In the Bush

Our safari and Tanzania started in Lake Manyara in search of the famous tree-climbing lions.  Shortly after entering the park we found ourselves surrounded by baboons.  At the start of any safari, which I learned from my time in South Africa, all new animals are exciting and you feel like you could watch them for hours.  However, by the fourth or fifth time you see them, you barely give them a glance.  But this was day one, and we were ready for anything.  After about 30 minutes of watching the baboons playing, fighting, eating and grooming, we move on and spent a similar amount of time with the elephants.  And then again with the zebra, giraffe, monkey etc.  But, like I said, we were really hoping to find the lions. A couple hours into the excursion, we saw a number of safari trucks lined up, which is usually a sign of something good.  We were told it was, in fact, a lion in a tree.  However, even with the binoculars I had inadvertently stolen from my parents, I couldn’t tell.  To me it looked like part of the tree was a slightly lighter color of brown than another part.   Shortly after searching and failing to really  see anything, it was time to leave the park and make for camp.

I was actually a bit nervous about this because the town where we were setting up camp was called Mto wa Mbu which translates to River of Mosquitos.  While the 98 percent Deet bug spray I was using was capable of destroying my pedicure and melting Holly’s shoes, it was largely successful in keeping the mosquitos at bay.

The next morning, we headed along a rather bouncy and winding road through the Ngorongoro conservation area to the Serengeti.  Along this road we saw a number of Masai villages and many Masai people herding cattle.  Next to the cattle were thousands of wildebeest and hundreds of zebra.  At one point we had to stop for a while and wait for about a thousand wildebeest to cross the road.  Watching this was spectacular and made you wonder what it must be like during the great wildebeest migration in the Serengeti when there are tens of thousands of wildebeest running in search of water. 

Shortly after entering the park, we came across a leopard napping in a tree conveniently located near the road.  (I really came to appreciate the animals that recognized how much we appreciated road-side posing).  The leopard more than made up for missing out on the tree-climbing lions of Lake Manyara.  It looked so content just lying there, tail swinging in the wind, eyes closed with just the tip of his tongue poking out of his mouth.  Shortly after, we came across a pride of lions.  They were a bit hard to see in the tall grass but one of them was nice enough to lay on her back, foot straight up in the air as if holding up a flag to let us know where to look.  But all the lions were, like the leopard, comfortably dreaming and not interested in putting on a show for us.

We spent much of the next two days on game drives.  By this point, we barely gave elephants, giraffes, zebra, baboons or antelope a second glance.  We had seen so many by this point that they really needed to work for it if they wanted us to stop.  And one baboon was indeed determined to put on a show.  We all regret that no one thought to video the baby baboon learning to climb and balance on a tree limb. He was up, he was down, he was hanging on to his brother’s tail, he was back up and then his brother stepped on the tree limb and both the limb and the baby went down.  But even this didn’t stop the determined baboon.

By contrast we could spend hours watching large cats doing nothing.  We came across a rather large pride of lions sunning themselves and spent 30 minutes watching their heads popping up and then lying back down.  Eventually all of the lions rose up, one at a time, walked about 50 feet to the left and then laid back down again in the shade.  We found another leopard that was a little more active.  We followed it (along with 30 or so other trucks jockeying for the best position) about 300 yards as it slowly worked it’s way through the grass.  At one point, it did manage to nab itself a rabbit but was clearly looking for something with a little more meat on it’s bones.  She finally diverted from the roadside and moved out of view to continue her hunt.  The cheetahs put on the best show.  We came across four that had spread themselves out in a perfect line such as a search party might.  They were clearly on the prowl for something good but the nearby impalas and wildebeest were on to them and moved safely out of the way.  But we enjoyed watching them work together to identify lunch even though it did not work out as planned.

The last day of our safari took place in the Ngorongoro crater.  I liked Colleen’s description, “it looks like an illustration from a fairy tale”.  Inside the crater was amazing, large green fields with a clear lake in the middle and a forest off to the side.  Here was where all the animals came together to play.  Elephants, zebras, wildebeest, buffalo, dik diks, gazelle, and a large variety of birds were all hanging out on the same fields of green.  As Dan said, it’s just like Dolores Park on a sunny day in San Francisco.  Here we finally saw the last of the big five, the rhino (others being elephant, lion, leopard, and buffalo).  Unlike some animals, the rhino were a bit shy and only visible via binoculars and cameras.  From the naked eye, they looked more like slow moving boulders. 

I think one of our biggest revelations is that, in nature, women do all the work (I’m not sure why we were surprised).  Men fight amongst themselves to be able to mate with the women but that’s about it.  Women do most of the hunting at which point the dominant male comes back to claim first dibs on the food.  Holly kept imagining the large male lions wearing white wife-beater t-shirts.  Headshots at the post office with all the rest of the dead-beat-dads.  I think this actually reduced her excitement when we finally came across a full-grown male lion.  But it wouldn’t just be lions in the wife-beaters. The same would be true for the majority of the male animals we saw.  That being said, this was my third safari, and I hope not my last.  I highly recommend that everyone, if given the opportunity go to Africa and go on a safari.  It is worth the long flights and the price for those few moments when you are face to face with a lion.