On Safari, Part I

Wed, Mar 17, 2010
Serengeti National Park, Tanzania

Yesterday we left behind our big Dragoman truck and set off for the Serengeti in three game drive Land Cruisers. We drove for an hour before reaching the Ngorongoro Conservation Area where we stopped to pay our park fee for the NCA and Serengeti Park. From there the roads got really bumpy, and we bounced along for another three hours before reaching the Serengeti Park. It was a beautiful drive, though, with lots to look at. The Masai are the only people allowed to live in the NCA and they still live a very nomadic life. They are also the only people allowed to graze cattle in the NCA, and we often saw herds of 20 or more cows being herded by one or two tall, thin fellows dressed in billowing red robes. We were told lions are afraid of the color red; that if a lion is running at you and you hold up something red, he will turn and run away. Don’t know if that’s true or not, and I don’t want to test that theory myself, but it would explain why the Masai all wear red.

Because they are nomadic, the Masai don’t live in permanent structures. They build round stick and mud homes with thatched roofs all clustered together within a stick enclosure, making a kind of temporary village. The men take the cattle out to graze and are sometimes gone for days and weeks as they move around the surrounding area finding new grass for their animals. The women stay back, and when the village moves to a new location, they are the ones who build the new huts. The women also spend a lot of time making the beadwork bracelets, earrings and wide necklaces that distinguish them beyond their clothing. They have branched out to making keychains and beaded mobile phone cases as well as simpler cheap jewelry to sell to tourists. Where there is a scenic overlook, there is sure to be a small clump of Masai men selling the women’s work, often at ridiculously low prices.

I don’t recall if we saw many wild animals while driving through the NCA, but as soon as we went through the gates of the Serengeti Park, we began seeing loads of wildlife. Our driver was infinitely patient with us and would stop for us to look at herds of giraffe and elephants that were so far away that they looked like miniatures. I’m guessing it’s the same with every new group. The first morning, you stop every time you see anything moving, and by the next day, if it’s not a herd of critters right next to the road, you just keep on rolling. We were all excited about spotting animals and scanned the tall grass hoping to spot a lion or cheetah or just about anything else. However, the rocks and trees and sticks have a way of fooling the eye and we had more than a few false shouts of “stop! stop!” only to be informed that our lion was in fact nothing more than a termite mound.

It didn’t take long before we began to encounter large herds of gazelles and wildebeest right along the roadside. Because we are here during the rainy season, we are witness to the annual migration – a period of several months when thousands of animals pass through the area to graze and fatten up before moving on to their dry season locations. Several times during our time there, we would marvel to see a line of wildebeest stretching along the horizon for as far as the eye could see. Many times we were brought to a halt by animals in the hundreds crossing the road. The best of course was when the critters crossing were giraffes or elephants.

As I mentioned, our driver/guide was very patient, and he had amazing eyesight. He would spot things out in the grass or in the trees that we could only see by looking through binoculars or by staring intently as he pointed our attention toward the animal in the distance. In that way we saw jackals and fox and our first hyenas. When we would encounter larger animals, he would pull us into a good viewing location and then wait until we all were ready to move on. He never rushed us.

In the Serengeti, when you see a jeep stopped, there is a good chance they are looking at something you will also find interesting, so it’s not unusual for there to be 4, 5 or even 6 jeeps parked along the road watching the same thing. What we found is that the other tour groups would stop for five minutes, often chatting noisily, then roar past looking for more animals. We, on the other hand, would stop there for as long as 20 minutes or more, just watching the elephants or giraffes grazing. By sitting there quietly and simply observing, we soon became part of the landscape for them, and often they would walk right past us, or even between our jeeps. Several times we had herds of elephants come so close to the jeeps we thought they might climb in, and twice we had them walk right between us. They had little babies with them, and it was so fun to watch how they protected those little ones. The biggest female would plant herself in the middle of the road facing us while the other females would cross with the babies, making sure they kept themselves between us and them.

One elephant encounter was particularly thrilling. We stopped to watch three huge, old elephants with enormous tusks grazing some distance from us. Eventually, they began to walk toward us until one of them was so close to our jeep I thought I might be able to reach out and touch it. I was holding my breath to see what it would do and snapping photos like crazy. The camera with the wide angle lens was sitting on my seat at my feet and the camera I was using had the long zoom lens, and by the time they were right next to us, my long lens was filling the frame with just one eye and part of a trunk. We were all standing on our seats (the roof pops up so you can stand and observe things), and I was afraid to even move, so my wide angle lens just sat there. I tried hard to make it levitate, but my leviosa charm still needs some work. In the meantime, one of the other elephants passed between us and another of our jeeps and the third must have crossed somewhere in front of them. We all marveled at the length and thickness of their tusks – the longest ones went nearly to the ground and the other two had tusks that were just shy of that. While this was all happening, we stayed incredibly quiet and still, with just the occasional squeak of excitement and hushed gasping, but after they were a safe distance from us, we let out a collective laugh of amazement and began talking all at once about how this person had this look on their face, and this person did that, and swapping around cameras so we could look at each others photos. It was a truly incredible experience.