Day 1: Safari Njema 'Have a Good Journey'

Our safari with Roman’s mom last week was a truly amazing experience. Roman and I had already been on a safari when we were here last October but I was really looking forward to my children seeing wild African animals. When we ‘safaried’ in October, the animals were abundant in all the parks as it was dry season and many come out into the open watering holes in search of water. It is the ‘long rains’ in Tanzania and Kenya right now and considered low season for safaris because many animals are deep within the parks and game reserves where water is abundant. Nevertheless, we felt very lucky with the game we saw. The other draw of safari during this part of the year is that the great migration of zebra and wildebeest is on. During this period over 1 million wildebeest and zebra migrate from the Masai Mara in Kenya, down through the Serengeti in Tanzania. The make their way to the Ngorogoro crater area where the female zebra and wildebeest give birth, then the herd eats all the grass available and moves back up to Kenya. They arrive there in July each year. The migration occurs in part, because the animals are in search of the green new grasses in the lower grasslands of the Serengeti and the Ngorogoro reserve. During the migration there tends to be a lot of predators (lions, leopard, cheetah and hyena) as they find it easy to prey on the young wildebeest and zebras or on old wildebeests who have become sick along the way and fallen away from their herd.

We left our makeshift ‘apartment’ at the women’s center in Moshi last Friday morning and after a stop at the bank, made our way to Arusha with Fred our driver and our 6 seater Toyota Landcruiser (with the pop-up safari top) that we rented for the trip. We were full of excitment and the anticipation of seeing the animals. I was most excited about spoiling ourselves with a bit of luxury (nice lodging and good food)along the way. The ‘safari’ experience has been well branded here in Tanzania with over 200,000 foreigners visiting the Serengeti each year and according to Fred our driver, over 1.2 million in Kenya. The parks in Tanzania are Africa’s best kept secret as Tanzania has not marketed them as well as the Kenyan parks. The Tanzanian national parks tend to be less crowded and have more wild life.
We made our way straight through Arusha to Ngororgoro conservation area. All those entering the park must pay a transit fee…even just to drive through it to the Serengeti. This is a fairly lucrative way for the government to collect extra tourist dollars but the money collected goes to preserving the park and protecting the animals. Rhinos in the crater were heavily poached until just a decade ago. There are a herd of only 14 left there now but efforts are underway to continue to protect them and there are high hopes that the herd will grow in size. There is a separate fee to descend into the Crater itself. Roman and I descended on what I like to call the 'death trap road' into the crater in October and saw many animals. The crater roads are wet and slippery this time of year and the drive down tends to be tedious. We opted to just stop at the edge of the crater, look down and then head straight for the Serengeti. My main concern was keeping the kids interested (and not going over the side of the road and tumbling into the crater in our truck!). I have attached a picture of us at the crater edge. The crater was formed from the cone of an extinct volcano from thousands of years ago. The whole place has a very ‘prehistoric’ feel to it. You almost expect to see a dinosaur walk by.

After the crater we made our way towards the Serengeti. Within an hour we found ourselves within a group of thousands of wildebeests and zebras. Fred our driver is a soft spoken ‘rasta’ but boy did he know his wild life! As we approached the herd he slowed the car down to a crawl, we kept driving along and then Fred said, 'well, here it is, you found the migration...you're right in the middle of it' We sat there for quite a while watching the herd cross the road. Mom's and calves frolicked and baby zebras were everywhere. Apparently the wildebeests and the zebras travel together and rely on each other. The zebra for their keen eye and the wildebeests for their sheer numbers in being able to alert each other when a predator is near. I have attached a picture but I really don't think it does the sheer numebrs of animals justice...there really wewre thousands...really!!

After we passed through the migrating animals we went through the main gate of the Serengeti National Park (and paid the requisite fee, again). The road after this point was quite bumpy and dusty but Fred was on the move so we could see some game and make it to the hotel before dark. We drove with the roof up and Roman used his hawk eyes to spot game. He really has a keen eye, probably from all those years of fishing and standing out in the middle of nature. We knew this portion relatively well as it was the area we spent the most time in when we were here in October. We had seen several lions here as well and we were hoping that the kids would get to see some that day. After about an hour or two of driving, as we approached an area of rock formations called the Kopjes (said as copies) we saw her, a beautiful lionness up on the rocks surveying her territory. As I've said before, the women do all the work of hunting and killing and bringing the meat home for the man of the house. This lionness was looking for prey. They sun was starting to set and it was a really beautiful sight. There are actually four of those formations in that area of the Serengeti. They are called the Simba Kopjes because they have four seperate groups of lion prides who have long since inhabited that part of the Serengeti grasslands. One of the formations is what I named 'Pride Rock' and I am almost 100% certain that the graphic artists who came to the Serengeti to draw their prints for the Disney film 'The Lion King' must have drawn these rocks as Pride Rock in the movie. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that they also conveniently chose names for characters by their Kiswahili names. For example Rafiki means friend and Simba means lion. I am not sure what Pumba or Timon mean. Fred didn't think that Pumba was the right word for warthog. Everytime we saw a warthog (and we saw quite a few along the way) someone would sing "when I was a young warthog!.." you know the rest. Hakuma Matata means 'no problem' ...something I like to say often here in my beloved Tanzania!
After we saw the lionness our car stalled and we had to get a safari truck who came up behind us to push us with their bumper while Fred cranked the clutch or gas or something else to get it going. Once we got re-started we picked up the pace as it was getting dark and there are strict rules about travelling after dark in the National Parks. Most animals hunt at night and trucks and people are not very conducive for those activities!! While we were clipping along we almost hit another female lion who was sleeping at the side of the road, completely oblivious to our truck. It was close. Fred mentioned at that point that the fine for killing a lion was $200 US. A little skimpy if you ask me. I would have thought more like $10,000 for hitting such a beautiful beast.
We eventually made it to the Serena Serengeti Lodge. We were pleasently surprised to find that we were in individual huts (with walls and windows to keep out the animals). We got cleaned up and went straight to dinner. On our way to dinner Jack spotted a tiny Gazelle called a Dik-Dik (yes, he also got a lot of mileage out of that one!). They are beautiful little delicate creatures. They mate for life and we saw two pairs of beady eyes staring back at us, a husband and wife, just outside our rooms.
We watched some African dancing that the hotel provided after dinner but we didn't last too long. Bumping along those roads for 10 hours was actually quite exhausting despite the fact that we were just sitting doing nothing. We headed off to bed and planned for an early start the next day.