just got back from our 4 day safari. one day in lake manyera, one day in serengeti, and one day in ngorogoro crater (yeah, that doesn't really add up to 4 days, but add in the transportation and there you have it). ngorogoro crater was definitely the best day. some highlights:
- bumping into jakob again near a pond of gaseous hippos. and then twice more, at various campsites. i'd swear he's following us, except he always arrives before we do.
- sereptitiously driving off road in serengeti to track a pregnant cheetah (we didn't know she was pregnant at the time, not that we would've given her any quarter had we known)
- finding a colony of prairiedog-like rodents behind the bathrooms of our serengeti camp. they had an elaborate system of tunnels and they'd stand up on their hindlegs to investigate strange noises (like the clicking of cameras...not bathroom noises).
- going for our dawn gamedrive in serengeti and finding a dead hippo (legs akimbo--skyward). we tried to direct all vulture and hyena traffic its way.
- skidding out of serengeti in the rain. the roads had turned pretty messy, and our brave mystery machine hydroplaned in the mud more than once (the other safari-goers (who were mostly white haired retirees in full khaki outfits toting intimidating cameras) drove around in cool range rovers while we got a flatnosed scoobydoo van). linn got splashed pretty well from a puddle we drove through, but otherwise, we emerged jostled but unscathed. full props to bernard, the driver/guide (fuller props to mchina, our chef/cook--he fed us WELL. the double title is handed to him by the safari company, who probably feels like he needs something to balance bernard's driver/guide role). nothing like the element of danger to add flavor.
- bernard introduced a bird with a curiously thick (and furry looking) neck as the "bastard". i'm sure we heard him wrong, i think it's actually called the battalliard (or something), but the name stuck. we had a fun time shouting at all the dirty bastards. freddy even came up with a dorky theme song for whenever one arrived on the scene (dooby dooby dooby dooby).
- kili time (make the most of it) with linn and frederick, our fellow safari-ists from sweden. linn had some trouble finishing her beer one night and decided that the stuff would go down easier if she poored it into a teacup and drank it out of a hollowed out greenbean. after freddy spent ages prodding and squeezing the beans out of the casing, linn took one half-hearted sip and declared that the bean turned the beer too salty. poor freddy ended up slowly slurping the beer out of the bean, just as a proof of concept of his handmade straw.
- camping on the rim of ngorogoro crater and being woken up at 2am by a family of munching buffalo--i thought they were rhino at the time--they were HUGE, and they chomped grass with a mighty ripping sound.
- at around 2:30am, we sneak out of our tents again, this time to see a bush pig rooting into linn and freddy's tent. the pig managed to enter the fly and rip a hole in the tent before freddy aimed a kick at his nose that sent him scampering.
- entering the crater and seeing swarms of zebra, wildebeest, buffalo, and deer.
- spotting the elusive black rhino, sleeping in the distance with it's baby.
- finding a pond of muddy hippos. every once in a while, one of them would roll over in the water, showing it's soft pink underbelly.
- the family of baby warthogs wallowing in the road (when i was a young warthog....when he was a young WARRRTHOOOG!) (psssst, we went thru all the characters of the lion king, asking our guide if their names meant anything in swahili. aside from simba (lion) and rafiki (friend), the only word that had meaning was pumba (sawdust). our guide was mighty confused by the other names, and we forgot what the 2 hyenas were called...but ed doesn't mean anything in swahili in case you're wondering). warthogs run with their tails pointed straight up in the air. this led to an argument between erika and i about whether rats run with their tails straight out behind them or dragging on the ground. anyone care to enlighten?
- the fucking lions! the female would get up first, stretch, look toward the male. the male would wait a good beat (no one wants to seem too easy), mount her, and start licking her head. 5 seconds later, it'd be over (that's generous timing too). the male lion doesn't make a single sound the whole way through. then they'd both flop over, sleep for 5 min, and start the process all over again (yes we watched it more than once. the angle the first time wasn't quite to our liking). our guide said that honeymooning lions will go like that for days, doing it about 60 times a day. sometimes the male lion will have 2 females with him, in which case he doesn't rest the full five minutes, but bounces back and forth between the two females. cool eh?
- picnicing near a herd of zebra and a bunch of kites. bernard wouldn't let us sit outside b/c of the circling kites, but after i spilled my chicken on my lap and kicked over my coke, i decided that i'd brave the birds. bernard even came over to act as "security". whenever a kite circled too close, he would pretend to throw something at it, and it would fly higher. in the split second that bernard turned to talk to mchina, a kite dove and snatched the chicken from my hand. bernard was only 5 meters away too! some security. that will come out of his tip :-).
- while i was still sitting in the scoobyvan like a good girl, a small, intrepid, yellow bird would fly into the roofhatch and steal macaroni off our plates. the football shaped partridge/turkey-looking-things with blue necks and bright red waddles would crowd the van door to hop at the macaroni in my hand (if i held it out to them, just out of their reach).
- sticking my head out of the roof hatch and catching a fly full in the mouth. it was bound to happen sooner or later.
ngorogoro made the safari worthwhile. otherwise, i'd say it was a lot of sitting in a car and watching. i don't know what i was expecting exactly, but the word safari sounds so exotic and exciting...(it's like the word fatfree in the US...ppl tack it onto exactly everything that they can. even in mbita, we'd see signs for "safari beach hotel". ha! yeah right, and next you're gonna sell me a bridge?).
it's just a matter of expectations, i guess. the majority of other ppl we saw on safari were elderly pensioners--potbellied, skinny-legged men sporting way too many pockets. everyone wore the same hat too. the logos on their vehicles would say things like, "it's rough, it's dusty, but it's an adventure!" but if a bunch of 60 yr olds can do it...how rough is it really going to get? plus, driving, you're still rather insulated from the animals. even when you do find the lion or cheetah, most of the time they're sleeping. and you didn't do any work for it, so it doesn't feel very rewarding. if i do this again, i'd prolly opt for a walking safari or a biking one. not having a car between you and the animals is really different. the buffalo at camp, for example. that was exciting. sleeping lions from a car? not so much.
tomorrow we're off to zanzibar to meet jakob again (this time, planned). maybe we'll see some giant manta rays!
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From safari
once again, all good photos courtesy of jakob.
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2 comments:
no pictrure?
yeh...where are the pics?
so...how long are you in Africa for?? And what exactly are you doing there? It sounds like some mix of farming and doing things that retirees do....
o.O
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