was the luckiest person on earth.

We drove back to Ngorongoro through the plains and again I was astonished at the vastness of the landscape and the huge numbers of animals all walking together to find food. In Ngorongoro, our campsite was right on the rim of the crater overlooking the lake and plains and we set up our tent underneath a massive tree. Abraham thought we were crazy for putting the tent under a tree (what if a branch falls down?) but again, we survived despite his disapproval. Seeing as we were in the highlands, we did however have to survive a massive downpour of rain. Our tent and everything got soaked so we were damp for the next day, but we had no problems.

The next morning we descended into the crater just after sunrise and immediately spotted a pride of lions dining on the carcass of a wildebeest they must have killed that night. They were ripping it to shreds while all kinds of hyenas and jackals ran around waiting for them to finish. The hyenas were making that crazy laughing sound like in the Lion King movie and they were chasing each other around in a battle to see who would get the first chance at the scraps. After the last lioness was finally finished all the other animals raced over and battled for bits of rib and flesh. The family of lions - 1 massive male, 5 lionesses, 1 teenager & 2 adorable cubs - marched down the road with full stomachs and stayed within 5-10 feet of all the landrovers. The lions were clearly not afraid at all of the vehicles and the male really liked the shade of the trucks, so he'd just lie down right next to the vehicle and look the passengers right in the eye. I caught a picture of him doing this and he made a low growling noise at me (from 10 feet away!) that made me understand how freaking powerful these massive cats are. We followed along with the mother of the two cubs as well and she lay down right next to our truck to nurse the babies and play with them. They were SO cute and made the cutest meowing noises ever. I got some great photos of them that I will post soon if all goes well. The hour and a half we spent watching these lions up close was the highlight of my trip for sure, and I am so lucky to get so close to them!

We saw every animal possible in the crater, including the endangered Black Rhino (there are only 17 left in the park) and the famous flock of flamingoes at the lake. We stopped at a picnic site to stretch our legs and as I pulled out some bread I had as a snack, a kite (fairly large bird of prey) swooped down and took it right out of my hand, hitting me in the head with his wings on the way by. We saw another cheetah, more elephant, buffalo and hippoes before ascending from the crater and making our way towards Tarangire.

-And now I'm out of time at the internet cafe, so part II of the Safari will have to wait! More to come on our last day...