Day 8 Migration Camp

We were the first ones up this morning at Migration Camp. Ephata had big plans for us today.
He's determined to find some of the animals that we have not yet sighted, namely leopards and rhinos.

Our camp is located directly in the path of the animals' migration. In fact, we have been warned not to wander from the camp unescorted because the hippos (most dangerous animal in the wild) are out in force. Last night as we tried to return to our tent for the night, we had to wait out a battle between two recalcitrant hippos near our tent. They kept up their fighting throughout the night!

On our morning drive, Ephata pointed out the giant "kopjes" or boulders that have been part of the landscape for over 400 million years. Kopjes is a German word that means small heads. Hmmm, they look like giant heads to me.

These huge rock formations were everywhere and felt like monuments commemorating the majestic creatures that they over see. They were also a favorite lounging place for the big cats.

We have realized that the further north we go in the Serengeti, the more animals we see and the more deciduous forests are evident. This is a mother giraffe with two babies. There is nothing on this planet more adorable than a baby giraffe!
















The Serengeti Plain is a landscape that seemingly has no boundaries. The distant escarpment seems to be hidden behind a scrim of mist and the sky is mildly overcast giving the dry landscape the effect of being a water color painting. This feels like being on another planet because it is like nothing I've ever experienced on the earth.

At several points during this day's exploration, we found ourselves completely engulfed by herds of hundreds of roaming herbivores.

A side bar about wildebeests and zebras: They enjoy a symbiotic relationship. It is our understanding that zebras have a very keen sense of sight; they are also very smart. Wildebeests, on the other hand, have poor vision, but a great sense of smell. Wildebeests are also not very smart. The zebras like hanging out with the wildebeests because the silly wildebeest is virtually a decoy. Let's face it, zebras got left out when nature was handing out camouflage! Also, zebras stripes are as individual as finger prints!!!! Who knew?

We have settled into the quiet wonderment of simply watching these creatures interact with one another. This is a band of buzzards waiting for the lion to get finished with the carcass. We learned that a flock of buzzards will allow one stork to be among them. The stork is also a scavenger, but depends on the buzzards to pull the meat off the bones for him. Isn't that something?

For some reason, a warthog (who is strictly a herbivore) came upon the scene and caused quite a stir when he kept chasing the buzzards away from the kill!

Perhaps the highlight of this day was finding two pairs of mating lions within 200 yards of each other. Ephata was sure that these two were brothers who co-led a pride together. Apparently two females came into season at around the same time so each brother has a mate.

A side bar about lions mating: The mating couple leaves the pride for a period of about 2 weeks. In the first 4 days of mating, the lion couple will not eat or hunt. They will copulate about every 10 minutes. After this frenzied time, then they will spend the rest of the 2 weeks together until they are assured that the female is pregnant. She will have up to 3 cubs in a litter. When they return to the pride, the male lion will completely forget about her!

We had a lovely dinner by candlelight and when it started to rain....RAIN? IN THE DRY SEASON?
they brought us an umbrella and the meal was uninterrupted (not even by a bread stealing monkey).

Day 7 Balloon ride over Serengeti plain/ migration camp

IF you have never seen the world from the floating basket of a hot air balloon, you've missed out on one of life's simple pleasures, particularly if you've been riding over life's bumpiest dirt roads for a week. What a soothing respite to drift high above the plain with the the ghost of a fading full moon on the west and the birth of a blazing African sunrise on the east! Very dreamlike, very surreal.

The ride lasted a fleeting 60 minutes, but was followed by a traditional English breakfast in the bush. Yes, this was very "tourista," but gave us the unique perspective of seeing the hoards of hippo, zebra, wildebeest from above.

I don't know if the animals are getting closer to us or if Gene's photography is improving, but we got some terrific animal shots as we headed far off to the Migration Camp in Serengeti.

Photos: Breakfast in the bush, jackal, monkey who stole Gene's bread off his dinner plate, our tent at Migration Camp, warthog kneeling to eat, bloody lion who just finished breakfast, buzzards in love, hungry hippo.

Day 6 Aldara Gorge/ Maasai Village

There is going to be an emphasis on Sociology/ Archeology/ Paleontology today as our first stop on the northward trek is a Maasai Village. Most of the vast tracts of land that we've been crossing are lands that once belonged to the large tribe of Maasai people. This tribe is the last bastion of purely East African culture, clinging steadfastly to their ancestral beliefs and customs.








For several days we've seen the young "warriors" herding cows, the women hauling water in large clay pots which they carry with tremendous grace on top of their heads, and the children waving to us enthusiastically from the roadside. The Maasai dress in red and blue to distinguish them from other tribes. They are tall, very slender with blue black skin coloring. In my opinion, they are elegant and beautiful!


As we entered the village, we met the only English speaking male in the village who is also the son of the chief. He brought us to a central area where we were given a dance show by the adults in the village. The males danced about virility and strength; the women (sequestered away from the males) not surprisingly danced about children and hearth. Although the sexes do not interact during their respective dances, they each have a set of rhythms, harmonies, ostinati, that intricately blend with everyone else. Several days ago I referred to this as their imitation of the sounds of nature in a cacophony of their own making.

The young man then took us inside one of the mud and thatch huts where we were given a lesson about living a tribal life. Interestingly, we were met at the opening of the first hut by a woman who refused to offer us admission to her home. (Can't blame her). At the second hut we had better luck as the woman who lived there was sitting inside quietly nursing her two year old child.


Here is the story as told by our young guide:
In this village the chief has 10 wives. Each wife has her own hut where she raises her children fathered by the chief. Wives are not allowed to have but one spouse. The chief can buy as many wives as he has the cows to barter with another Maasai tribe! He then rotates each night to a different wife/hut for mating. The children of the "chosen" mate for the night are then sent to sleep with another wife for the evening.

Each wife builds her own hut out of clay, cow dung, and straw. The roof is made of sticks overlaid with clay and straw. Light comes through built in holes in the structure of the walls. The floors are dirt and there are two beds in every hut; one for the mother and children/ the other for mating purposes for those nights when the chief comes to sleep. This sounds quite like the arrangement that the lions have.

The wives are solely responsible for raising the children, cooking the food, building the huts, and herding the cows (if the warriors are otherwise indisposed). The chief's job is to oversee the wives and mate with them!!!

Maasai are strictly carnivores. They mainly subsist on milk and the blood of animals. Meat is for special occasions. There is a fire pit in each hut and smoke is emitted from holes in the roof.
Each hut has a place for storage of firewood and cooking utensils.

Boys are circumcised between the ages of 12 and 18. If a boy cries or flinches during the circumcision, he is forever relegated to be among the women. This is a terrible stigma.
Once a boy is circumcised, he becomes a warrior and is responsible for protecting the village's herd of cows. Once he turns 25 he may marry a Maasai girl from another tribe if he has the cows to buy her!

Once the wife is bought she leaves her tribe of origin to go live in the tribe with her new husband. There is a ceremony, exchange of jewelry. Girls are married off at 15 or 16. Girls are circumcised between the ages of 14 and 16 (ostensibly to make child bearing easier).

Women are basically slaves and the bearer of children.

There is a strong government movement to educate the young children of the Maasai by sending them to private westernized schools in Arusha primarily supported by America.

Our next stop was the Aldara Gorg, home of mankind. This is the place where scientists believe humans first evolved and started their inexorable trek northward to Europe and Asia and ultimately across the Bering Strait to North American down to South America (30, 000,000 years ago).

We stayed in the Serena Lodge this night and had fun watching tribal Sindimba dancing that originated in Zanzibar. Beautiful costumes and drumming.

Day 5 Ngorogoro Crater

Our lodging had a very humble name, Gibb's Farm. It was dreamed up and developed many years ago by a British colonial who obviously wanted to create an African paradise with English flair. This was truly one of the most romantic "farms" imaginable.

We stayed in a cottage that was all glass casement windows over-looking an exotic African garden complete with outdoor rain head shower. At bedtime one of the staff members lit the fire in our hearth that was beside a huge (very English) soaking tub.

The 40 acre estate consisted of a 10 acre organic vegetable garden where the proprietors used only bug resistant flowers for keeping down the grubs and crop rotation to keep the nitrogen in the soil. Unfortunately, they have problems with the elephants breaking down fences and robbing them of vegetables! And I thought our deer population was a nuisance!!!

Well, I loved Gibbs Farm and I hope to replicate their vegetable garden concept on a much smaller scale our on farm in Pocahontas County.

It's time to move off to Ngorogoro Crater and a new day of adventures.

The absolute highlight of this day was the sighting of a very large pride of lions. Ephata was in his element. I'm in awe of his ability to glance out his driver side window and spot a lion hidden on a ridge in tall grass about 200 meters off the dirt road, but this is exactly what he did. We parked the safari jeep and waited.

We could see 2 male lions (about 4 years old) and 4 female lions through our binoculars. Ephata assured us that if we waited patiently for the sun to come out and warm the lions that they would come down to the river (much closer to us) for a drink. Amazingly, when the sun came out the lions marched to the river, some appearing over the ridge. We counted 19 lions! This was spectacular, both in sheer numbers and the close proximity to us.

We soon heard terrible roaring from deep in the river gorge. One of the younger male lions ran out of the fray because he had been chastised by the leader of the pride. The message was, you are a big boy now...go get your own pride! The rebuffed young male sought sympathy from several of the female lions who seemed to be happy to offer him solace.

A side bar about lions: A pride usually consists of the alpha male and several female lions who mate only with the alpha. The females do the hunting, but the alpha male is the first to eat the kill. The idea is that he has to reserve his strength for more important things like fighting off his rivals who want to steal his pride. More about lion behavior later.

Day 4 Tanzania on the road to Lake Manyara game preserve

After a sad good bye to the Tree Tops Tent Camp and our new friend, Lembris (whose name means grace in his native language), we headed off into the sunrise on our slow trek north through Tanzania. Next stop, Lake Manyara!








A side bar regarding Lake Manyara......
This is a shallow lake, but considered by many to be the most beautiful in all of Africa It is located in the Great Rift Valley in Tanzania and is very alkaline (pH about about 9.5). It covers 89 square miles and is home to baboons, hippos, impalas, elephants, wildebeests, buffalo, and giraffes. Most of the enormous ficus and mahogany trees draw water from underground springs which is also how this lake gets its water.

The flora in this area was quite different than that of the Tarangire and the view of the gorgeous Rift Valley escarpment affords a dramatic backdrop to the lake. In this area we do not see the ancient Baubab trees but we do see the Sycamore ficus and the yellow barked acacia.







As we drove we saw trees with scores of storks in each branch, eerily redolent of an old Alfred Hitchcock movie! In my experience, it is most unusual to see a single stork, but to see hundreds of them populating the branches of fig trees was amazing.

A highlight of this day was seeing the thousands of migratory birds such as:
pelican, storks, egrets, pink flamingos. The flamingos were so numerous that, at a distance, they looked like a pink pond within the larger lake!

Herds of hippo, impala, zebra and wildebeest (for where there are zebras there will be wildebeests) were very large.


The animals in this region tended to be closer to the dirt roads so it was easier to observe the behaviors up close. We had to stop several times to wait for herds of elephants to cross the road. A baby elephant got separated from its mother and panicked trying to cross to her safely. Once he found her he huddled directly under her enormous body for protection. Elephants are very good mothers.

Side bar about elephants: The female elephants and their young roam together for food and protection. All of the females co parent the babies. It's a lovely and moving phenomenon to watch....Guess that it indeed "takes a village" to raise an elephant.







In the afternoon, Ephata took us to see the family of an Iraq tribe. These people are among the descendants of four tribes that converged in the area. According to Ephata, there was much fighting between the Maasai and the Iraq people with each group claiming that the other stole its cows. In Tanzanian tribal cultures, cows are the currency used for barter, buying wives, and generally marking the wealth of a tribe. Cows are very important! At some point, the two made peace with one another and now there is even a bit of intermarrying going on among the youth!

Anyway, I digress. The Iraq family was most interesting for a number of reasons. First of all, the alpha male wore a Cleveland Indian t shirt under his tribal swaddling wrap. He spoke the King's English while his wife wore traditional African and spoke no English. His wife showed us some of her home made crafts including a leather and beaded wedding wrap (for sale) and several sweet grass baskets (similar to those sold in So. Carolina).

While this whole experience was calculated as a tourist trap, it proved to be educational.
The man boasted that his wife the "mama" was his one and only spouse and that they have 4 children. The wife has several young female "helpers" for her various jobs (which seem to be legion). She is responsible for the children, growing crops, keeping the house, milking the cows that have not been stolen by the Maasai (ha), and weaving baskets in her spare time.

At one point, the "mama" draped the wedding garment on me over my western clothes. She got so close to me that I could detect the lingering smell of spoiled mother's milk on her clothing!
We didn't buy the proffered garment, but we did purchase a couple of her baskets. BTW she was allowed to keep the money for her baskets!
It made me wonder what the "papa's" responsibilities might be, other than edifying tourists and collecting t shirts of American
baseball teams.

We stayed in another coffee plantation this night called Gibbs Farm. Lovely place!

Day 3 Predawn Game Drive and Night game drive

Yawn....stretch.....
I was awake most of the night attending to the rooting sounds of some unknown critters near our tent site. Ephata, our fearless guide wanted to take us on a predawn game drive followed by a picnic breakfast in the bush so it was easy to get up at 5:00 am! We're learning that Ephata is passionate about finding and watching the animals...all of them!




The ostriches were the most fascinating birds to watch and, yes, they are HUGE! The fancy one on the right sporting pink neck and legs with a black torso is the male. The plain Jane is the female. He is desperately trying to get her to accept his proposal for mating; she's having none of it until she's good and ready. Meanwhile he follows her around like a puppy on a leash. When she does lay eggs (whether as the result of mating with him or another handsome ostrich) she will share her nest with several other female ostriches. She will nest sit during the day and the male will nest sit at night. Great arrangement and one of the most egalitarian in nature!


We spotted this cheetah lounging on a termite mound about 20 feet from the dirt road. Bingo! We found our very first cat. We must have watched this guy for 20 minutes and he put on quite a show.

A word about the termite mounds.... The termites eat the dry grass and are able to make huge dirt looking mounds that become the habitat for snakes and mongoose. Interestingly, snakes and
mongoose are both prey and predators to one another; just
depends on whose lucky that day.





















We watched these elephants for quite a while wondering how long it would take them to discover "Waldo" ah um the well camouflaged female lions in the grass watching them. They say that the lions are the only animals who really sleep soundly in the wild, but these elephants reconnoitered and found the sneaky carnivores watching. The elephants made a straight line in front of the lions to mark their territory and they put their young babies in the middle of the ring for protection. I couldn't help but root for the elephants!




After dinner back at the camp site, we went on a night game drive under a full moon that looked like a magnificent topaz stone that had been dropped into a black velvet sea. Our guide found these two male lions about 20 feet from our open jeep. He assured us that if they were hungry they would go for the zebras before they would come for us! These two young males are around 3 years old, are brothers and best friends who hunt together as they become of age to challenge the leader of a pride.

Tanzania Day 2 Tarangire and Tree Tops

At 5:30 am we were awakened by a Maasai staff member bringing hot coffee, steamed milk and cookies to our tent! Now this is what I call camping!! Actually, he had to come out and lower the trap door so that we could descend the stairs from the tent. NO ROAMING THE GROUNDS AT NIGHT.

After a breakfast spent in the open watching the sun come up as we were entertained by the Superb Starlings (a gorgeous cerulean blue bird with brown bars) trying to steal the breakfast right off the buffet, we headed off with Ephata for a full day of animal watching in the bush.

The road from this camp is arguably the most bumpy ride I've ever had in my life....and that includes some of the crazy roads in Pocahontas County. The very first creature that Ephata pointed out to us was a Puff Adder, one of the most deadly snakes on Earth. According to Ephata, a victim can only survive a bite if he can get to a hospital within 30 minutes and IF that hospital happens to have the proper anti venom. Well, considering that it takes 30 minutes just to get to the main gate of Tarangire, a snake bite is tantamount to a death sentence!

Other deadly poisonous snakes in Tanzania are: vipers, black mambos, and green mambos, cobras (who spit their venom into the eyes of the victim).








We soon saw two young male impalas sparring with one another over their female love interest (who was standing nearby grazing and rather impervious to the trouble she was causing).

Not far from the impalas we saw several majestic giraffes at a distance with their heads taller than the Acacia trees they were eating.

Giraffes walk like camels...right rear leg followed by right front leg/ then left rear leg followed by left front leg. This is the gate that gives them the loping appearance.

One of the animal highlights of the day (for me) was when we spotted a large troop of baboons lounging, grooming, and playing in a sausage tree. A sausage tree is so named because it looks like it has several large sausages dangling from its limbs when, in fact, these are fibrous fruits with bark like exteriors. Very odd looking, but the baboons love this fruit.

We continued to see giraffes, elephants, baboons, and many species of exotic birds and Eagles.

One fact that really surprised me was that these creatures live together in harmony; they are not segregated in the wild! Having only seen these animals in a zoo, I always thought that they were isolated from one another.

In the late afternoon, Ephata took us back to the Tree Tops Tents where we had planned to take an afternoon game walk through the bush. Imagine our concern when we were met by a guard toting a rifle and a Maasai tribesmen carrying a spear to accompany us on the game walk. We were told to be quiet, to stay in a line, to walk behind the guard and in front of the Maasai warrior. YIKES.

At this point I was seriously having second thoughts. As it turned out, we did have to take a detour through some pretty high grass to avoid a herd of elephants. (I was really wondering what could be worse...death by being trampled by an indignant elephant or death by Puff Adder bite!

That night the entire camp had a barbecue dinner by the campfire where we enjoyed some tribal dancing provided by the Maasai workers in the camp. The dancing and singing was fascinating to me and sounded much like their imitations of animals in the wild. Each voice took on a different rhythm and pitch which gave the eerie effect of a cacophony. I'd love to study this more in depth.