Safari is awesome!
Day 1 - Ngorogoro Crater
We get picked up around 8:00am for a 3 hour drive to even get to the crater. Most of the drive is through a fairly dry steppe, since we were there right before the short rainy season. It was really cool to see dried-out riverbeds everywhere. I can only imagine what it looks like right after the rainy season. Looks like I'll have to go back... (I feel like that might be a recurring theme.) The road to Ngorogoro/Serengeti/Lake Manyara is probably the nicest road in all of Tanzania, because that's Tanzania's big money-maker. So it makes sense. What I thought was incredibly interesting is that on the road between main highway and crater there are these giant troughs in the road. These troughs apparently are there to allow water to flow from one side of the road to the other during the rainy season. I thought this was fascinating, because you'd never find anything like that here in the States.
So once we get into the actual Conservation Area, the road isn't paved anymore. It's bouncy as hell. So then we go up the outside of the crater, and when we stop at a lookout point on the crater rim, are breath is just taken away. What we see is very much like this. The first amazing sight of the safari. What's amazing about the crater is that you are looking down on a little bit of forest, a lake, a huge steppe, and all these different biotopes in this (relatively) tiny crater. But from this lookout point you can also see all these little dots from up there, and while you can't make out the animals themselves, you know that the area is just teeming with life. We then drive another 20 minutes along the crater rim before we hit another gate, at which point we open up the roof of the 4x4 and then off we go to the animals. Of course Sven, Inga, and I stand up because how often do you get to do that kind of thing? I mean, without being one of those people who stand up while they're in a rented limo.
As we drive to the crater floor, we see animals slowly grow from dots to little fuzzballs to vaguely recognizable shapes. Before we knew it there were baboons, gazelles, zebras, wildebeest, impalas, water buffalo, etc, all over the place. Warthogs run across our path. Ostriches stand around, doing something. A hyena trots right up to our car before turning away. We then pass at least 10 hyenas just lying by the side of the road most likely extremely pregnant and about to burst. Hippos can be found primarily in the aptly named "Hippo Pool". They don't do anything. Really, none of the animals did anything except for sleep and graze. Rhinos similarly, we standing off in the distance. I was tempted to jump out and start a fire, but decided against it. Then, finally, after driving around for about 4 hours, we head towards the exit ramp up the rim, pausing only to take pictures of elephants in the distance and a sign telling one not to feed animals because apparently it kills them.
After picking up a cook, we commence on a 3 hour drive to our campsite, into the Serengeti along a road that is bumpy as hell and we never go below 80 kmh the entire time. I somehow managed to shoot a decent sunset pic while being shaken about like a martini. So finally we get to our campsite at around 8pm, 90 minutes after the sun went down, after racing through seemingly random roads in the pitch-black Serengeti for 90 minutes. It's literally just a patch of land in the middle of the Serengeti. Literally. No fence, no sentry guard. Just us and the belief that animals don't go near human settlements, which turned out to be true. And in spite of the nasty toilet facilities, I absolutely loved camping there.
Day 2 - Serengeti
I woke up in the middle of the night and was just amazed to see that with the cloudless sky and full moon I could see everything out there. Still, I returned to bed fairly quickly, since it was cold and dark and I was in unprotected in the Serengeti. But then, when I woke up in the morning this view greeted me as I walked out of the tent. Amazing. I was just stunned. It took 5 minutes before the thought "hey, get your camera - this shot won't be here forever" popped into my head and I went to get my camera.
After breakfast, we headed out towards a dirt airstrip in the middle of the Serengeti where our driver could pay our national park fees, since we had arrived too late to pay them the night before. But before we even got close to the airstrip, we stopped to see giraffes. Only 30 feet from our car. Sadly, the one that was closest was back-lit for its close-up, but the others in the group were not. We saw still more countless impalas, another elephant herd, an alligator, a scavenger bird whose name I forget, more monkeys than you could spit at, lazy lions, another elephant herd grazing on that dry grass, and lots of stunning vistas. (I only wish I could upload as many pictures as I'd like, but Flickr has a 100mb/month limit. If you want other pictures, just ask.) At one point we past a different jeep that had a (60ish year old) English couple looking out the top towards an area that had, it appeared to us, nothing to offer. Inga proceed to ask the couple what it was that they were looking at. They answered "Some birds." When my mother asked what their answer was Inga said "Oh, just some birds," which prompted the English couple to respond with " 'Just birds'?!?" This then became a recurring line during the rest of our trip. The 90 minutes or so were spent driving around, hoping to see a leopard, as that was the last of the "Big Five we had yet to see. I wasn't too upset about this though, because I just couldn't get enough of the endless never-ending plains that are Serengeti. Finally, after getting a tip from the driver of a different car, we headed to a large rocky outcropping that had a leopard on it. Around the outcropping were a dozen other safari cars. We ended up driving around the outcropping 3 times, following the leopard from one side to the other. Finally, it decided to lie down, which let me calmly get a decent shot.
By noon all the animals were sleeping in whatever shade they could find, so we headed back to the campsite to grab some food. After lunch we proceeded to race back through the Serengeti, along the same bumpy road as the first time, though this time it was during the day, so we could see more than the bit illuminated by the headlights. This feature turned out to be important, because animals tend to be dumb when it comes to timing when exactly to cross the road. Thomson's Gazelles feel the need to cross just when we will barely miss them. Also, we could see dust devils, sometimes 3 or more at a time. We even drove through one, which made us roll up our windows rather quickly, though we rolled them down just as quickly. After 2 hours on this bumpy road, my heels were entirely numb. I discovered, much to my dismay, that this feeling would only decay slowly, when I woke up the next morning still suffering from crazy-heel. As we drove back up to the Ngorogoro Crater rim, as hit some road-work. Since the road isn't paved, road-work consisted of a dump-truck filled with dirt (presumably clay) and a steam-roller. Again, much later than planned we get to the camping ground, which is actually in a town. This made me happy because it meant that I could charge my camera battery, so I had a spare the next day.
Day 3 - Lake Manyara
On the third day we drove to Lake Manyara which was actually only a 10 minute drive from the campground. At the entry gate we were told not to take anything tangible with us. Again we had luck, because 5 minutes after we entered we met a herd of elephants eating a bunch of trees. It was actually interesting to see them amidst lots of green foliage, since the day before we only saw them in dry plains. Honestly, I wondered where all those elephants in those dry plains would get their water from. But we soon had to move on to monkeys. Specifically little ones like this one hanging out in a tree, or two new-borns playing with each other. In hindsight, those little monkeys bore quite the resemblance to Peter Jackson's vision of Gollum. Our attention was soon diverted to an army of babboons marching across a clearing on the other side of the road.
We continued on into a large clearing near what I can only assume is Lake Manyara itself. I was somewhat surprised at the number of bones littering the area. Not everywhere, but still a noticable number. And at one point there were these three water buffalo, just staring at us. All three of them, hardly moving, seemingly wondering what we found so interesting about their home. We tried to tell them, but they just kept staring. So we moved on, and soon found another couple giraffes. This one had better lighting, which made me happy. Near him was a leopard, sleeping in a tree. However, I caught him mid-yawn. WOOHOO!
Moving on, we passed a colony of babboons hanging out by the roadside. Let me tell you: that stank. I mean, seriously, couldn't they take a shit a little further away? But we could here one of them talking on a tree above our car. Too bad I cannot for the life of me remember what it sounded like. The next animals we saw were 10 or so giraffes, just sitting or standing near each other, all gazing in the same direction. Why they all decided that staring off in the general direction of the sun was a good idea beats me, but Inga decided to join them.
After leaving the giraffes to their staring contest with the sky, we move on to see the most excited animal we saw: An ostrich running away. We then drove around for a while searching for something in particular (what exactly, I don't know) before heading out at noon to get lunch and back to Arusha. There was only one thing standing in our way: an elephant. Literally. It was meandering down the road, then stopped on this small little concrete bridge over a stream to get a drink. I'm guessing that it felt vaguely threatened by us, since every few minutes it would turn towards us lift one leg, and stare at us for a couple seconds, before turning back to get more water. It did this like three times before finally moving on. After the bridge it moved off to the side of the road and we passed it so closely that I could've jumped onto its back. What I would've done then is another matter entirely, and it's probably a good thing that I didn't. After lunch we then made the three hour drive back to Arusha.
If any of you ever get the chance to go to Africa, I can't recommend a safari enough. Personally, I would go for a 3 day safari, because that's just about the most you can stand before you're overcome with the feeling of "great, another babboon/elephant/lion/giraffe/water buffalo/etc". Then again, the more time you spend there the better your chances of seeing that certain animal you've been waiting to see or the animals doing more than just grazing and sleeping. I'm told that we missed out on elephants just randomly knocking down a tree in Lake Manyara by one day. If you can swing it, definitely camp in the Serengeti. Camping isn't completely safe, naturally, since I met people on Kilimanjaro (subject of my next extensive post) whose tent was broken into during the night. By a warthog. Because the guard had fallen asleep.
You'll probably get some sticker-shock when you get a price from a safari company (we paid $1000 per person). But at least $400 of this went towards national park fees and another hefty chunk went towards all that diesel. All I can say is that it is definitely worth the money. As was the camera and lens I bought, as you can see.
Finally, for some reason Flickr didn't really put my pictures into any coherent order. It's generally in chronological order in the photostream, except for the very beginning which is only pictures from the end of the trip, and the occasional out-of-sequence picture. If you want the comments to make sense, I suggest starting at the end of the photostream and working your way towards the front, since that's how the pictures were presented to me once they were uploaded. Does any of this make sense? Good. And what do we learn from this? Flickr's interface sucks.
We get picked up around 8:00am for a 3 hour drive to even get to the crater. Most of the drive is through a fairly dry steppe, since we were there right before the short rainy season. It was really cool to see dried-out riverbeds everywhere. I can only imagine what it looks like right after the rainy season. Looks like I'll have to go back... (I feel like that might be a recurring theme.) The road to Ngorogoro/Serengeti/Lake Manyara is probably the nicest road in all of Tanzania, because that's Tanzania's big money-maker. So it makes sense. What I thought was incredibly interesting is that on the road between main highway and crater there are these giant troughs in the road. These troughs apparently are there to allow water to flow from one side of the road to the other during the rainy season. I thought this was fascinating, because you'd never find anything like that here in the States.
So once we get into the actual Conservation Area, the road isn't paved anymore. It's bouncy as hell. So then we go up the outside of the crater, and when we stop at a lookout point on the crater rim, are breath is just taken away. What we see is very much like this. The first amazing sight of the safari. What's amazing about the crater is that you are looking down on a little bit of forest, a lake, a huge steppe, and all these different biotopes in this (relatively) tiny crater. But from this lookout point you can also see all these little dots from up there, and while you can't make out the animals themselves, you know that the area is just teeming with life. We then drive another 20 minutes along the crater rim before we hit another gate, at which point we open up the roof of the 4x4 and then off we go to the animals. Of course Sven, Inga, and I stand up because how often do you get to do that kind of thing? I mean, without being one of those people who stand up while they're in a rented limo.
As we drive to the crater floor, we see animals slowly grow from dots to little fuzzballs to vaguely recognizable shapes. Before we knew it there were baboons, gazelles, zebras, wildebeest, impalas, water buffalo, etc, all over the place. Warthogs run across our path. Ostriches stand around, doing something. A hyena trots right up to our car before turning away. We then pass at least 10 hyenas just lying by the side of the road most likely extremely pregnant and about to burst. Hippos can be found primarily in the aptly named "Hippo Pool". They don't do anything. Really, none of the animals did anything except for sleep and graze. Rhinos similarly, we standing off in the distance. I was tempted to jump out and start a fire, but decided against it. Then, finally, after driving around for about 4 hours, we head towards the exit ramp up the rim, pausing only to take pictures of elephants in the distance and a sign telling one not to feed animals because apparently it kills them.
After picking up a cook, we commence on a 3 hour drive to our campsite, into the Serengeti along a road that is bumpy as hell and we never go below 80 kmh the entire time. I somehow managed to shoot a decent sunset pic while being shaken about like a martini. So finally we get to our campsite at around 8pm, 90 minutes after the sun went down, after racing through seemingly random roads in the pitch-black Serengeti for 90 minutes. It's literally just a patch of land in the middle of the Serengeti. Literally. No fence, no sentry guard. Just us and the belief that animals don't go near human settlements, which turned out to be true. And in spite of the nasty toilet facilities, I absolutely loved camping there.
Day 2 - Serengeti
I woke up in the middle of the night and was just amazed to see that with the cloudless sky and full moon I could see everything out there. Still, I returned to bed fairly quickly, since it was cold and dark and I was in unprotected in the Serengeti. But then, when I woke up in the morning this view greeted me as I walked out of the tent. Amazing. I was just stunned. It took 5 minutes before the thought "hey, get your camera - this shot won't be here forever" popped into my head and I went to get my camera.
After breakfast, we headed out towards a dirt airstrip in the middle of the Serengeti where our driver could pay our national park fees, since we had arrived too late to pay them the night before. But before we even got close to the airstrip, we stopped to see giraffes. Only 30 feet from our car. Sadly, the one that was closest was back-lit for its close-up, but the others in the group were not. We saw still more countless impalas, another elephant herd, an alligator, a scavenger bird whose name I forget, more monkeys than you could spit at, lazy lions, another elephant herd grazing on that dry grass, and lots of stunning vistas. (I only wish I could upload as many pictures as I'd like, but Flickr has a 100mb/month limit. If you want other pictures, just ask.) At one point we past a different jeep that had a (60ish year old) English couple looking out the top towards an area that had, it appeared to us, nothing to offer. Inga proceed to ask the couple what it was that they were looking at. They answered "Some birds." When my mother asked what their answer was Inga said "Oh, just some birds," which prompted the English couple to respond with " 'Just birds'?!?" This then became a recurring line during the rest of our trip. The 90 minutes or so were spent driving around, hoping to see a leopard, as that was the last of the "Big Five we had yet to see. I wasn't too upset about this though, because I just couldn't get enough of the endless never-ending plains that are Serengeti. Finally, after getting a tip from the driver of a different car, we headed to a large rocky outcropping that had a leopard on it. Around the outcropping were a dozen other safari cars. We ended up driving around the outcropping 3 times, following the leopard from one side to the other. Finally, it decided to lie down, which let me calmly get a decent shot.
By noon all the animals were sleeping in whatever shade they could find, so we headed back to the campsite to grab some food. After lunch we proceeded to race back through the Serengeti, along the same bumpy road as the first time, though this time it was during the day, so we could see more than the bit illuminated by the headlights. This feature turned out to be important, because animals tend to be dumb when it comes to timing when exactly to cross the road. Thomson's Gazelles feel the need to cross just when we will barely miss them. Also, we could see dust devils, sometimes 3 or more at a time. We even drove through one, which made us roll up our windows rather quickly, though we rolled them down just as quickly. After 2 hours on this bumpy road, my heels were entirely numb. I discovered, much to my dismay, that this feeling would only decay slowly, when I woke up the next morning still suffering from crazy-heel. As we drove back up to the Ngorogoro Crater rim, as hit some road-work. Since the road isn't paved, road-work consisted of a dump-truck filled with dirt (presumably clay) and a steam-roller. Again, much later than planned we get to the camping ground, which is actually in a town. This made me happy because it meant that I could charge my camera battery, so I had a spare the next day.
Day 3 - Lake Manyara
On the third day we drove to Lake Manyara which was actually only a 10 minute drive from the campground. At the entry gate we were told not to take anything tangible with us. Again we had luck, because 5 minutes after we entered we met a herd of elephants eating a bunch of trees. It was actually interesting to see them amidst lots of green foliage, since the day before we only saw them in dry plains. Honestly, I wondered where all those elephants in those dry plains would get their water from. But we soon had to move on to monkeys. Specifically little ones like this one hanging out in a tree, or two new-borns playing with each other. In hindsight, those little monkeys bore quite the resemblance to Peter Jackson's vision of Gollum. Our attention was soon diverted to an army of babboons marching across a clearing on the other side of the road.
We continued on into a large clearing near what I can only assume is Lake Manyara itself. I was somewhat surprised at the number of bones littering the area. Not everywhere, but still a noticable number. And at one point there were these three water buffalo, just staring at us. All three of them, hardly moving, seemingly wondering what we found so interesting about their home. We tried to tell them, but they just kept staring. So we moved on, and soon found another couple giraffes. This one had better lighting, which made me happy. Near him was a leopard, sleeping in a tree. However, I caught him mid-yawn. WOOHOO!
Moving on, we passed a colony of babboons hanging out by the roadside. Let me tell you: that stank. I mean, seriously, couldn't they take a shit a little further away? But we could here one of them talking on a tree above our car. Too bad I cannot for the life of me remember what it sounded like. The next animals we saw were 10 or so giraffes, just sitting or standing near each other, all gazing in the same direction. Why they all decided that staring off in the general direction of the sun was a good idea beats me, but Inga decided to join them.
After leaving the giraffes to their staring contest with the sky, we move on to see the most excited animal we saw: An ostrich running away. We then drove around for a while searching for something in particular (what exactly, I don't know) before heading out at noon to get lunch and back to Arusha. There was only one thing standing in our way: an elephant. Literally. It was meandering down the road, then stopped on this small little concrete bridge over a stream to get a drink. I'm guessing that it felt vaguely threatened by us, since every few minutes it would turn towards us lift one leg, and stare at us for a couple seconds, before turning back to get more water. It did this like three times before finally moving on. After the bridge it moved off to the side of the road and we passed it so closely that I could've jumped onto its back. What I would've done then is another matter entirely, and it's probably a good thing that I didn't. After lunch we then made the three hour drive back to Arusha.
If any of you ever get the chance to go to Africa, I can't recommend a safari enough. Personally, I would go for a 3 day safari, because that's just about the most you can stand before you're overcome with the feeling of "great, another babboon/elephant/lion/giraffe/water buffalo/etc". Then again, the more time you spend there the better your chances of seeing that certain animal you've been waiting to see or the animals doing more than just grazing and sleeping. I'm told that we missed out on elephants just randomly knocking down a tree in Lake Manyara by one day. If you can swing it, definitely camp in the Serengeti. Camping isn't completely safe, naturally, since I met people on Kilimanjaro (subject of my next extensive post) whose tent was broken into during the night. By a warthog. Because the guard had fallen asleep.
You'll probably get some sticker-shock when you get a price from a safari company (we paid $1000 per person). But at least $400 of this went towards national park fees and another hefty chunk went towards all that diesel. All I can say is that it is definitely worth the money. As was the camera and lens I bought, as you can see.
Finally, for some reason Flickr didn't really put my pictures into any coherent order. It's generally in chronological order in the photostream, except for the very beginning which is only pictures from the end of the trip, and the occasional out-of-sequence picture. If you want the comments to make sense, I suggest starting at the end of the photostream and working your way towards the front, since that's how the pictures were presented to me once they were uploaded. Does any of this make sense? Good. And what do we learn from this? Flickr's interface sucks.