Katie and Tommy: Around the World

It has been an eventful few days since our last post. We caught a bus from Dar es Salaam to Arusha, the gateway town to the Serengeti. The ride was unremarkable, except that we were appalled when the attendant tossed whole plastic cups of coffee out of the window when passengers could not finish them. This kind of mindless littering seems as prevalent here as it was in South America. I think it comes from the fact that for hundreds of years the people in these places lived simple, rural lives, and all of their waste was organic and could be tossed outside without worry. Now they do the same with plastic and paper products, and they litter the roadsides. By the fish market in Dar, there were people snorkeling and fishing in the bay, and not ten feet away waste and trash was being dumped into the water that gives these people their livelihood. It is a sad situation.

Still, the constant stream of tourists who come to see the natural beauty of the Serengeti and surrounding parks ensures that they, at least, are strictly protected. We were among the many who arrived in Arusha to go on safari. Our company, Shidolya, picked us up from the bus station and put us up for the night in the hostel at the Catholic center in town. The next morning they picked us up in a heavy-duty Land Rover and drove us to the company’s offices, where we waited for everything to be finished processing. The parks are very strict about permits and payment, and they do not accept cash. Special debit cards must be purchased in order to pay at the park gate. Once we had everything we needed, we set off.

It was a long drive from Arusha to the first campsite, about 2 or 3 hours. The scenery slowly began to look like the African plains one sees in pictures. We passed a great many Maasai villages and shepherds with goats and cows. The Maasai are a pastoral people who still retain many of their ancestral ways. They wear special blankets and carry sticks or spears and daggers. Both women and men wear beaded jewelry and sometimes sport large holes in their earlobes from spacers. Many of the Maasai have capitalized on the many tourists passing through the area, and when we stopped at a market to buy some food, we were bombarded with Maasai selling jewelry, t-shirts, and other souvenirs.

Now, when Tommy and I were looking for a good safari company, we read that some led camping safaris. We laughed at this and referred to it as “feeding the lions” for the remainder of our search. That is, until we found out that the only safaris that would be remotely within our budget were, in fact, camping safaris. When we arrived at our first campsite, we saw just how wrong our first impression has been. This was not out in the wilderness, but in a small town. There was a walled-off grassy area surrounded by souvenir shops where several different safari companies pitched their tents. There was also a hotel (complete with bar) and swimming pool. Our cook served up a simple lunch, and after waiting around a little longer than we would have liked, we got into the Land Rover and headed to the nearby Lake Manyara around 2:30 pm. The top of the Land Rover could be raised so that we could stand up and look out as we drove. The winding paths of the park took us through some lovely forest and savannah, and to a big lake filled with hippos and waterbirds. We also saw elephants, giraffe, buffalo, impala, baboons, and lots of birds, including two species of hornbills and African Crowned Cranes. Our guide thought it was humorous that I “liked the birds more than the animals.”

Unfortunately we only had about three hours in the park and had to head back. The next morning we began the long drive to Serengeti National Park. It is necessary to drive through the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in order to reach the park. This required a transit visa. It was very foggy, and we couldn’t see down into the Crater yet. We did come upon a safari vehicle that had somehow tipped over on the muddy road, and no one could get by. Several men pushed it back upright, and we were able to continue.

Around noon we stopped at Olduvai Gorge, probably the most important site for early human fossils. There is a small museum and some shaded picnic areas overlooking the gorge. It was a very powerful feeling, to be looking down there and remembering that you were walking on the same ground on which our early ancestors most certainly walked. As proof of this, the museum had a cast of the Laetoli footprints, early hominid footprints preserved in hardened volcanic ash which were found nearby. They were immensely important to early hominid evolution, as they proved that humans were walking upright much earlier than anthropologists thought. The actual site has been re-buried to protect it.

From Olduvai, we pressed on to the Serengeti. We had pictured some massive gate that we would drive under while the theme from “Jurassic Park” played, but on the contrary, it was a very tiny wooden sign. In fact, Ngorongoro and Serengeti used to be one park, but they were divided because of the Maasai. In the fifties, they had many conflicts with park authorities. Now, the Maasai may only live in Ngorongoro, and Serengeti is only for the animals. Where there had been Maasai villages and herds dotting the plains of Ngorongoro, once we crossed into the Serengeti, we saw none at all.

We began to see wildebeest and zebras on the horizon, and they steadily increased in number until we were surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands of them. This was the massive migration we had heard so much about, and it was breathtaking to behold. They dotted the plains as far as we could see. The Serengeti is vast. It’s almost incomprehensibly vast for someone used to the size of National Parks in the United States. Once we crossed the entry, we drove for an hour before we saw anything besides the plains and the animals. We came to a small hill where the official park entry center is located. Again, we were quite underwhelmed by it all. The Serengeti charges foreigners 50 US dollars per day to enter the park, and yet the visitor’s center was tiny. The bathrooms were run-down, and there was one small souvenir shop selling barely anything.

The permit and payment process took about an hour. We’re still not quite clear on whether this is normal or if something was wrong. Every time we crossed a park gate, it seemed there was an entire ordeal to undergo. Every park official looked at our documents with great suspicion and scrutiny. Our cook and driver seemed unconcerned. It was here that we learned a very popular phrase: “No hurry in Africa.” Believe it or not, “Hakuna matata” (“no problem”) is also very popular. While we waited, we climbed to a vantage point where we had a 360-degree view of the plains, dotted liberally with wildebeest and zebras. Again, the sheer number of animals and size of the park were breathtaking. As we drove on, the animals only grew thicker, and the sheer biomass of the mammals was overwhelming. I have never been surrounded by so many large animals before.

We drove for another hour and a half before arriving at our campsite, on the way spotting many animals such as elephants, gazelles, hyenas, hartebeest, buffalo, and topi. This campsite was far less tame than the first. It was positioned on a slight hill, and there was nothing protecting it from the vast and wild Serengeti. There were many other tents, some primitive restrooms, and enclosures for the cooks to prepare meals. We watched the sunset over the plain, and enjoyed another delicious dinner. Our cook turned out to be fantastically skilled, especially considering the facilities he had to work with. We thoroughly enjoyed each of our meals.

We survived the night without any lion attacks, and set out early the next morning. We watched the sunrise from out in the park, and then continued our game drive. First we took a lonely road that didn’t yield much by way of large mammals, but showed us a great diversity of birds. I was especially excited to spot secretary birds, lovebirds, and an African hoopoe. We ate breakfast on the hood of the Land Rover in view of a vast herd of buffalo.

We took a new road which appeared busier than the first. We began to pass more safari vehicles. Our guide would ask the other drivers what they had seen, and so he knew where to take us. We could usually spot something good from a ways away, because there would be at least four or five other safari vehicles stopped on the road, and all of the tourists in goofy hats and vests were peeking their heads and immense cameras out. We pulled up behind the first such group and looked in earnest into the tall grass, trying to figure out what was causing so much excitement.

“Lion,” our guide said. Squinting, we saw it. It was a foot. The lion was resting on its back, one foot propped up against the tree. Everyone was frantically snapping pictures. Our guide ensured us we would see more. We took a couple of pictures of the foot just in case.

We drove until we came upon another group of cars, this one much larger. There, we saw a beautiful male lion resting under some palm trees. Driving a little farther, we managed to get a back view. He was resting on a riverbank, and below him was another male devouring a baby hippo carcass. Across the way, a group of tourists who had paid for balloon rides that morning was having a fancy champagne brunch.

Before the day was out, we saw several more female lions and a leopard lounging in a tree, as well as many more of the animals we had seen the day before. We had to return to camp around noon for lunch and to pack up. Our Serengeti permits lasted 24 hours, so we had to reach the entrance of the park by 3:00. Once we exited (with much more waiting and scrutiny of our permits), our 24 hour Ngorongoro permit began. We drove to our campsite in the Conservation Area, and this one was the wildest of all. It was positioned at the edge of the crater with an amazing view down into it. There were Marabou Storks wandering aimlessly around the tents, and guards with AK-47’s patrolled around to keep animals away. A few minutes after our arrival, an elephant strolled up and took a long drink out of our water tank. We realized that Jonathan had not been joking when he asked us if we wanted to set up our tent with a view, or with the elephants.

The next morning we drove down into the crater. It was, if possible, an even more breathtaking landscape than the Serengeti. Where the Serengeti had been flat, the crater was enclosed by steep sloping mountain walls. There were many lakes, one which was filled with thousands of flamingos. We drove through thick forest and had to drive behind a slow-moving elephant for a time. We came upon a group of female lions and cubs devouring some kind of animal carcass. And we saw the last two African mammals we had been missing from the day before: rhinos and cheetahs. The rhinos were somewhat far away, but the cheetahs strolled right by us and across the road. No less than 13 safari cars stopped to watch them, hoping to see them chase down something. All of the zebras and impala watched them warily. But they merely paused to poop and then walked on.

We again only had time for half a day, and so we returned to camp at noon, ate lunch, and then drove back to Arusha. We caught a bus to Moshi, a town at the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Our hotel has a perfect view of the mountain. Today I am going through our hundreds of photos, while Tommy visits the Kilimanjaro Center for Community Ophthalmology.

Pictures are taking a while to upload, and video even longer, but check back–they’re good ones!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 9:10 am and is filed under Tanzania. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.