We got our safari tour organised by Shadows of Africa. It turned out to be such an apt name because at times, we saw shadows. The animals in their habitat are sights to behold and we only saw a minute fraction of life that goes on here. And in our week here, we collectively took over ten thousand photos, some of which will make it to our photo albums and a few onto this blog entry.
What you don't see and what they won't tell you in the brochures is that to catch these sights you will have to endure hours of ruttedly bad (main) roads. A "Masai Massage" the drivers call it as you bump through the humps. As you get off the main B-roads, the side trails are even worse. That said, the A104 road (we travelled on the stretch called Makuyuni Road from Arusha to Ngorongoro is part of a road that goes all the way south to Victoria Falls and then Capetown. We were on this same highway earlier in Ethiopia and there is a stretch in Kenya called Nairobi Road.
Road building is both an expensive endeavour (money the government doesn't have) nor is it ecosystemically friendly to the animals. So with the lack of money and then animal activists agitating, the roads remain bad and are increasingly in disrepair. The government, to their credit or more like because of the economic need, intends to designate more national parks (ie safari sites) that will generate more tourism dollars. However, these are the ancestral lands of the Masai - for the past 200 years - and they would not move. In protest, they would block the main road into the Serengiti national park. That happened the day before we were to drive through and so were glad it was resolved prior to our drive and we had clear passage. Thankfully, private operators respectful of the land and culture (and abiding by the laws governing national parks) have made accommodation and dining reasonable even luxurious. Well, one expects no less from lodges that call themselves Farms of Dreams. I joked with the guide that after this safari, I might start dreaming of farms.
Truth be told we saw little farmland on this safari. Any vegetable cultivation was limited to the backyard and the livestock would graze on the savannah, tended by shepherd boys barely into their teens. The rest of the bush could be more appropriately referred as a Wildebeest habitat for there are more here than any other animals, in fact with nearly 2 million of them, it's a factor more than the 200k zebras that we also saw a lot of. We lived in tents right next to wildebeest (also called gnu by the locals). In fact, the wildebeest crossing the Mara river is the main sight we want to see. We went to the river three times and saw it once. So, like the hunt, a day in the life on the serengiti is a lot of waiting. In the case of the wildebeest, there isn't a leader and so while the herd instinct got them migrating, the crossing tends to happen by accident. One of them will get inadvertently pushed into the river and the rest will follow in an avalanche. Over dinner, I commented that they are like Moses. For he too got so far but never crossed the Jordan river into the promised land. The wildebeest pauses like Moses.
We also got to see baboons, impalas, gazelles, bucks and birds of all sorts but got excited when we saw the big animals.... be it gentle giants like the elephants or tall grazers like the giraffes and of course the big cats: cheetahs, lions and the odd leopard. One game every tourist on safari will play is
spot the leopard and end up seeing lots of ALT (animals looking things) like a short tree stump in the bush resembles a cat sitting and staring patiently at its prey waiting to pounce or a dangling leaf looks like a bird perched about to fly off.
In August, in the bush, it is cool in the morning and it gets hot in the afternoon. So hot that bushfires are not uncommon. As the elephants tend to destroy trees when looking for mineral nutrients, they leave behind a wake of dead branches which are really susceptible to getting lit up and while many fires are contained naturally, there are of course animal casualties... Even if its superficial like a smoked out a giraffe who must have walked through a recently burned field and was all "sooted"-up as a result.
Most animal deaths here are not from bush fires but rather from hunts, of course. We watched three on the Serengiti: a predator lioness stalking her prey impala, a warthog prey unaware of its predator leopard. We didn't see the leopard stalking in the bush. We saw one's tail dangling from a tree. It remains an elusive animal to spot. The hunt also eluded us both times. We sat and wait like the animals but as no move was made, we moved on. The third time we got lucky and saw a lioness actually initiate a chase though the gazelle got away. Right after the lion showed up and we wondered if he would blame the lioness.
We did witness one final predator waiting episode in Ngorongoro crater which also did not materialise into lunch for the lioness... or rather we left for out own lunch rather than wait any longer to find out. The crater (nearly half the size of Singapore) is the result of a volcanic eruption 2 million years ago and is now a conservation area. The land floor of the crater is teeming with wildebeest and zebras as well as gazelles while the lake is the domain of pelicans (with their synchronised swimming) and flamingos (with their formation flying). There are of course lions here too and all of 36 rhinos (more than 5% of the world's population); one of which we sighted from miles away. With that sighting, we have came and saw all the big five albeit just the tail of a leopard and that speck of a rhino. Hence, shadows of Africa .
Still, there are a lot of animals here in their natural habitat and we are glad the Tanzanian government is protecting these by making them national parks, or at least conservation areas. Even the animals that have wandered outside these get some protection both both governmental and non-governmental organisations. That meant that we got to see the big five, ie the five apex beasts in the savannah - buffalo, elephant, leopard, lion and rhino. The Serengiti also have a big nine list that included the cheetah, giraffe, hippo and zebra. J added it should also include the wildebeest since it is the most populous here. I don't know why they only stopped at 9 :-s. So, all in, we saw the Top 10 mammals and not counting the monkeys, mongoose and reptiles like the crocodiles and lizards who were mostly at rest soaking up the sun as well as many birds with special shout outs to a new flightless but confident bird we got to know, the Kori Bustard, the many superb starlings we had lunch in the bush with, the clutch of helmeted guinea fowls that always look like they are busy heading to the market, not to mention the vultures feasting at a funeral and the flamboyance of flamingoes walking and flying in synchrony. The birds are the unsung heroes of the Safari. Though they don't make it to the Top 5 or 9 (the ostrich could have been a candidate for the 9 to be honest), they add a dazzling dash of colour and freedom to the bush and no less then that displayed by the 7-coloured bee eater.
Within a week, we covered over a thousand kilometres, beginning from a lodge in Arusha to Lake Manyara and then through Serengiti from south to north to Mara River at the border with Kenya and back again via Ngorongoro crater. The unsung hero of this epic trip is the Toyota Landcruiser and more than that, the multi-able driver and guide, Frank and they could have done so much more if they had better infrastructure to work with. In fact, the vehicles and the guides are the hardest working elements here. The animals we observed spent a lot of time waiting, or eating or resting. But I guess that's one of the reasons a safari is a unique sort of trip.
One event on the Safari that can never be faulted is the landscape especially at dawn and at dusk. And to see it from a hot air balloon is heavenly. The land stretches interminably ahead litted up with a golden glow from the rising sun. It's at this stage that one realises how insignificant we mortal humans are and what a responsibility we have to preserve this planet and all its flora and fauna for future generations.
"All things bright and beautiful
All creatures great and small
All things wise and wonderful ...
The lord God made them all."
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