Adventure Chronicles™

03.21.01 - Tanzania Safari
Kilimanjaro, Tanzania
Lake Manyara & Ngorongoro Crater

It was a long, hot bus ride to Tanzania, and getting through the Kenya/Tanzania border was chaotic. The immigration office seemed to lack any sense of order. Funny, but that seems to be the case in most of the places we've been (government offices that is). Although we didn't visit Mt. Kilimanjaro specifically, we did get a pretty good view on our way to Arusha, Tanzania.

I was surprised at how different the landscape in Tanzania is from that in Kenya. Only a few hours south, I didn't expect much difference, but it was definitely more lush and tropical. It reminded us a lot of Hawaii, with its green hills and bright tropical flowers and trees.

We arrived in Arusha at dusk and were relieved to find a young man from the safari company waiting for us. He took us and a couple from Holland to the safari office for details on the next day's departure. We had been promised a night's stay in the safari company's guest house that night. After a good Indian dinner with Jacob and Saskia (the honeymooners from Holland), we all retired to the guesthouse, which was less than thrilling, but a warm place to sleep for the night. There were some cute little lizards running across the ceiling, to keep us all entertained.

Unfortunately, Jay encountered his first real gastro-intestinal issues that night. Since many people have inquired, I will say that up until this point, we'd been fairly blessed from a bacterial standpoint. Using a little caution and commonsense, we'd encountered no real issues. But, Jay awoke in the middle of the night and woke me out of a sound sleep in a mad search for the toilet paper (which we are never without). I probably shouldn't be including this in the journal, but even he agrees that his panic is funny now that it is over. Since he left the light on when he headed for the bathroom, I laid there awake and waited for him to come back. When he did, a HUGE cockroach scurried across the floor of our room, so needless to say, the lights remained on for the rest of the night and I never really did get anymore sleep. My tolerance for the less than finer things in life has gone way up on this trip, but there are some bugs I will never learn to appreciate.

The next morning, we were less than impressed by the new safari company personnel. We were two hours late leaving and they seemed far less organized than their Kenya counterparts, and not nearly as friendly. But, we finally got on the road and headed for Lake Manyara with Jacob and Saskia. Upon arrival, we said goodbye to them, since they were doing a longer safari that included Serengeti National Park. We ate a quick lunch and headed with our new guide, Baba, to Lake Manyara National Park. Although we didn't see a whole lot of animals, due to the thick vegetation in the park, the scenery was good and we did catch quite a few elephants along the way. We also got a good view of the hippos in the lake and some baboons mating on our way back to camp. Pretty amusing.

That night, we just relaxed at the campground. We were starting to feel a little bit of safari burn-out, but were excited about seeing Ngorongoro Crater the next day. The area where we ate dinner was lit by a few florescent lights and the little lizards were out in full force, eating the bugs that flocked to the light. We sat back with our sodas and joked about finally getting to see some hunting and some "kills".

The next morning, Mike, a computer programmer from the Bay area, joined us for the trip to Ngorongoro Crater. It was a long drive on a very bumpy road, but the view of the crater was breathtaking. Ngorongoro is a volcano that collapsed in on itself, creating a large crater that now holds an entire safari experience within its walls. We descended down into the crater and began to drive around. It was then that we realized just how lucky we were to safari in Kenya. The laws in Tanzania are much stricter, and off track driving is forbidden. Although understandable and good for the park, it also meant that it was much more difficult to get close to the animals. But, we did catch some black rhinos from a distance, as well as some elephants and antelope. Jay and I were feeling a little dissapointed with the lack of good viewing when we headed for the west side of the crater. It didn't take long for the action to pick up. We drove through a huge herd of zebra and wildebeast, many with new babies, and had to wait for them to decide to move out of our way. As we headed along a pool of water, I spotted a group of something in the distance. Baba headed for the spot and we found ten lions, just lying on the dirt, sleeping in the sun. We drove right up to them and stopped our jeep. They barely noticed us, but I think we got some amazing pictures. We were having such a good time watching them that we decided to eat lunch in the jeep. While we did, one of the females got up and walked a short distance away. She roused a few others, who decided to take advantage of the shade behind our jeep. I looked out from the roof of the jeep (which was open), right over them, less than five feet away. It was really exhillerating. Mike was even a little scared, since one of the males got up and came walking right by his side of the jeep and laid down. Mike quickly rolled up his window while we teased him about reaching out and giving the lion a little pat. A few seconds later, the male got up, bumped the jeep with his behind and hit Mike's window with his tail. If Mike hadn't closed his window, he would have been hit right in the face! We all laughed, but then noticed that one of the female lions was intently watching a small herd of buffalo in the distance. Finally, a chance to view some hunting! She began to walk towards the buffalo, and to our delight, was followed by three other females. We watched them walk slowly out to the heard and begin to surround them. Jay and I were so excited we could barely stand it. Then, some hyenas came running in behind the lions, obviously sensing that something was up. It was like watching National Geographic up close and live. While this was happening, the other lions were waking up, but not doing too much. Then we spotted a solitary buffalo not far away, and so did one of the male lions. He got up and started towards it, so we now had two hunting activities to keep our eye on. To add to the picture, a very large herd of buffalo began to come up behind the rest of the lions, and Baba explained how they can be dangerous to the lions when in a large group. We were hoping that a few of the lions whould join the male, since the single buffalo was unsheltered and unprotected, but nobody followed. He crouched on a small hill overlooking the buffalo and just waited. Meanwhile, the group of four females had closed in on the small herd and were starting to pursue, but the buffalos got mad and began to chase after them. The lions ran and waited a safe distance away. Our lone male decided he was going to pursue the buffalo, who had now caught wind of him. The buffalo headed for the safety of the large herd, but not before the lion gave chase. Instead of running, though, he turned around and they stared each other down. Without backup, the lion made a half-hearted attempt at him, but didn't try to get too close.

Eventually, the buffalo met up into one large herd and the obvious leaders of the pack proceeded to chase the lions away until they felt safe again. So, we didn't see any successful hunting, but how thrilling to sit back and watch it all unfold. We were blessed with great viewing on our safari, but this was the first real "animal behavior" we had the opportunity to watch.

After returning to our campsite, which was in a large field overlooking the crater, we settled in for dinner. We ended up meeting up with a few other safari groups, included Jacob and Saskia, which was a pleasant surprise. As we were finishing our spaghetti, our camp cook came rushing out of the kitched shed and yelled at something that was bothering the garbage and leftover food. At first, I thought it was birds or something, but when Jay shined his flashlight in that direction, we realized it was much bigger than that. We couldn't tell what the heck it was, and neither could our cook. As we peered through the dark, making guesses, we realized that there was more than one, in fact three! They ran through the light and we thought they were warthogs, but soon came to find out that they were wild boars, which tend to live in the hills above the crater. We had a good laugh about it and joked about not going down to the bathroom on the edge of the field.

After a good look at the stars, which by the way, were amazingly easy to see in Africa, we decided to call it a night. Jay joked about the wild boars coming back. Little did he know. I had fallen asleep, but woke up when I heard someone yelling about their shoes. Turns out the boars had come back and had picked up someone's hiking boot from outside their tent, as well as poked their head in and made off with a pair of underwear. We listened as the game rangers who were staying at our camp tried to run the boars off and ease people's concerns. Personally, I was getting a real kick out of the whole thing, but not everyone was sharing my amusement. I did have to make a trip to the bathroom, and was too nervous to go out of the camp area, so I made Jay come with me as I squatted on the edge of the field. Too funny.

I went back to sleep only to be woken up a few minutes later with Jay yelling "go away!". The boars had decided to take a crack at us, but fortunately, our fort held up well and they only butted at our tent before running off. Jay was pretty annoyed by this point, but I thought the whole thing was hilarious. Hey, you come on safari to experience the animals, right?

Want to contact Jay and Lisa?

william.gibson@airtreks.com