Into the Wilds of Tanzania: A Safari Adventure

9/16/2012

Elephants, walking into a Serengeti storm

My blogs will be out of chronological order the next 3 week. During that time, I will be sharing with you my experiences during the last few weeks I lived in Africa. After that, I will be returning to sharing adventures of looking for a dream job in the international development sector.

So, to begin, the first week of June, my dear friend Emily and I spent a week on safari in the the Tanzanian Serengeti. Traversing through the savanna, we were able to watch zebras, wildebeest, water buffalo, hippopotamus, lions, leopards and many other animals all interact in the wild.

Please click "read more" for the rest of this week's blog.

Flying from Zanzibar to Arusha Airport, it was too cloudy to see Mount Kilimanjaro on our way to the national park. (Luckily, both her and I saw it on our plane rides from Nairobi to Zanzibar.) Spending a week in a Toyota Land Rover, Emily and I entered the Serengeti excited to spend our days popping our heads out through a roof and windows to learn about the circle of life first-hand!

We used the Bushmen Expeditions tour service, a tour company recommended to me by a friend in the United States who had used them when they had visited Tanzania a few years previous. They are local, trustworthy, their prices are fair, they are highly knowledgeable, and I had the utmost confidence in our guide the entire trip. For your own comfort and security, if you go to Africa on safari, and it is your first time in Africa, use a tour company. I also highly recommend that you use a tour company that came as a reference from someone you personally know. Going to Africa is very different than going to Europe, or South America or Asia, you cannot wing it.

Emily and I had the trip of a lifetime! We were able to watch a family of lions napping in the branches of a giant tree in the afternoon sun. A matriarchy, the tree contained over six lions, with ages ranging from infant, to adolescent, to teenager, to middle aged females. An interesting fact, female lions do most of the hunting, and live much longer than the male. The males tend to spend a lot of time fighting over the females, as there is only one adult male to a female pack. Emily and I were able to watch a lion honeymoon, and listen to the newlyweds purr in their new marital bliss as they sunbathed on a rock surrounded by meadows.

Driving through the savanna, we passed herds of water buffalo, who have terrible eyesight but a fantastic sense of smell, which they use to identify danger. They would wiggle their ears and raise their noses to catch our scent in the cooling afternoon rain.

Driving from the middle to the top of the Serengeti, we saw 1.6 million wildebeest in the middle of the savanna making their annual migration to the Maasai Triangle. The wildebeest migrate 12 months out of the year, and only stop for a few weeks at a time to eat and give birth, following the rain patters for greener pastures. Zebra and wildebeest are considered cousins and are very good friends. It is not uncommon for a zebra family to have a wildebeest cousin living with them, and vice versa. Wildebeest are known for their aggression and sparing skills, but have a reputation for bad eyesight, getting lost, and making poor decisions. On the other hand, their cousins have a fantastic sense of direction, sight, wit, and problem solving skills, and actually herd the wildebeest through their migration, with some zebra leading the way to the Mara, and other zebra keeping up the tail end, ensuring no wildebeest are lost or left behind.

Towards the tail end of our trip through the Serengeti, we visited a pool that contained more than 300 hippopotamus. It was fantastic to watch them interact, submerge and emerge from the water, and get into fights! They are very interesting animals. They are nocturnal, and graze like cows in meadows as far as 6 miles from their pools at night. Hippos spend their days sleeping in water because they have sensitive skin that sunburns easily and have not sweat glands. They use the water for protection from the sun and to cool off. Hippos are the 2nd most dangerous animals in Africa, because they have trampled so many people to death. Never get between a hippo and water or a female hippo and her child.

Warthogs continue to be my favorite animal. That said, I love leopards. They have gorgeous, glossy, spotted coats, their body lines are sleek and their body strong. I also love the way they move- slipping from the tree into the grass and disappearing into the wild. Emily and I had the chance to observe two different leopards. There were a lot of lions and leopards in the areas we visited; they were hunting the migrating wildebeest. Leopards are tough to spot, they spend their days sleeping high in tree branches, where their coats are great protection blending them into the spotted light and shadows of the leaves. In one sighting, a leopard we were observing sleeping high in a tree became fed up with all of the chatter from the people in their vehicles. She got up, walked down the tree, and slipped into the savanna- never seen again. (We ruined her nap.)

Overall, my favorite moment in the Serengeti was during an afternoon drive. On that particular bright and sunny day, we could see clouds forming in the distance. We pulled over, as the clouds gathered, to watch a family of elephants. As the the thunder boomed and the lightning flashed, the elephants crossed in front of us and into the storm, into a green valley filled with gazelle, heart-beasts, zebras, water buffalo, and wildebeest. This was what I had dreamed of when I was a little girl and said I would live in Africa someday. I repeated to myself, this is Africa.

To see all of the photos from our trip, please click here.

Next week, I will share our Ngorongoro Crater adventure!