Safari, Part Three: The Serengeti

So, remember your geology lesson? That vast plain of cement-colored ash, flat as a pancake? That’s the Serengeti. It has some rock formations that are basically bubbles of lava granite (“kopjes”) but very little else, and none of those huge ancient baobob trees that were so abundant in Tarangire. It has a lot less water than in Ngorongoro and is drier and hotter (ie T-shirt weather, rather than fleeces-and-hats). It’s a rough ride over a gravel washboard road for about 2 hours or more to get there from Ngorongoro, headed due west and down in elevation.

The “entrance” to the Serengeti is a large island of granite rocks, trees, and birds called the Naabi Gate. It’s high above the plain and the road goes right over it, so you get to pause there at a little visitor’s center with washrooms, a small grocery, and watch the birds soaring in and out of the trees and rocks. We bought some Sprite for Forrest, which he was able to keep down.

We had some car trouble going there. The Land Cruiser was taking a beating on the rutted roads, and it was very hot and dry. Our driver kept watching the engine temperature climb and stopped several times to add water. It was clear that the radiator was leaking.

At one point, he and the cook had a discussion about what to do, and they added some eggs to the radiator along with water, hoping that the cooked egg would help seal the holes. Obviously this was only a temporary solution. At another point, we were broken down with nothing, and I mean NOTHING, else in sight but the road going towards us and away from us on an otherwise featureless plain of grass in all directions to the hazy horizon. Amazingly, the next two cars to come along and stop were the park rangers, and a Kilimanjaro water delivery truck, from which we bought another case and started pouring it in.



We made it as far as a waterhole, where we added more water and then from there made it to another small visitor’s center just at sunset. (Here's Thompson, out of the car for a minute, which isn't really allowed, but the driver was filling water jugs in the waterhole, and Thompson wanted to brandish our new Maasai club).


From there the driver decided to bail on our vehicle and he called for backup from one of the nearby campsites and someone else came and picked us and our gear up, and the driver took our car another 10 km to the Serengeti safari vehicle garage – which he knew would be expensive, but at this point there was no alternative.

We set up camp in the dark, two tents right near one of the dining halls under a full moon. Everyone was tired and hot and Forrest didn’t feel up to eating anything, and even though Rama made the full dinner (soup course, main course, fruit course), we couldn’t eat more than a few bites before collapsing into the tents.

And that’s when we found out just how wild the Serengeti can be. We weren’t accustomed to the animal sounds, and in the public campsites in the Serengeti there are no fences, no lights at night, no guards with rifles or anything – the animals just stroll right on through. The guy who picked us up told us not to go out of our tents at night, as if there was any chance of that once we heard the sounds of the animals all around us.

Being “blind” in a tent is really disorienting. It’s hard to tell where things are in relation to you, or how big they are, or how close. Things that make guttural groans and grunts, things that crunch through the bushes, and things that roar, whoop, hoot, and howl – and you have no idea what those are, how long it’s going to go on, or how close they will get to your tent. Or to the tent of your sleeping children next door!

At 12:30, Forrest needed a trip to the washroom. I (Don) listened and counted his steps to the washroom and then went out myself sneaking to the washroom looking around for stalking animals. We made it back safely to the tent. Three to five minutes later we heard a lion roar then growl. I had been joking before leaving on the trip that I wanted to camp in the wild and have a lion walk through our camp. Beware what you wish for. We also heard an elephant. Forrest and I were doing high fives in the tent. Tona was not.

Around 2 am there were definitely hyenas fighting with the lion over something. Their chuckle is truly chilling, there’s nothing funny about them at all ( this is Tona again). It seemed ages until the cooks started getting up and banging pots and water containers, between 4 and 5 am. In the morning Halle and Don found that the hyenas had ripped open a margarine tub and shredded it with their teeth. Yikes.



Our big day in Serengeti started somewhat late, since the car was still being repaired (but Forrest was grateful for the rest). Around 10, we got the car back with a newly-welded radiator and set off across the center of Serengeti. Highlights: a huge strolling giraffe up close, huge herds of Thompson’s gazelles,



more snoozing lions (which after the previous night looked a lot more threatening than before)



huge herds of water buffalo, a line of elephants stretching single-file to the horizon, kooky secretary birds



and hippos loudly battling each other in a pool of sulphurous sludge.



For lunch, we drove up through a herd of elephants ripping up the roadside trees...



...to a place called the “Hippo Pool.” That sounds lovely, doesn’t it? Like a cool blue pool with palm trees? Um, no. Once again the Serengeti was way more wild than we imagined. Instead, it was a foul pond of liquid hippo manure thick with gigantic crocodiles (maybe a dozen) sliding among and between the hippos (maybe 40 – 50). And to make it even more memorable, a bloated dead hippo being torn apart by the largest granddaddy crocodile. Our driver was thrilled. He said in three years of guiding in the Serengeti, he’d never seen a hippo being disemboweled by a croc, and commented enthusiastically how lucky this was for us! Lucky, indeed! And even luckier, it was a picnic area, where we could enjoy our lunch to the accompaniment of hippo groans, bellows, and sloshing crocodile tails! I’ll give you a very tame picture of crocs climbing out of hippo swill. I’ll spare you the photos of the real action.



Back at camp, we spent a quiet evening – lots of German tourists at the camp, and we wondered how much to tell them about the nightly floor show. It turned out that our second night was very quiet, just some baboons whooping as they discussed and sorted the garbage around midnight, but no carnivores in the camp, thank heaven. Jacob and Halle treed a vervet monkey which kept vigil all night in a tall tree (the one on the right) until sunrise. Forrest was still feeling lousy, despite our traveling pharmacy of traveler’s meds, and wasn’t eating anything yet, but was staying hydrated. We had an early start, soon after sunup, heading back to Moshi back the way we came, with a detour to Olduvai Gorge (except here they call it “Oldupai George”). But that's another post.