Arusha, Tanzania - Day 184 - Boots on the Loose

Pulled into Arusha around lunchtime aboard the luxurious Scandinavian Express after a lovely 20 hour bus ride from Kampala, Uganda. The one bus we actually expected to leave on time left 3 hours late, went through Kenya (pulling into fun-city Nairobi at 4am – not the best time of day to be on the streets of Nairobi). Arusha was about 4 hours from Kenya – I think marking the first time I’ve ever crossed 2 borders in 1 day. At the Kenya/Tanzania border had a couple guys attempt to con us out of our $100USD visa money (undercover police officer stepped up and they bolted as they were attempting to go to work).

Stayed in Arusha for one night at the extravagent Hotel Flamingo ($15/night) as we worked on setting up a safari. Ended up going in on a truck with 3 guys we had met on the bus, leaving the next morning for the world-famous Serengeti. Incidently, Arusha seemed quite nice, very luch and green, lots of little shops… apparently very unsafe to walk around after dark though which is always a bummer.

Ended up leaving the next morning around 9am; took about 6 hours on rough road to get to near where the campsite was, right in the middle of the park (passed through the Ngorongoro Park to get there, which we would later return to). About 20km before the campsite, pulled over due to the engine overheating and it turned out the horn had fallen off it’s bracket and managed to dig a nice hole in the radiator. In the middle of nowhere. Around dusk. When lions and leopards like to hunt. Didn’t take long before a couple trucks had stopped and before we knew it we were being towed by some funny European guy in a lion-conservation truck. When the other Sunny Safari trucks met up with us (now after dark and raining), he let us loose, gave us a warm “Welcome to the Serengeti!”, and was off into the night. Setup camp in the dark which is always a pleasure, had a late dinner and a couple Serengetis (beer), off to bed.

Woke up to find the campsite wasn’t nearly as safe and sheltered as we thought the previous night; unfortunately couldn’t start our first official “Game Drive” until around 10:30am as Severan (our driver) was fixing the truck in the nearby garage (yes, there’s a garage in the middle of the Serengeti!). Amazingly the first animal we got to see is one of the hardest to find – a big, fat leopard sleeping up in a tree. How cool was that. Ten minutes down the road we find a big male lion lying in the tall grass with his lady (unfortunately it would end up being our only lions before going to Ngorongoro; they’re hard to find as the grass is tall this time of year). In no specific order: countless giraffe, zebra, gazelle, impala, antelope, 50 or more elephants, tens or hundreds of thousands of wildebeest (on their migration), buffalo, a cobra, a chamelion, hyenas, a hippo… all in one day. Highlights for the day were the leopard, waiting for the elephant herd to cross the road, as well as the wildebeest train. They say the Serengeti has the densest population of wildlife in Africa and I don’t doubt it. The wildebeest were fantastic (though not pretty to look at); they behave like a school of fish… if one makes a move they all bolt. Pulled the truck into a group of thousands and they formed a huge ring around us, staring uncertainly… neat to see the zebra intermingle, as they do the same migration route.

I could go on for hours but I won’t; the Serengeti was everything one would expect. The only thing we missed was a cheetah, and I had my heart set on seeing more of my favorite, the lion… but of course there are never any guarantees. To our surprise, we thought the vulture mentality of the hoards of safari vehicles would be irritating as hell, but it actually wasn’t too bad and kind of helpful at thimes (it’s how we found the leopard!).

It did occur to me how odd the whole concept of a safari was… why were we doing this to begin with? To prove to ourselves that the animals actually do exist? Why is seeing these animals so satisfying anyway? Why would my ultimate satisfaction be to see a lion kill and eat something? There’s definitely something to be said about seeing them in their own, non-recreated enviornment.

Seeing the safari infrastructure conjures up funny feelings. Each park has its own landing strip, the lodges are ridiculously nice (and $$$ expensive… sometimes more than $500USD a night), the road between Arusha and the park is better than any road found in North America; on one hand it’s good to see the money going into the park, but it’s sad to think about the number of people that leave Tanzania thinking it’s the wealthy country that it’s not.

Next morning we did a 6:30am drive; lots more of the same, as well as ostriches, baboons and a stop at the hippo pool (probably more than 50 hippos together there). Still can’t figure out why one didn’t hop out and eat us. Came back to camp for lunch around noon, packed up the truck and headed back to Ngorongoro to setup camp on the rim of the crater.

The Masaai are cool as shit. We’ve seen many tribes on the trip by now and in my mind, these guys are the coolest. You see them everywhere wearing their red and/or purple garments, carrying spears, rarely shoed, head to toe in jewelry. They’re nomadic, they herd cattle anywhere and everywhere, including in the park… they even sleep outside with the cattle to protect them from lions (our guide told us lions would eat us but are afraid of the Masaai… the other guys were pretty skeptical but I thought there was probably some truth to it). Apparently every boy has to spend a number of years always outdoors, in order to become a grownup “warrior”.

The top of the crater is around 3000m above sea level so it was as cold as hell at night, and we woke up to pouring rain and socked in with fog. After breakfast started making the descent to the crater floor, about halfway down dropped below the clouds to a spectacular view of the mammoth x-volcano. At Ngorongoro you can see everything. It almost (but not quite) makes going to the Serengeti pointless. It is way bigger than I thought. I don’t get how it was a volcano; surely if lava shot out of something that big it would hit the moon.

Within about 20 minutes we spotted a minute spec on the horizon which turned out to be a Black Rhino, thus completing the Big Five (as our guide put it: “A far away rhino is still a rhino!”). The Big Five. Leopard, lion, elephant, buffalo, rhino. I don’t get the qualifications… seems to me that a host of other animals is being sold short. Is the hippo, giraffe and zebra not “big” enough? Thought maybe these were the five that killed people, but hippos kill more than any of them so I’m still wondering…

Did close to a lap around the crater over 5 hours or so, seeing most of everything we had seen on the Serengeti (found 4 more of those elusive lions… no males though). It’s very much more green and tropical compared to the Serengeti which actually made quite a difference when seeing certain animals (you’d expect to see a herd of elephants waste-deep in a swamp, as opposed to a grassy flatland). Took a good 30 minutes to get back to the top of the rim, went back and loaded the truck and headed back to Arusha. Looking forward to a shower, a cold beer, and a good sleep in, on a real bed!!