Safari Report - Part 4

30 August 2004

 

Rob often gives me a hard time about how I can run on at the mouth.  I know I write like I talk, but the fact that this is the 4th installment and we're only on day 3 of the Safari is really illustrative of my bad habit.  Rob has been reading along, and I've asked him for comments, but he's long since given up on interrupting my stories.  He is, however, taking some professional interest in editing the photos that he has taken, and will be posting his favorites to the website.   I also want to remind you that this is my way of recording our life in Africa for our children, so sorry if it seems long winded.  My advice is to have a beer and relax while you're reading, as that's the way Rob handles my talkativeness and we've made it past the 16 year mark.

 

After we left the Masaai Boma, we headed for the Olduvai Gorge for lunch and the "educational" part of our Safari.  The Olduvai Gorge is where the Leakey's found many of their great discoveries.  The gorge has the unique characteristic of having 5 distinct layers of sediment exposed in one place.  I am not an archeologist, so my apologies to those family members and friends who are, but I think this means that the stuff you find in the gorge can be dated relative to findings in other layers as well as scientifically.   I will try to remember what we were told in our 5 minute lecture overlooking this historic place. 

 

The Olduvai Gorge, called Oldupai by the Masaai after the native sisal plants which grow in the area, was "discovered" by a German butterfly collector.  As he chased a butterfly, he found some bones, which he took with him and delivered to a museum in Berlin.  Louis Leakey, who's family was living in Kenya, saw these bones on a trip he made as a young man to Germany.  He wrote down the coordinates of the gorge, and when he returned to Africa, he set out to find it.  Mary Leakey, went with him, and in 1959, she found the 1.8 million year old skull of a hominid known now as Australopithecus Boisei.  This is the skull which gave rise to the debate about human evolution.  According to the information in my 'Lonely Planet' guide, this skull and the footprints found about 45 Kilometers away and other findings nearby suggest that there were at least 3 hominoid species in the region about 2 million years ago:  Australopithecus boesei, Homo habilis and Homo erectus.  The first two are believed to have died out, but the third is said to have evolved into Homo Sapien, or modern man.  Significant fossils of the oldest evidence of Homo Sapiens are found in the upper layers of Olduvai Gorge.  I confess to having to look up a little of this information so that I didn't sound like a complete idiot.

 

Today, at Olduvai Gorge, there is a small museum and craft market, as well as a covered porch overlooking the gorge for lectures and picnicking.   Our kids had already heard the lecture in April, but we made them listen again anyway.  Just before we had gone on our Safari in April, there was an article in the local papers and in the international news about an archeological discovery in a dig in the Serengeti.  This discovery was of trading beads in a layer of sediment thought to be much older than anyplace they'd been found before.  The significance of this find, apparently, is that the first signs of "thinking" men in Tanzania far precede those of "thinking" men elsewhere in the world.  As this was a very new discovery, I asked the guide at Olduvai in April if he'd heard of the study.  He had not, but asked me to bring him the article when I returned.  Amazingly, I remembered to print the article from the internet before we left, and I still had it when we arrived in Olduvai.  You can read the article at:  http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-03/asu-eaa032504.php.  Funnily enough, when I talk about the fact that the Tanzanians were thinking way before anyone else, to a man the reply is "When did they stop thinking in Tanzania?"  - even the Tanzanians!  I think this is another thing in which they should take great pride! 

 

After lunch and a quick wander through the museum, we were off to the Serengeti.  One of the cars made a quick side trip to see a phenomenon called the "Shifting Sands" which is a dune made of volcanic sand which is shifting eastward at a pace of 17 cm per year - or something like that.  I was not in the car that made this side trip, but judging from Madie's reaction, it is a place to spend about 15 minutes marveling over at some future trip to the Serengeti.  Karen was thrilled to have seen this geological phenomenon, but she may have been the only one.

 

When you enter the Serengeti National Park from the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, you pass through a gate on a hill.  This gate has the requisite picnic areas and shops and toilets for the travelers, as well as the ranger station in which permits are purchased.  You have to pay per car, per guide, per person, per day.  Everyone passing through the gates must get a permit, so there is often a back up.   The two cars reunited at the gate, the permits were acquired and we drove down the other side of the hill into the great Serengeti Plain.  In April, this area was teeming with Wildebeests.  This time, there were a few odd Thomson's Gazelles and a few Zebras, but it was pretty empty to those of us who had been here before.  The rest of the party seemed pretty amazed, though, and I remembered how it felt for me the first time here.  Just being in that place that we've seen so vividly documented by National Geographic and the nature shows on TV is a real treat.  

 

In April, the track was packed and the plains were a rich green.  This time, the grasses were all a uniform golden color and the track was a dust producing mass of sand.  We had the added good fortune to have a car with a rear hatch that wouldn't close properly, so sitting inside was worse than sitting outside.  The finest silt would flow in from the rear of the car, so if the windows weren't open, it would settle in our eyes and noses and pores.  There is a picture of Polly and Nancy and Noot from one of their trips in Tanzania and they are covered with dirt.  I think it was the same car.   Anyway, this is Africa after all, and the dirt that was settling in our eyes and noses was from the Serengeti - Cool!

 

After an interminable ride, we finally arrived in the area in which our lodge was located.  Since the great migration of wildebeest had taken them all up to Kenya in search of plentiful permanent water, we had to settle for the odd gazelle or zebra or Topi.  Finally we saw some elephants, phew!  I was starting to worry that the Serengeti was going to be a total bust, and we had 2 nights here!  

 

As we were heading for the safari lodge, we came across a small pride of lions.  I think there were about 5 or 6 cubs, not real young, but not hunting for themselves yet.  We stopped and photographed and watched them for a while, then moved on.    Each day of the safari, we tried to mix up the people and swap cars so that everyone could experience the safari from the "good" car as well as the "bad" car.  The "bad" car, in addition to it's dust problems, had a cover over the open top that was just the wrong height.  If you stood on the chairs, you'd bump your head.  If you stood on the floor, you couldn't really see out the top.  Rob and I and Bill and Elissa and my boys had drawn the short straw that day, and we were in the "bad" car.  About 200 yards from the cubs, we got a flat tire.  Joseph, the guide/driver had to get out and change it.  Rob tried to help, but Joseph declined - I think in favor of keeping his tourists alive.  As we had just left some lions, I thought we should at least watch to make sure none of them got curious and came to see if there was an easy lunch.  A few guides stopped and offered help, but Joseph would have none of it.  He did at one point say to me to watch for lions after one guide stopped, so I assured him that I was and kept my lookout in the direction of the cubs.  Finally, Rob did have to get out of the car to help Joseph put the flat tire back up under the car.  Just as Joseph finished the change, we were surprised by 3 lionesses coming from the other direction!  I believe they were about 20 yards in front of us when Joseph and Rob climbed in and closed the doors.  Whew, who would have thought to look in the other direction?  Apparently not me, nor anybody else in the car!  Lucky for us, they just walked by as though we weren't there.  Joseph got a little bit of a fright, though, and I'm sure he didn't trust us for the rest of the trip.   I'll put the photos of the lions on the website. 

 

The Seronera Wildlife Lodge is built right into a huge volcanic rock that is one of many that dot the Serengeti.  They are the remnants of the volcanic activity in the area millions of years ago.  The lodge makes great use of the rock, and it is the main architectural feature of the common areas.  The rooms are sort of so-so, but the dining area and bar are fantastic with lights in all the crevices and rock hyrax and vervet monkeys running around it.  We had been out in the dust and driving for a long day, so we quickly had showers and ate.  You have no idea how good a nice shower is after riding in a dust producing car for the day.  As we finished our dinner, we started to discuss the possibility of a very early morning game drive.  Rob and I and Bill were game, as was Karen, but the rest of the gang  wanted to sleep in.  No matter how hard we tried, we couldn't convince them that the early morning is when stuff happens.  We arranged for the good car to come at 6, and for the bad car to come later.  

 

The next morning, the early risers were up with (actually before) the sun.  We made the boys come, too.  As we started our drive, the sun came up and we got some nice photos of the sunrise.  We had been sort of counting the lion sightings with the boys, and were in the neighborhood of 25 or so from our time in Tarangire and so far in the Serengeti.  On that drive which lasted about 2 1/2 hours, we saw at least 25 more!  By the time we returned for breakfast, we had seen 6 tiny lion cubs, a large herd of elephants, a herd of Cape Buffalo, various antelope, warthogs, zebras, hippos and some hyena.   Fantastic!

 

We spent the rest of the day on game drives.  Ending up with over 70 lion sightings in the Serengeti.  We saw them from the smallest cubs to the largest males.  We saw them hunting, playing, sleeping and generally doing what lions do.  The only thing we didn't see was an actual kill - we came close a couple of times, we had nearly seen a lion kill a Hartebeest, and a cheetah kill a Thomson's Gazelle, and we heard reports of kills witnessed the day before, but we didn't actually see it happen.  Maybe that's a good thing.

 

One special trip we made while in the Serengeti was to a hippo pool.  This had to be the most disgusting place I have ever been on earth.  Hippos, as I previously mentioned, are filthy.  This pool had at least 30 hippos and the water just sits there.  It doesn't appear to flow out of or into the pool, so everything the hippos deposit into the water just floats there.  Yuck, you could smell it from the parking area above.  We watched the hippos for as long as we could stand it.  Also in the pool or on the banks were crocodiles, the biggest one being at least 12 feet long and just hanging in the filthy water.  He seemed to like watching Austin, so we teased him a little about going close to the water so we could take pictures of the big croc eating Austin.  This is also where the seeds for the Hippo song got planted, as we all thought about how awful it would be to fall into that water.  As luck would have it, one member of our party did fall, not into the water, but when climbing up the bank.  Karen slipped and nearly knocked herself out on the rocky path leading to the pool, which raised a welt on her forehead that bothered her for the remainder of the trip.  As the days wore on and the welt shrank back down, she got 2 black eyes to remind her of the hippo pool in the Serengeti.

 

That evening when we went back for our showers, there was no water at the hotel.  Not just no hot water or anything like that, no water at all.  No ice for Karen's head bump, no water for showers, no water at all.  Apparently the bore hole had gone dry, and it was going to be some time before it was fixed.  This is Africa, after all, and water is always an issue.  The hotel managed to get a few trucks of water somehow, and we ended up with cold water, but if you wanted a bath, you had to arrange at the front desk for a bucket of boiled water.  It turned out to be boiled dirty water, so it wasn't really worth the trouble.  At least everyone else in the place was in the same state as we were, since there is literally nothing to do but game drives.  Made the dust producing "bad" car an even greater issue on that day. 

 

The next morning, still with no hot water, we got in the cars and had our last game drive in the Serengeti.  We were heading for an afternoon in the Ngorongoro Crater, which I will tell you about next time.

 

Take care,

Barb