Safari Day 1: Maasai Mara Game Preserve. First day on safari! You immediately knew we were headed for something special when the driver would impatiently wave us off for asking to stop to see that one "giraffe!" or photograph an amazing "zebra!" on the way into the park. Within the first afternoon's short game drive we saw more animals than I had imagined was possible for the entire trip: wildebeest, zebra, Thomson's Gazelle, dik-dik, hornbill, guinea fowl, giraffe, cheetas, Cape Buffalo, lions, long crested eagle, secretary bird, Coke's Hartebeast, crown crane, Kirk's Dik-dik, impala, eland. Even more amazing: all the animals have babies now, too. Baby giraffes and zebras were cute but we sat for a long time watching the lion cubs
wrestle within reach of the van's window, and, a mother cheetah napping while her cubs fought over some recent kill. Our driver Dominic, who's great, continued to show a sort of disinterested impatience and while he endured our enthusiasm for taking one hundred pictures of that first zebra we began to get the idea that incredibly, there could possibly be better sights to be seen.
Safari Day 2: Maasai Mara Game Preserve. Lots of animals again today. Highlights included an interesting encounter with the first male lion we'd seen. He peed on his tail and we were all amused that this seemed like some pinnacle of deliberate laziness. Our guide explained that the tail-soaking was deliberate but well-intentioned and that the male lions would even splash urine from their tails into the faces of elephant calfs they were trying to subdue. We think he was just making excuses for such a slovenly display from the king of the jungle. Later, we witnessed an amazing procession of over a hundred elephants with many calfs, some possibly one day old. Dominic said he'd never seen that large a heard moving in this area and insisted we go somewhere other than where they may be heading despite our curiosity. The elephants are exteremely destructive and the wardens do their best to keep them within the preserve but we secretly hoped they were heading for our lodge. The day also included visiting a Maasai village. Amazingly primitive and charming, fairly touristy. The Maasai were very welcoming but at $20 bucks a head you'd be friendly too. There were introductions, song and dance; our visit concluded with a dead-end in their high-pressure hawking gauntlet, I mean market, where we bought some trinkets of questionable origin.
Safari Day 3: Lake Nukura National Park. Lake Nukura is a managed game preserve that borders a city of two million people; somewhat of a safari-themed Disneyland. It offers an abundance of animals concentrated in a very small area and not one bit shy of your vehicle. We saw two leopards here: nocturnal, elusive and among the most difficult of the 'Big 5' animals to view.
Also, a female white rhinoceros and her calf grazing unintimidated two meters from us. Despite the great game viewing, the park was crowded (with animals and tourists) and we were glad to be heading for someplace wilder and more remote.
Safari Day 4: Amboseli. Wilder and more remote we got. When your safari guide of almost twenty years experience makes blatant exclamations like "Very long drive. Very long." , or, "The worst road in Africa. The worst. Terrible." you're guaranteed a long drive on bad roads. Fortunately he had exaggerated, either out of his own frustration or just to prepare us for the almost nine-hour trip, and our route was downgraded to "the worst road in Kenya" and then to "not even the worst road we've been on." After scrounging a quick lunch, those of us who hadn't cracked from being in the van all day were immediately back on the road for an afternoon game drive. Amoboseli is an expansive dry lake bed and translated from the Maasai language means something regarding "dusty" but you don't need translation here: if the Maasai, who just might be the hardest people in the world call it dusty, you're pretty much assured of some impressive dust. Wildlife continues to be abundant, with most of the big game concentrated in and around the scarce, swampy remnants of water in the area making for some great viewing.
Safari Day 5: Amboseli. Morning and afternoon game drives highlighted by a baby elephant who, trumpeting his prowess, refused to yield the road to our van. This is where cute baby elephant intersects with jumping out of your seat and when that little thing trumpeted we were all thinking escape! I'll admit he alone scared us but his massive mother and other family members were within a few feet and we certainly hadn't intended any offense or foreseen the possible range of
consequences. This afternoon's game drive featured Pinky's appearance that had Dominic fleeing the van and will remain among the most memorable moments of our trip (more on that later).
Safari Day 6 : Travel day...leaving Amboseli we enjoy another opportunity to traverse the "worst road in Kenya" and then are quickly ushered through some version of the safari-tourist border crossing entering Tanzania. Today we must change tour companies from Naked Wilderness Afrika to Leopard Tours Ltd. and that means saying goodbye to Dominic, our Kenyan driver whom we have come to love. Our new man Daniel is nicknamed "Mamba" (crocodile in Swahili as well as the black- and green- varieties of deadly snake) giving him instant credibility. The East African tour continues over what must truly be the worst road in Africa, to Arusha, and following a quick but welcome stop in civilization (ATM, vodka, candy) we are on our way to Tarangire.
Safari Day 7: Tarangire to Ngorongoro. In what is now beginning to feel like a rock tour of East Africa we enjoy a brief morning game drive in Tarangire National Park with legendary baobab trees and one of the highest known diversities of birds in the world, then we are on the road again. Our afternoon travel is over what could be the best road in Tanzania, donated by
the Japanese government, to Ngorongoro Crater. While each of the parks we have visited has been magnificent in their own rights, Ngorongoro is overwhelming and truly feels like remote African wilderness. Our lodge is in the thickly forested crater rim surrounded by dense Red Acacia trees and foreboding jungle. Stretching below is the expansive Ngorongoro plain within the giant volcanic crater. The landscape alone is outstanding and even around the lodge, where enormous Cape Buffalo greet us after dinner, wildlife is almost too rancorous for us to sleep, highlighted by cries of Tree Hyrax: amazing creatures that may win my award for Africa's loudest - you'll have to Google them because if I tried to describe them you wouldn't believe me. Trust me, very loud.
Safari Day 8: Ngorongoro Crater. We leave on our game drive before dawn. Descending out of the mist from 7800 feet rapidly to the crater floor in total darkness feels primordial and a dinosaur would not seem out of place. Wildlife caught in our headlights freeze as we approach offering some amazing views of zebra, wildebeest and buffalo. At dawn we discover a pack of lions and enjoy watching numerous cubs fight over the remnants of a kill. The Ngorongoro Conservation area is over 8,350 square kilometers and the crater floor itself is 250 kilometers square and over 23 kilometers at its widest point. Touring plains, forest, salt marshes and a spring-fed lake we see an astonishing variety of densely populated wildlife. Spotting a black rhino with a calf we are thrilled even though they are distant: endangered and two of only 29 in the entire conservation area, they are the missing piece of many travelers' incomplete 'Big 5' lists. Daniel was previously a ranger in the Serengeti and we can tell from his enthusiastic lecture he is pleased with the sighting as well. He relates that within his lifetime black rhino were as abundant as cape buffalo, wandering in groups of three to six. However,
they are only able to reproduce once every four years, their calfs are favorites of the lions and their horns (at about $5,000/pound) targeted by poachers. Although conservation and protection have been a priority in the past twenty years, their numbers are slow to recover. In the afternoon we hike on the crater rim with a ranger and a Maasai who, spear in hand, guards us from our fantasies of lion and buffalo attacks in the jungle. The walk provides panoramic views into the crater and we celebrate the opportunity to be out of the Land Cruiser even as we finish hiking in the pouring rain.
Safari Day 9: Traveling again, we spend the morning at Olduvai Gorge, anthropologists' presumed location of our species' origin. Then we are on to the vast Serengeti, named from the Maasai word siringett meaning "endless place." Our afternoon game drive features abundant antelope and their like, zebra, wildebeest and buffalo. The Serengeti is indeed expansive but we've come to understand and trust the Maasai assessments of their surroundings and though it feels like we traveled hundreds of kilometers through the plains before reaching the lodge we arrive energized in discussion of sights we'd seen.
Safari Day 10: Serengeti. Searching for the 'Great Migration' we depart for a day-long game drive crisscrossing Serengeti's eastern plains and forests wondering how the professed movement of millions of wildebeest through this area could remain hidden from view. These wildebeest, numbering over two million, migrate annually in great herds between the Serengeti and Maasai Mara. Those we'd seen so far were mainly females that stayed behind because they were pregnant or had a calf. We finally become mired by the migration in forested reaches of Serengeti's
eastern end; wildebeest scattered through the trees, on the plain in groups reaching from one horizon to the other and on the road, often blocked by their scattered, indecisive procession. Large groups of zebra join the parade and our driver jests that the zebra know they are safe from lions while moving with wildebeest but after watching them for a while I'm sure he's not joking and share the zebra's assessment of them as dumb, awkward and slow. Our day culminates in one of the trip's most memorable encounters with not one but two male lions, one of whom we catch in the act! Lion's mating schedule is legendary, rumored to last as long as a week and include over forty encounters per day. Despite the scope of this epic undertaking it is allegedly very difficult to witness and we experience the competitive safari pride such accomplishments have come to provide as our driver proclaims that groups of professionals spend months here without witnessing the spectacle we've collected.
Safari Day 11: The last day on safari, we cross the Serengeti one more time traveling to Lake Myanara. Our final game drive of the trip in Lake Myanara Biosphere Preserve doesn't disappoint. Both the landscape and the abundance of wildlife are impressive. Plus, the area is literally infested with baboons and monkeys. Within a few meters of the gate our Land Cruiser is surrounded by both, providing a perfect stage for the now-infamous "Pedro Incident" (more later). We see hippos and giraffe. And, after so much big-game saturation are excited to see an elusive python and later a leopard tortoise. While we are sad for the adventure to come to an end, we are animated in our accounting of the game collected, triumphant in our successful quest for the 'Big 5' and continually break into laughing fits recalling Pedro's exploits.
