Safari! Day 6 - Sunrise on the Serengeti!

Today was our daybreak safari.  We had to be up at 5:30 to catch the sunrise on the safari.  That’s fun trying to get 3 grumpy people going at that hour I can tell you!  Jen has been affected by the malaria medication we think as she’s not sleeping much (or more correctly I tell her, she’s not getting restful sleep – she says she’s having pretty vivid and disturbing dreams) and the kids don’t do well this early anyway but we’re all excited about getting out early to see what’s out there.

The plan is that we’d get out early, and have breakfast on Safari and then come back for a hot lunch before leaving the Serengeti for Ngorogoro Crater.  We almost no sooner left the grounds of the hotel than the sun started poking up over the horizon bathing everything in that red light…  stunning and well worth the early morning.  Especially with lots of Impala and Zebras lounging around us. 

We can see a couple of hot air balloons getting ready for flight (Jen sat beside a lady on the flight here who’s husband has the exclusive rights in the Serengeti for this).  This was an option we easily discarded as they wanted $400/person for a two hour excursion (most of which is on the ground having breakfast!).  It looked fun but not at that price on our budget!

What's not to love about this place?

LOTS of Giraffes and other animals such as Baboons who we never really got tired of watching.  We also learned a neat trick about Giraffes in how they chew their cud.  You can watch them chewing away and then they swallow and you can watch it go down… then seconds later you can watch a new load come back up their throat.  When I get a chance on a better internet connection I’ll post a short movie.  Its quite entertaining.

We had breakfast at a large hippo pool.  We counted 85 hippos and lost count (and there seems to be every 4^th one under water at any time anyway).  A couple of crocodiles out sunning themselves as well.  We also saw another Hippo wandering in the grass not far from us and a mom and a young hippolet? walking up the rapids to the pool.  Its interesting that they keep the babies on the OUTSIDE of the group as they are more concerned about them getting squashed from other Hippos than attacked by predators. 

Back to the hotel for a quick lunch and then on for the long drive back to the Ngorogoro Crater Rim where our next lodge was.  On the drive back, we saw even more Wildebeest than before if that’s possible.  That migration is nothing less than stunning.  Sam was driving like a maniac between the herds crossing the roads and we were sure he was going to take out a wildebeest or a zebra but they are far too quick to catch and can change direction in a nanosecond.  Great fun to watch.  I have a great video of it I’ll post when I can.

We passed another pride of lions lying at the side of the road – I think they must pay them to be the star attractions!  It is amazing how in such short grass they seem almost invisible from more than 100’ away.  

Back to the park gates and then out the long and dusty road to Ngorogoro.  Out in the middle of the desert, we saw a bunch of Giraffe walking toward Ngorogoro… they must have walked 20 miles without a stick of grass or a mouthful of water and still had another 10 to go.  Can’t imagine what would drive them to do that. 

Then back up the mountain to the top of the rim, where our next lodge (Ngorogoro Wildlife) was located.  We drive in, get the traditional juice and then are transfixed by the view… floor to ceiling (20’) glass panels on an angle looking down directly into the crater.  Wow!  What a view!  It’s a Billion dollar view.

Our rooms are nice but also have stunning views of the crater.  The bar area has one of those attraction binoculars (at no cost) that allows you to pick out individual animal species from all the way up here.  Jen and Rachel spent a good 20 minutes looking at it.  I ended up with the first migraine of the trip so wasn’t really in the mood .  I pop a bunch of Excedrin Migraine and nothing happens… I find that only Advil works so I pop a couple of those and its la-la land for me (although I had a bit of an upset stomach from the ASA a bit later).  Damn migraines are a PITA.  (I was getting them about 1-2 a week at home and have gone almost 6 weeks with only one here… must be stress related or something although this evening, I’m suspecting it’s the lack of sleep and the altitude change.  

Safari! Day 1 - Elephants!

Our guide (Sam) picked us up at our house at 9am, for the 3 hour drive to our first day at Tarangira National Park.  We stopped in Arusha, the local capital and third largest city in Tanzania (which we learned Is not pronounced “Tan Zan ee a” but rather “Tanz Anya”) to allow Sam to pick up our box lunches for the day.  As soon as we pulled into the parking spot, we were swarmed by street vendors trying their absolute best to sell us stuff through the windows.  Rachel had been sitting up front to prevent car sickness but felt a little intimidated so climbed over the seat back to us in the back and someone reached in and took Sam’s cell phone right from her seat!  I was distracted by the street vendors on my side but Jen saw them running away and Rachel realized that it was the cell phone they had taken.  This was a pretty disappointing start to our trip.  Rachel was pretty upset about it and considered it her fault but Sam was very good about it and said it was really his fault for leaving it out in the open and that they may have reached right over her to get it even if she had stayed up front and he was happier that she was OK.  Luckily the guides all carry multiple cell phones and radio’s so no real impact to our trip (beyond a quick stop to shut down the service while we went into a local “supermarket” to pick up some snacks.  We have enjoyed doing this to see what the locals pay for groceries as it gives us a good sense of how expensive things are for them.  Just like in Costa Rica, we found the groceries about the same or perhaps a bit more than home - considering that the average Tanzanian makes less than $7/day, I don’t know how they survive.  They certainly don’t buy $5 cans of Pringles!

Arusha is also the town that was featured in John Wayne’s cheesy but likeable flick called Hatari! (Danger! In Kiswahali).  They would come into town to have a few bar dustups and during one scene, the Duke’s love interest (a sexy young French photographer) had somehow let her pet baby elephants loose for a path of destruction through the town.  This film also featured the song Baby Elephant Walk – a memorable tune you’d know if you heard it.  Unfortunately, Arusha is also famous for holding the UN war crimes tribunal on neighbouring Rowanda. 

After Arusha, it was about another 90 minute drive to Tarangira National Park.  The roads are quite good 2 lane paved roads… certainly better than Costa Rica.  Along the way, we saw hundreds of little Masai villages or perhaps communities – a cluster of round mud huts (Boma’s) with open doors and thatched roofs surrounded by a ring of thorn branches to keep the wildlife away.  Near each of these, we’d see some small boy (4-8 or so) sheparding 50-100 goats and sheep and further away, we’d see a young Masai warrior sheparding a similar number of cattle (that all looked as if they hadn’t had a decent blade of grass in a month).  It is almost the start of the short rain season here so things are VERY dry… as evidenced by the dust devils we could see rolling across the plains… typically you could see 5-6 at any one time.  It’s a very tough life.

We got to Tarangira safely and stopped at the park gates so that Sam could get the permits and we got out to walk around.  They had the skulls of all the local animals mounted on posts along the walk so we could try our hand at figuring them out.  The elephant skull completely baffled Shawn as he had it backwards and upside down.  We had lots of fun with that.

After that, it was into the park.  Tarangira is known for Elephants and the Baobob trees.  Right at the park gate, there are several large Baobob trees.  You have to see these things to believe them.  The local Masai are said to believe that God was angry with the Baobob tree and planted it upside down.  Without leaves on the branches, it certainly does look like that.  They also have leaves (some did and some didn’t) as well as tasty fruits and white flowers in season.  The trunks on these trees are perhaps 10-15’ in diameter and most show severe scars caused by elephants using their tusks to tear them apart to get at the bark and outer wood which contains vitamin C.  Some of these scars are more like shark bites that go most of the way through the trunk and a few large holes you could walk upright through side by side with two of your friends.  They were really quite astonishing.  The park is full of them and we’d see one for every 20-30 Acacia Trees (those famous umbrella like trees you often see Lion’s under in the movies).  Lots of palm/fig like trees as well as low shrubs.  A very desert looking place but is actually a swamp with a natural river that flows year round – although for long stretches it flows under a sandy river bottom out of sight.

It wasn’t long after that that we saw our first elephant.  He was a very large solitary male harassing a Baobob tree naturally!  It was right at the side of the road.  He was quite oblivious to our presence until we started getting excited and then decided he wasn’t quite sure about us and faced the Land Cruiser head on, flared out his ears, trumpeted very loudly and took a couple of quick steps toward us!  That kept us quiet!   Then he, turned and sauntered off.  Wow…  we were all quite glad to be inside the vehicle at that point!  I should mention that the Land Cruiser has a pop up roof so we were all able to stand up under the canopy.  He was right at eye level with us and perhaps 10-15 feet away.  We got some great shots of him.

Sorry that the shot wasn't perfectly centered but I was more concerned that we were going to get flattened!

Then on to a lesser used track to see other animals… it wasn’t long before we were seeing small groups of Zebra’s, Impala, Giraffes, Antelope, Wildebeasts, Wart Hogs and pairs of Dik Dik’s.  Dik Diks are small, dog sized, antelope.  Very cute with big ears and big eyes.  They pair for life and are very territorial as they hang around the roots of small shrubs within a 500 metre radius.  They also will leave their droppings in one spot.  Most times, you could look around the plains and see several pairs of Dik Dik’s..  Jen saw the first group of Elephant off in the distance.  Sam told her she had good bush eyes as they were quite well hidden.  Jen’s always had astonishing distance vision so this was no surprise to me.  This particular herd had about 17 elephants ranging from 4-5 years old up to 50 or so.  They are very majestic creatures.  We’re told that Tarangira has the highest density of elephants of any park in the world…  2-3 per square kilometer and I don’t doubt it.  There are about 10,000 of them across the 27000 square kilometers of Tarangira and over the next few days we’d see dozens of similar sized herds. 

We got to one particular valley where we could see three different herds, two of which were digging in the sand of the seemingly dry river bed and coming up with water.  There were elephants standing a respectful distance back patiently waiting for their time at the hole.  With the rest of the heard facing outward looking in every direction.  Totally fascinating! 

We could also see several Cape Buffalo.  We have been told several times that these are among the most dangerous animals in Africa and I don’t doubt it from looking at their horns!  They are large black animals with horns that curve outward towards you when you are facing them.  He horns have a particular “braided” look, so they actually look something like those German girls you see with the braids and brindles…  almost laughable but I’d sure hate to have one of them take a run at us!  None of them seemed the slightest concerned about us however much we laughed at them.  

We then came across a male and several female Ostriches… very large animals.  The male has bright pink neck and black feathers while the females are very plain dusty colour.  The females sit on the nest during the day and blend in well with the local scrub, while the males sit on it at night and are black enough to remain invisible (and hold in heat).  A single male will have several females if he’s lucky otherwise, he’ll wander around looking to take on other males for the right.  Much like many of the animals out here… although I wonder how the heck they manage so many wives.  I’ve always had a challenge with even one! J

We didn’t see any lions this day but with all the other animals we had seen up close, we weren’t the slightest bit disappointed.  After a few hours of this, we left the park to head to our Lodge.  This was quite a splurge for us and we had chosen a “Tented Lodge” true safari experience and we were not disappointed!  The kids and Jen/I had our own tents (next to each other) although calling these tents is a bit of a stretch!  They are built on raised 20’x40’ platforms much like a deck on piers at home, only the wood of the decks is fine furniture quality wood polished to a high sheen.  Then the tent would be made from 2x4 frame with canvas panels with detachable, roll up, panels covering large screen windows.  They all have thatched roofs (covering tin and then the tent inside) so no real danger of leaks.  Inside, there is a tented partition for the large bathroom with top end fixtures. Each tent has a 200 gallon tank with a large solar water heater and a few high efficiency light bulbs.  All extremely comfortable with a large king++ sized bed (more like two queens attached together) with a mosquito net canopy.  Very decadent and I’d be completely comfortable living in this as a house.  The meals were served in a separate inside/outside dining area at the main lodge.  Each of these tents are 50’ or so apart and are separated by sand paths that are brushed daily but are still well covered by Zebra and Impala tracks.  I should mention that at any time you can see dozens of these animals grazing around in the (not so) distance. 

The porters also serve as quides and escort you to and from your tents at night with flashlights.  One explained to us that they used to be armed but there are no lions around anymore so they no longer bother with that!  Later that night as we were sleeping, we could hear Zebra and Impala’s right up against the tent…. One of whom was using one of the pier supports to scratch his back!  It was magical.  What a great way to end our first day on Safari!