Out of Africa, Part 8: On Safari

A note to my readers: I am ecstatic to finally be able to post this entry about our safari experience. I began working on this September 1, and had added to my draft numerous times. But alas, I have no computer savvy, and was experiencing many technical problems in the blogosphere. I don't know HOW many frustrating hours I spent on trying to complete that post, but finally in sheer exasperation, I deleted it entirely and then began again from scratch. Ugh! So I didn't mean to leave everyone hanging after the road trip (though that was one big Survivor challenge!) - I was only dealing with technical challenges. I hope I've been able to recreate and even improve upon what I started several weeks ago . . .

Friday, July 24 - Saturday, July 26

Jason drove us to Arusha early Friday morning to meet up with our safari company to begin our adventure scheduled for the next three days and two nights. We booked our safari way back in March and emailed back and forth numerous times with Dyness, whom we looked forward to meeting. We weren't sure if his name would be pronouced "Dennis" or "Dinness," but we definitely were anxious to put a name to a face. Often it had been a challenge to work out the details. He had asked for a 50% deposit, which we opted to put on a credit card. That was one ridiculously drawn out and strange process. We had to fill out a detailed "authorization form," and make a photocopy front and back of our credit card. We thought it would be more secure to fax the info, but after a couple of unsuccessful attempts at that, Dyness let us know that the office's fax machine was broken. I'm pretty sure it remains broken to this day after having been in Africa and seeing firsthand what happens to items once they no longer work! We were somewhat leary of emailing all of that info, but went ahead and did it. And again when our safari time got closer, we had to pay the final 50% payment and go through the entire process AGAIN! It took an entire month each time for the payment to go through to their office. So much for credit cards being fast and easy. ANYWAY, we were surprised to find out when we met that Dyness was a very pretty young woman, and her name is pronouced "Dighness!" Funny how both of us were thinking of Dyness as being a male. She had with her our driver, Antone, and after dropping Dyness off back at the office, stopping to pick up bottled water and boxed lunches, Antone soon had us on our way to Tarangire National Park to begin our animal viewing.

Within just a few minutes of driving through the park we viewed our first animals. It was definitely a thrill to see them wandering free in their natural habitat. The first animals we spotted were huge groups of zebra and wildebeest. Antone explained that we would often see the two groups of animals together, as wildebeests are too dumb to find water on their own, so they follow the zebras around.

Wildebeests certainly are not the most attractive animals! Something we noticed throughout the miles and miles of the Tarangire National Park were these gigantic ant hills - up to eight to ten feet tall, and they were everywhere! Here is a group of wildebeest hanging around one.

That first day we felt like we saw everything - I recorded 14 types of animals and birds, along with seeing some very interesting trees, including the huge baobob trees, acacia, ficus, and euphobia, which are a giant cactus-type tree. Our driver was at our beck and call - would stop whenever we asked for as long as we wanted to look. The top of the jeeps are either removable or lift up, so we were able to stand and look in every direction with our binoculars and take pictures with our cameras. We often stood also while driving, but the dust got to be too much at times, so mostly we just stood up when we had spotted something and wanted to stop for a better look.

It was such a peaceful sort of feeling to see the animals free to roam, eat, hunt, etc. as far as they chose; and to intermingle with other animals. One of my favorite things was seeing groups of zebra, giraffe, wildebeest and ostrich together (as in the picture below) - something you usually don't see in captivity.

The second day of our safari we drove to Lake Manyara National Park and saw many more of the animals already seen, but this day we spotted our first lions and hippos; and saw huge groups of baboon, very close to our jeep. We watched them for very long periods of time - so interesting and in many ways so much like humans!

We were provided with boxed lunches both days. The lunches usually included a hard boiled egg, chicken (very tough with little meat), some sort of meat pie, an apple, some chocolate or cookies, and a juice-box type container of mango juice, which was delicious. Antone would decide when it was time to stop for luch and knew where the picnic places were. One day as we ate, a huge group of children from a Tanzanian Christian school happened to be there on a field trip. They all crowded around us (I think they wanted our table), but were also very interested in these wazungu tourists. We found out that they learn English in school. Some of them were very good at speaking it and seemed excited to talk to us. So teacher that I am, I loved engaging them in conversation and asking them about their school, etc. I discovered that many of them were first graders - no wonder we related so well! I let many of them try my binoculars until it became a problem of too many kids grabbing them from each other (some things are global, I guess!)

We stayed in beautiful lodges both nights - the first night was the Tarangire Sopa Lodge, right in the park; and the second night was more of a local lodge located off the road between Tarangire enroute to Lake Manyara. At each one upon our arrival, the African workers employed there would meet us with a warm, wet washcloth to wipe off the dust from our faces and hands; and then we were offered fresh mango juice or watermelon juice. After we were refreshed we would check in and be shown to our room. We enjoyed wonderful food and drink and had very nice comfortable rooms with hot water showers and real toilets! Yeah!!

On day 3 Antone picked us up a little early to be on our way to Ngorongoro Crater for there was much to see there. But an early arrival was not meant to be.

Roxanne had told us that no visit to Africa involving highway driving would be complete without experiencing a car breakdown, and we were not to be disappointed. After only 20 minutes on the road, the radiator in our jeep went out, and we spent 2 1/2 hours on the side of the road waiting for a replacement jeep to come to our aid. We were fortunate that our jeep driver was responsible and it was his job to solve our problem. He merely needed to call the safari company to send a replacement. However, on your own if you experience car trouble in Africa, who knows how or when help would be provided. Mechanics and gas stations are very few and far between, and having to explain a problem in swahili

is a place I would not want to go! We drew quite a lot of attention from Africans while we waited and a couple of young guys hung around watching us the entire time we were there.

At Ngorongoro we saw much of the same types of animals that we had already viewed. Seeing the crater itself was magnificent - driving down into it and out again an adventure in itself. But the dust there was very bad, and Jim had a lot of trouble with his contacts. It is crazy, too, when you start to say - "Oh, it's just another group of zebras . . . no big deal!" Funny to make a comment like that when in our day to day lives that would be a very unusual thing, but on safari it's pretty commonplace!

Though tired and dusty at the end of our third day, we both agreed that we had experienced something very unique and most likely a once in a lifetime occurrence. I recorded 34 different animals that we saw, and many of them were beautiful birds that I didn't even know existed. Seeing the landscape where these animals thrive, seeing evidence of animals having been hunted and killed by other beasts, and watching them interact, and enjoying beautiful lodgings and delicious food served by friendly and loving African people was certainly a fascinating experience and a definite highlight of our trip to Africa.