Author: ryan

Another day, another adventure. Our vehicle was a couple of minutes late and missed out on a leopard that was in a tree near the road, although most of the other vehicles got a good look. We hung out next to the tree for over an hour after he had climbed down, but didn’t see him again; such is luck while on safari. Cape buffalo, wildebeest, zebras, lions, and the usual complement of elephants and other critters made up most of the rest of the day’s sightings.

To give some idea of what this trip has been like thus far, we wake up early (before sunrise) and either have a quick breakfast or else immediately jump in the safari vehicles and head out looking for whatever is stirring. The more obnoxious visitors (Hi!) stand in the back of the pop-top Toyota Landcruisers with their heads in the breeze for the entire time in order to have the best view of the surroundings, and the Tanzanian guides generally pick a direction and point out whatever they see that will be of interest, while passengers point out tree stumps and rocks that we mistake for something interesting. Stops for photographs or just to take in the surroundings are frequent. At any given moment there is usually something visible, whether it’s a gazelle or a vulture or an eagle or something else. Most of the time there is a herd of something around, be it two hundred impala next to the road, anywhere from a handful to an armada of wildebeests, or four elephants on the horizon. It’s never boring for me – there is always a surprise around the corner, waiting to be found.

While it would be awesome to rent a vehicle and travel entirely at my own pace, the downsides of such a trip are that the “roads” are often little more than two uneven tracks leading into a gully (and it’s the dry season – in the rainy season they will be muddy and often flooded), and also it’s hugely helpful to have four other vehicles that can call on the radio when a particularly interesting animal is sighted or someone gets stuck in an aardvark den. The Cheesemans have mostly booked top-end lodges within the park, but options also exist for more basic accommodation, with the caveat that you can’t just pitch a tent anywhere on account of there being various creatures about who would view such a thing as a pre-wrapped meal. Overall, I think the Cheesemans have put together an amazing tour that is probably about as good of an Africa trip as anyone could have, and we still have four nights left in Tanzania before moving on to Kenya.

Growing up in the USA we are all told stories about pioneer days when herds of buffalo filled the horizon. That still happens in the Serengeti – at one point today we watched a herd of wildebeest galloping across a pass in the hills, down a valley, and across the plain, and couldn’t see where the massive movement of animals began. The animals traveled in lines that broke like a wave around our vehicle (see the photo below), with hundreds and hundreds running by us while the majority took another path further away. The herds of wildebeest here are IMMENSE, and we’re supposedly only seeing the stragglers that haven’t yet crossed the Mara river into Kenya…

Our lodging for the evening is the ridiculously fancy Mara Sayari tent camp – my “tent” has a hardwood floor, partitioned separations for the upscale bathroom, tub, shower, etc; I am not roughing it. There is a pool here with a large pile of what is obviously elephant poop near it – I asked the manager if elephants ever stopped by for a drink, and she admitted that they do but noted that the wooden fence keeps out the hippos who once frequented it. Pool maintenance is clearly a much different task in the bush of Africa than it is in the backyards of Los Angeles. Lest anyone think this is merely a fancy resort, everyone was frequently and emphatically reminded to request a guide when walking at dark due to the many animals roaming about, several of whom would happily make a meal of any stray camp resident.

Coming on this safari was an unbelievably good decision, and I’ve already seen sights that I’ve wanted to see since I was a little kid watching nature documentaries on TV. We’ve got much more to go, but already the soul has been much refreshed from everything we’ve experienced.

I was trying to estimate the number of mammals we saw today, and no one in my jeep could even venture a guess – 100,000 seemed to be a number that everyone felt was neither too high nor too low. It was unbelievable how many animals were grazing the green grasses as we moved north, and supposedly the numbers will continue to increase tomorrow as we make our way up to the Mara River at the border with Kenya. I know that Yellowstone is “America’s Serengeti”, and other places similarly claim the “Serengeti” label, but there is no where that could possibly compete with this part of Africa for numbers of animals.

Not to make this journal a list of species, but in addition to the massive numbers of animals, today was a good one for variety of species as well. We saw at least a dozen lions, another cheetah, at least fifty hippos, a leopard that had dragged a gazelle up into a tree in order to escape from prowling lions, cape buffalo, and the zebras and wildebeests that are part of the great migration.

After standing up in the pop-top jeep scanning the horizons for hours today, arrival at the lodge was with very tired legs, but I still climbed up on top of the rocks here for an unbelievable view of the Serengeti plains. Further hiking is limited by the small matter that there are numerous animals around that will eat people. The lodge grounds included a troop of baboons and an infestation of hyrax, which clamber all over the rocks within a foot or two of the guests and look at bit like massive gerbils – in speculating which ecological niche they fill, consensus seemed to be “appetizer”.

Two honey badgers today, making three total for this trip; the lady that runs the lodge says she’s never seen one, so clearly fortune favors those who head out in jeeps prior to sunrise at 6:15 each day. More cheetahs, lions, elephants, giraffes, ostriches, and other critters today – our driver had the best eyes of any person I’ve ever met, and spotted the cheetahs immediately when we were more than a mile and a half away and they were merely blobs on a small hill to me. I can take credit for a couple of sightings today, but if it was a football game the final score would have been something like Yuda 54, Ryan 3; the guy is a wildlife-spotting savant.

So far what we seen of Africa has been inspirational – there are a million different types of animal, but each one fills a specific niche. Cheetahs are the best hunters, but are the weakest cat and thus must be on constant patrol for other cats. Elephants are the least susceptible to predators, but also need the most food and water. Gazelle can get by without much water and only a little bit of grass, but are preyed upon by the fastest cats. It’s like a perfectly balanced system, and you gain a huge appreciation for how amazing the natural world is by being out in a mostly-pristine system each day and watching it function as it has for hundreds of thousands of years.

We haven’t seen a leopard yet, and Doug says tomorrow is a good day for them, so I offered Gail $20 if she would reunite the same four passengers and driver from yesterday in a jeep tomorrow (Cheesemans assign passengers to vehicles each night so that everyone gets an opportunity with each of the drivers). She refused the $20, but obliged on the request for the Magic Bus reunion, so hopefully our luck from yesterday will be rekindled and leopard photos will accompany tomorrow’s journal entry.

At 6:15 we were off across the landscape on the hunt for whatever animals might make an appearance. The day started with a honey badger, and when your day starts with a honey badger it is going to be an awesome day. He was not feeling excited about the safari vehicle behind him, and chose not to pose for pictures as we pursued him – clearly he cared. Numerous animals followed the honey badger, and then a call came in on the radio that one jeep had two cheetahs, while another had a den of lions. Conundrum. We went for the cheetahs, and an hour after we joined them we watched the mother cheetah take down a reedbuck (think small antelope) and then patrol the area while her teenage cub had a meal. And there were still lions to see…

Our planned return to the lodge for lunch at noon ended up being closer to 2PM, and then at 3:30 we were off again to chase more lions, cheetahs, elephants, ostriches, giraffes, birds, etc, etc. While the safari jeeps have seats, I stood in the back looking out for animals the entire time as we drove over fields, lakebeds, and through forests. My camera memory card has photos of lion cubs and baby cheetahs, among 500 other pictures, so pretty much the best day ever.

In non-animal news, the lodgings are pretty lavish, the Tanzanian drivers are all fun personalities and have mad skillz at both driving through crazy terrain and finding (and identifying) hidden animals, the food is really good, and the people on safari are for the most part really enthusiastic. There isn’t a lot of time for sleeping, so journal entries may be a bit incoherent and it’s tough to find time to review photos to find some to include with entries, but I’ll do my best to keep things readable and illustrated. One more day at Ndutu, then on to the Serengeti plains.

I ate dinner with four wild genets watching from the rafters. If you don’t know what a genet is (much like me three hours ago), it’s related to the mongoose and looks like a leopard’s coat put onto a cat’s body with a fox’s head and a lion’s tail. And four of those are residents in the lodge, living in the rafters, and watching guests eat each night before they head out to look for their own meals (no, Audrey, we can’t get one).

Overall the lodge grounds are practically a petting zoo – dikdik’s (deer that are about a eighteen inches tall) tolerate people to within a few feet, you practically need to avoid stepping on birds, impala graze fifty feet from the main path, and long eared bats make chirping noises under the eaves. Apparently they’ve all come to realize that predators don’t hang out in the vicinity and that people aren’t a threat, so they’ve made the place into a wild animal park run by the animals.

In non-lodge news, we drove across the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater and down into Olduvai Gorge to see where the earliest hominid fossils were discovered. Bones are still washing up there after the rainy season each year, as we quickly discovered when looking through rocks in the wash. Strangely, the highlight of Olduvai was the birds on its rim, which were oddly tolerant, numerous, and amazingly colorful. From Olduvai we then did an off-road safari for about five hours, which was a massive amount of bouncy fun standing in the back of the pop-top safari vehicles scanning for animals. A more mature man would not have made a game out of trying to find more animals than the driver, but I am not such a man and came away with the first hyena sighting of the trip as well as a bunch of other finds. Gazelle were so abundant that we quickly got to the point where they didn’t merit a stop, giraffe and ostrich were also numerous, and a bunch of other critters made an appearance as we rocked and rolled over the terrain.

At one point during the drive a call came in that another jeep had become stuck in a collapsed aardvark den, so we went to their rescue and helped winch them out. Writing about helping to extract a vehicle stuck in an aardvark den is a subject that I never in a million years would have imagined would be a part of this journal, and I feel unimaginably lucky to have been able to put it into words. Tomorrow is another day and another adventure.

I think I saw 80% of the cast of the Lion King today. I won’t do the full species rundown, because that would take forever and be the most boring journal entry ever, but there were wildebeests and hippos and gazelles and zebras and giraffes and baboons and monkeys and cranes and storks and hornbills and vastly more. No big cats or elephants, but for the first day of the safari this was a hell of a start. The experience was straight out of a National Geographic special, with all manner of species in huge numbers mixed-up together and going about their business – we saw hundreds, if not thousands, of yellow-billed storks mixed in with pelicans, zebras, hippos, impala and other critters in just one corner of the lake. Side note, but the sound of hippos lazing about is a deep rumbling noise that anyone hearing would be able to immediately identify as having come from Africa – hippos are clearly badass.

Lake Manyara is just at the edge of the rift valley, and tomorrow we’re off to the top of Ngorongoro Crater, down to Olduvai Gorge, and onto the Serengeti proper. Today’s park is supposedly just the tip of the iceberg, and I’m already in full-on amazement mode. More, please.

Day two of the African adventure – the full safari starts tomorrow, and in the interim I got to enjoy the second day at Lake Duluti with a morning walk around the lake and then plenty of time to enjoy the sprawling lodge grounds. My first animal attack of Africa occurred on the walk – it rained a little last night, so a colony of red ants was flooded out of their home and covered a fifty foot section of the trail; despite running through it I had a dozen defenders doing their job on my legs. Africa 1, Ryan 0.

In the afternoon a troop of two adult and three young monkeys came through where the lodge is located, and as opposed to yesterday’s distant views these guys were fearless and were at times only a couple of feet away. Monitor lizards and more types of birds than I can count made up the rest of the day’s wildlife sightings, and another bushbaby made a fleeting appearance at dusk.

I can’t wait for phase two of this African odyssey – if the grounds around a lodge and a tiny lake reserve can produce so much, I can’t fathom what the wide open spaces of the Serengeti will yield.