Safari: STOP THE JEEP!!

 

Author’s Note: This is a very long blog entry; if you are short on time or long on Mike, skip down to the Serengeti, and you will get the gist of our safari experience. However, we enjoyed the safari so much that we wanted to share as much of our experience as we could with you. If you’ve read the entire thing and for some reason still want more, well, buy me a couple of beers at the Lab when we get back, and I’ll tell you a little story about a guy who came on the first part of our trip…his name was Tom, and he looked like a cross between the Michelin Man, the Keebler Elf, and a slinky…

After the excitement of summiting Kilimanjaro, it was time for Sarah and I to experience a different kind of adventure; we were set to go on a five day safari to Lake Manyara, Ngorogoro Crater, and the Serengeti. Safari is Swahili for “journey,” and our time in Tanzania had already been an amazing one, and the five days of game watching would indeed be a wonderful journey with Sarah.

Our safari guide, Ernest, was a very nice guy; he was actually the brother of Castro, the owner of the company we were using for our adventures in Tanzania. He has been guiding for 17 years, and he claimed to be bored with the animals. Yet, he made sure that we stayed happy, and there were times over the next few days where he got excited in spite of himself. He spoke using huge hand and arm gestures, and his laugh was deep and full. Both Sarah and I really liked Ernest, and we could not have asked for a better guide.

We spent our first day in Lake Manyara , a small game reserve located around what is historically a huge salt lake that has mostly dried up in recent years; most of the game is located in the wooded areas north of the lake. There are many creeks in the park, so it sustains a large variety of wildlife. Lake Manyara is probably best known in the United States for being the site of the 1961 John Wayne film, “Hatari,” which means “danger” in Swahili.

Over the course of the afternoon, we were treated to views of many animals: blue and grey monkeys (one of which allegedly had teal balls, but I missed seeing it…or rather them), baboons, large horned antelope called hartebeests, tiny dik-diks (they look like baby deer), warthogs, hippos both in and out of water, a couple of giraffes, and a few elephants–the last of which were almost close enough to touch, so much so that it was a little scary!

Day 2 of the safari was spent in Ngorogoro Crater, which is on the edge of the Serengeti. I had really enjoyed this park when I was here in 2006 and was really looking forward to being here with Sarah; despite its relatively desert-like atmosphere, this dry and dusty area with its sporadic pockets of small grassy marshes supports a huge number of animals. You can see pretty much any animal you want here, although leopards are pretty rare.

Ngorogoro Crater sits on what was once the site of a huge mountain–larger than Kilimanjaro by a significant amount and home to all kinds of species, some of which are now extinct.. Over 2.5 million years ago, a momentous series of eruptions destroyed the volcano, and the crater was formed. Today, aside from being a premier place to view wild animals, Ngorogoro Crater is also the home of the Masai, who were once known for being fierce warriors. Because the Masai are basically herders who live in harmony with the land, they are allowed to live in the park.

Once down in the crater, Ernest popped the top on the land cruiser, and we were immediately treated to a view of a large herd of zebra, followed by gazelles, scroungy hyenas, and a huge warthog–enough to keep me in bacon for a year–kneeling on its front legs, rooting for insects with its tusks. I think the warthog may be so intriguing to me because it is very funny, but it doesn’t know it; they stand there with their blond mullets, huge tusks, potbellies hanging over stubby legs, and round black eyes as if they know you are laughing at them but can’t figure out why…then for no apparent reason they sprint away…either in embarrassment of fear.

After seeing some ostriches, hartebeests, zebra, and wildebeest, we were heading to the hippo pool where we would eat lunch when we had two separate highlights–the first when we spotted (well, actually the 10 vans in front of us did first) some lions taking a nap in the sun. The male was in plain view, with is gigantic front paws crossed under his huge mane and his fearsome face. Near him lay two females sprawled out in the sun.

A few minutes later, as we drove into a wooded area, we saw the second highlight–a huge elephant giving himself a mud bath with his trunk. Time after time, he dipped his trunk into the mud and sprayed himself with large spurts of the cooling dirty muck.

After lunch and a few minutes of watching the hippos bob up and down in the water, we resumed the game drive. For the first few minutes, we drove a circuit that was full of zebras and wildebeest–I would not have been surprised if they numbered in the thousands. We also saw a couple of buffalo and were checking them out when we noticed an group of vans nearby checking out something…it turned out to be a cheetah sitting up in the grass, and we could see it’s striped face (one way to differentiate it from a leopard, who has a spotted face) clearly through our binoculars. It was pretty impressive!

Earlier that morning, we had attempted without success to spot a black rhino that was down in a wooded area; they are very rare–almost extinct–and Ngorogoro is one of the few places where you can see them in the wild, but too many vans were in our way. Throughout the afternoon, we continued to see a lot of game–including more lions and ostriches, so we decided to try our luck with the rhino again. It took several attempts, but we finally saw it (Sarah actually saw two) far below the roadway–there were also two buffalo, so it was easy to get mixed up at first, but finally I saw the distinctive horn.

We thought we would call it a day, and a remarkable one at that, so we started to head toward the exit, but one more surprise awaited us…just before leaving the park, Ernest slammed to a stop beside another van and only about 10 feet from a large male lion resting below a tree! Every feature from his red mane to the ticks on his bulging muscles to his enormous paws was evident in our close encounter, and we sat there in awe of the king of the jungle–what an amazing end to our Ngorogoro experience!

The next morning came very early because we had a long way to go the Serengeti. I was really excited because I had never seen a leopard in the wild before, and my chances were supposed to be good in the Serengeti. The road from Ngorogoro to the Serengeti is dirt and rock, and it is actually really scenic in itself–we saw Masai villages, gazelles, giraffes, ostriches, and warthogs.

Once we got the Serengeti gate, it was clear to us why the name means “endless plains”–it seemed like you could go forever across this land! Our morning here would turn out to be amazing; even Ernest couldn’t believe the luck that we had on the way into the park. For starters, we saw two lionesses within 20 minutes of entering the gate. Thinking that seeing them was pretty cool, we drove only another few minutes before being blown away at the sight of a cheetah sitting mere feet from us on the side of the road! It was magnificent–spotted back, long sinewy muscles, black striped face, and two large fanglike teeth protruding from its mouth. Unbothered by the cars, it sat calmly while turning its head from side to side, looking for a possible lunch.

We were already thrilled with our Serengeti experience, and it just got better as we continued to spot the more common animals–gazelles, ostriches, warthogs, hyenas, and a ton of zebra–on our way to set up camp. The morning entertainment wasn’t up yet, however, as we pulled up to a pond to admire the first water buck we had seen, we noticed a ton of vans surrounding a nearby tree. Upon further investigation, we found a leopard lying lazily at the foot of it; Sarah had read that they are strong enough to drag their kills up into a tree, and sure enough, hanging from the limbs above the leopard was a freshly killed water buck! The leopard was a lot bulkier than the cheetah, and the spots on its coat grew much smaller and denser towards its head. It was awesome!

After moving on, we had only a short distance to camp, and we passed several giraffe along the way. Once we got to the campground, I noticed that you could see both elephants and buffalo in the distance. That means that we had seen the entire “Big 5” and a cheetah all before lunch. After eating, Ernest said that he was trying hard to figure out what to search for that afternoon, since we had already seen so much, and he decided that maybe we should go look for crocodiles, so off we went.

On the way, we saw a large pack of elephants, including several babies flapping their already humongous ears. They were scooping mud onto themselves as they walked, and we noticed that the babies’ trunks seemed much more elastic than the adults’ trunks; we also noticed that we must have been too close for the mother’s comfort because she gave us a blaring warning roar before making some sort of growling sound to the other elephants, who immediately followed her away from us.

We did indeed spot a crocodile laying beside a hippo pool a few minutes after seeing the elephants, but it was a pretty small one, and Ernest seemed disappointed that the large one wasn’t around. Through our binoculars, however, I could see enough to know that he was big enough that I wouldn’t want to meet him up close. He slept with his mouth open, so you could see his sizable razor-sharp teeth, and his tail more than doubled his size.

Determined to show us a large croc, Ernest continued to another pool that was absolutely teeming with hippos. Along the way, we saw a ton of giraffes, elephants, hartebeests, zebra, and wildebeest, as well as two tiny dik-diks. The Serengeti was the real deal! The hippos snorted and grunted as they popped their heads out of the water and yawned–it reminded me of a button I got at the dentist’s office when I was little; it had a picture of a hippo’s toothy grin and declared, “Hip Hip Hooray, No Tooth Decay!”–before they bobbed back under water, bubbles rising to the surface as they breathed. The crocs, on the other hand, are really hard to spot, but sure enough, we managed to find two large crocs laying beside the water. One got up, moving eerily fast, and dove into the water before we knew it.

We had just decided to head out when Ernest came running up to us (we were in one of the few areas where you are allowed out of the vehicle to watch the animals), wildly gesturing for us to follow him. He was literally hopping up and down with excitement. When we got to where he had been, we saw why–a hippo had died and was floating upside down, and two huge crocs were feeding off of it! They would circle in the water, and every few minutes, one would blast out of the water onto the hippo’s carcass, twisting around like a corkscrew to rip into the hippo’s flesh!

Word must have spread quickly among the guides because several vans nearly collided with us as they sped toward the hippo pond while we were driving back to camp. We had decided to head back a little early since we had seen so much; it had been a long day, and a little rest before dinner sounded good. Just like yesterday, however, we had one more treat–only a few minutes from our camp, we noticed another leopard sprawled across a snag. We got a great look at how muscular it was, and it also was nice because no crowds were around it this time. What a great end to the day!

Back at camp, we took (cold) showers and relaxed for a while before dinner. At Lake Manyara, the camp had a restaurant that provided our meals, but we picked up our cook, Harry, in Ngorogoro and had been eating meals made by him since. He always had our table set up with a table cloth and hot drinks from a thermos that was the size of a third grader, and a platter of popcorn was always ready for us when we sat down. Tonight’s menu was cucumber soup, mincemeat pizza, mixed veggies in butter, spaghetti noodles, and steak skewers. For dessert, we had orange slices and fried bananas. Needless to say, we ate well (although I lost 12 lbs. by the time we left Tanzania).

Tuesday was our final day of safari because Wednesday was only game viewing on the ride back home, which took virtually all day. We were surprised to see several new animals right away. Near a herd of buffalo, we spotted some Otapi, which look similar to hartebeest but seem to be a little bigger and have black patches on their upper legs and faces…for some reason, we hadn’t seen them before, but we saw them all over the place today.

Near the woods with the buffalo and otapi, we saw some banded mongoose looking for insects or snakes for breakfast. These weasel-like critters were entertaining–they moved as a one group, scurrying into their tunnels when alarmed, then popping back out as one after a few minutes had safely passed.

A few minutes later, we down at another swamp, where we saw storks, with their long legs and bills, and Egyptian geese that were honking wildly. More entertaining were the baboons, who were frisky this morning and wrestling and tumbling all over the place.

This morning was another great one for seeing the big name animals; we saw several lions lying around (Ernest told us about how the males fight it out when they meet up, the winner taking over the pride–if the new one wins, he and the lionesses kill any cubs in order to start a new pride), quite a few giraffes, and a leopard. Actually, we saw two leopards together, which is sort of rare; at first, we could only see one pacing back and forth in a tree, looking down with what we thought was menace at a potential meal or enemy, but it turned out it just wanted to find a good place to take a load off by its buddy.

Believe it or not, in the next hour, we saw another cheetah and two more lions! We watched the lions in particular because we thought we might see some action. At first, we were driving along looking at zebra, when all of a sudden, they bolted. Knowing that zebra have a good sense of danger, we immediately started scoping for predators, and sure enough, a lioness sat on a rock nearby, her head down and her shoulders forward, judging her chances of success. Nearby, the male lion poked his head out to see whether the wife would bring home lunch, but the zebras had caught on too early. Still, it was probably the best view of a lioness that we had seen so far, and the male was huge.

 

A few minutes later, we were back amongst the zebra when a funny thing happened–they started biting at one another, spinning in circles as they went, and even kicking at one another from time to time. Then some would peel off of the group, and the remaining zebra would sprint a bit forward before restarting the process. We thought that they were playing, but Ernest explained that they were actually competing in a show of dominance; eventually one would be the king stud…literally. When you think about it, it was almost exactly the same as how I won Sarah…except that it was utterly different in every way.

On the way back to camp for lunch, we saw several more groups of giraffes and elephants; no matter how many times we saw these, every time was just as impressive as the first. We were seeing quite a few young ones today, and so it was fun to see what they look like as “little ones.” We had lunch and dozed off for a bit; the plan was to sleep when the animals sleep, and drive when they hunt!

 

At first, the only thing we found on our late afternoon drive were biting flies, and they were vicious! Ernest put the petal to the metal, as Sarah and I counter-attacked with a fire-storm of insect sprays. We survived, but it had been close. For the next hour, we explored an area filled with kopjes, cave-like rocky hills where cats often hang out because they provide good vantage points for hunting. Today was not one of those days, as we saw nothing except a wart hog that must have seen the ghost of Elvis (the fat one on the toilet) judging by how fast it was sprinting!

One final treat awaited us, however, before we finished our main safari experience, and it was awesome! After spotting a couple of lions that were barely visible napping in the grass, we decided to call it a day and were driving back when we saw a virtual parking lot forming up ahead. As we got closer, we saw a cheetah sitting upright in a field; about the same time that we stopped, however, it stood and took several slow, decisive steps towards a group of hartebeests–the hunt was on! It got within about 300 meters of them before hunkering down, but it remained alert, leaning forward and eyeing its preyFor a minute, I wasn‘t sure anything would happen; a group of zebra had approached and clearly sensed the cheetah‘s presence. The cheetah, in turn, seemed to realize that they were on to it, and it became a bit apprehensive, lowering itself to the ground. If the hartebeest sensed the zebra‘s nervousness, it was over. Luckily, the cheetah waited it out, unlike some of the land cruisers around us, and the zebra eventually moved on.

Still, nothing happened, and the cheetah hadn’t moved in nearly 20 minutes. Other vehicles came and went, and I was worried that the engines would scare the cat off, as every new sound caused the cheetah to turn its head cautiously, considering how the situation had changed. However, Ernest pointed out that the cheetah was actually waiting because one hartebeest stood watch while the others were lying down in the grass and resting, and cheetahs–although super fast–can only maintain their speed for about 30 seconds. This cheetah was too far from its prey!

Just as Ernest had predicted, when the hartebeest finally relaxed and laid down, the cheetah started to creep forward. Ernest moved the land cruiser closer to the herd, giving us a front row seat for the action! Soon the cheetah had made enough ground and sprung into action–the hartebeest immediately fled at full speed. Taking long, powerful strides, the cheetah closed the gap within seconds as the pounding of hooves and paws filled the air, dust rising from the fray! The cheetah tore after the hartebeest; it was beautiful as it sprinted full-speed and sensing that it was now or never, made a diving lunge in an attempt to knock the antelope to the ground. It barely missed, making contact but not with enough force, and the cheetah had missed its chance. The whole chase probably took less than a minute, but what a way to end the safari!

That night, I awoke around 2 AM to the breaking of branches and the snorting of buffaloes somewhere near the campsite. Thinking they sounded sufficiently far enough away, I got up to walk over to the bathroom. Not far from the john, my headlamp picked up two sets of glowing eyes hovering between 5 and 6 feet off of the ground. I immediately decided that I could hold it for another 4-5 hours if necessary and returned to the tent…only to lie awake listening to the buffalo snort and chomp nearby. I woke Sarah up to warn her, but she was either unconcerned or thought I was crazy, and I decided that it would have to be my job instead of hers to say I love you two seconds before buffalo squished us to our end.

 

The next morning, as Ernest and Harry packed up the vehicle, Sarah and I found a buffalo pie only 30 or 40 feet from our tent. The Serengeti is the real deal, and our safari had been one captivating moment after another. When we get back stateside next July and are inevitably asked the question, “if you could pick just one thing to recommend,” well, I know this great little company in Moshi, Tanzania!