Tanzania

Our safari in Tanzania was an incredible experience. It was five days of driving, mostly in silence, giving us all a chance to do a lot of thinking. We would drive for hours at a time without talking, just watching the world go by. I had these almost out-of-body experiences at some points, feeling like I was looking down on myself in the truck. It was pretty surreal, but very therapeutic.

Our guide, Tuma, picked us up in Moshi on Christmas Eve morning. We packed our bags into our own personal Toyota Land Cruiser, and then made our way out of the city, toward Lake Manyara. This was our first stop, and we made camp at a campground just outside of the park. Once the truck was unloaded, Tuma drove us into the park for an afternoon game drive. He described Lake Manyara as the “appetizer” to our safari. All I could think driving through the park, was that it was a pretty damn good appetizer.















The day was sunny and warm, and we popped the top of the truck open so we could stand and have a 360 degree view of everything. We saw all sorts of animals, including giraffes, hippo, zebras, monkeys, and my favorite, elephants. Toward the end of our drive we came upon a herd of elephants crossing the road. We stopped to let them pass, watching as the adults led the way while the babies followed close to their mothers. Just as they had crossed the road I saw another young one burst through the bushes, running to catch up. I could almost hear it calling, “Hey wait guys, wait for me!” (with a slight lisp and a high-pitched voice).

We spent the night at the campground, and on Christmas morning we packed up and headed out for the Serengeti. We drove by the Ngorongoro Crater on our way, which we would visit on our return. The word “Serengeti” is a Maasai word meaning “endless plain,” and that it is. I remember thinking on the drive that you can actually feel how old the land is. We stopped for lunch just after entering the park, and climbed up onto a rocky mound to get a view of the plain. It literally stretched out as far as we could see, and then kept going. I had the Lion King soundtrack and a certain few Paul Simon songs on repeat in my head for most of our time there.


The wildebeest migration was going on while we were there, which was amazing to see. Hundreds of thousands of wildebeest could be seen for miles, grazing and moving slowly across the grass. We saw herds that stretched out to the horizon, becoming a dark smear against the ground in the distance. Tuma told us that the herds just kept on going past the point that we could see. The wildebeest graze with zebra, using the zebra’s eyesight while the zebra use the wildebeest for their sense of smell, to stay alert to predators. They would dart across the road in streaming groups, so we spent a lot of time just watching them run by, looking for better areas to graze.


The best part of our first day came as we were driving past a tree, when we realized a lioness was dozing in the branches. Tuma managed to pull up right next to the tree, and I ended up parked about 10 yards from this lion, face to face with her and her claws. It was awesome. She looked right back at us while we snapped pictures, and then put her head back down to continue her nap.


We went for an early morning game drive a couple days later. We saw a leopard and some hyenas who decided they’d prefer not to move out of our way in the road. The highlight of the morning was when Tuma pulled off to the side of the road, asking us if we could see the lions through the tall grass that was growing next to a muddy stream. We looked closely, and saw a couple female lions emerge from the grass. That in itself would have been really cool -- then another lion with three cubs walked out of the grass and crossed the stream. The group walked right by our truck, crossing the road, and made their way to a tree a few yards away from the road. The adults climbed up quickly, and we watched for a while as the cubs tried jumping and clawing their way up the tree. No success. They flopped down on the ground to nap for the day.

We spent our last night on safari camped above the Ngorongoro Crater. We asked Tuma what “ngorongoro” means in Maasai, thinking it would have some romantic origin like “Serengeti.” He said, “You know the bells that cows wear?”… “Yes.”… “You know that sound they make, ‘ngorongorongorongoro’?”… It took us a minute, but then we all burst out laughing. More practical than profound.

Our campsite was full, and it was much colder at the higher elevation. We had our final dinner, and went to get ready for bed. It was dark by that time, and the grass was wet with dew. I rolled up my pant legs to avoid getting wet, and as we were leaving the bathrooms, I noticed what looked like a dry area to walk across. I stepped up onto some concrete, and without looking, took one more step forward…into a knee-deep pool of kitchen run-off water. Nice. I managed to keep my other foot out of the water, and tried to step up onto the grass again. My submerged foot had settled into who knows what at the bottom of the pool, and as I lifted my leg out, I felt my sandal sliding off. I tried to keep it hooked onto my toes, but no dice. My leg came squelching out of the cesspool of nastiness, and all I could do was stare down into the brown, greasy water. My friends didn’t know whether or not to laugh, but one of them grabbed a stick to try to fish out my lost sandal. Again, no luck. At this point we all started laughing and I ran back to the bathroom to wash my leg and dispose of my other sandal. No point in keeping it with the other one drowned.

The next morning we packed our things and descended down into the crater. Tuma told us the crater is about 2,000 feet deep and about 100 square miles in area at the floor. He also explained that animals migrate in and out of the crater using the same road we did to get to the floor. We drove around for a few hours, checking out flamingos in a small lake, some ostrich, and, completing our sighting of the Big Five, rhinos.
We also saw a female lion stalking some zebra and I thought we’d get to see some serious badass lion-hunting, but they caught on to what she was doing and scattered. It began to rain heavily, and fog settled into the crater as we climbed up the road that led up and out. Our last vision of the crater was through rain-smeared windows as our Land Rover groaned up the muddy, red road.