Month: July 2009

Is Kosher available on safari?

Is Kosher available on safari?

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From SimonandMariaLWagner@

Q.    We recently returned from a wonderful safari to South Africa (Kruger, Phinda and Bushkloof) which we had been planning for some time, because we need kosher meals throughout.  Now we’d like to visit Tanzania.  Is this possible?

A.    Right now, no.  If you stayed most of your time around the bigger cities of Arusha and Dar-es-Salaam, taking short day trips to nearby parks, then it could be arranged.  And I know of a few cases where kosher meals were actually chartered in from South Africa, though that would have been very, very expensive.  So for now, I’m afraid the answer for normal budgets is no.

OUT OF AFRICA

OUT OF AFRICA

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25 years ago the final shots of the movie that made East Africa famous were just being shot. And today the controversy continues….

The 1985 movie, Out of Africa, was being completed in Naivasha, Kenya, almost exactly 25 years ago. The last scene shot was actually in the middle of the movie, where the lions attacked Isaac Dinesen (Meryl Streep), because director, Sydney Pollack, hadn’t been satisfied with earlier takes.

I remember that wonderful year, 1984. We were all deeply involved in outfitting the movie, since there were so many people there to shoot it. I never learned a number, but it had to be hundreds. There’s never been a movie shot in East Africa before or since with such a large number of people involved.

My movie friends in Kenya tell me that today the technology has improved so dramatically that cameras and lights and booms now replace people. The largest media productions recently have been the BBC’s Big Cats series, and those were mostly “associate producers” who would be scooting around the Mara in tiny Suzuki’s looking for something to shoot.

When it was finally found, the “set team” would be called in, and we would see scaffolding, lights, platforms and giant cranes with moving cameras set up at remarkable speeds, all sometimes to shoot a family of 7 or 8 lion sleeping. It was remarkable, especially how fast it was done.

But 25 years ago, Sydney Pollack was so dissatisfied with the lion attack scene that, according to Meryl Streep (who played Karen) today (in contactmusic.com), he endangered her life to get a better shot!

Streep has always claimed, and the late Pollack has always denied, that he “unleashed” the lions to get a more realistic scene as they were set again on Streep.

The lions by the way came from Los Angeles and were trained as movie lions. But that never mollified Streep, who has always claimed that she was traumatized for life by what she’s often termed a “reckless move.”

It was a great scene!

Best Time To Go

Best Time To Go

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First-timers always ask, “When is the best time to go?” to East Africa. There’s no easy answer, but there are many wrong answers!

I got a lovely email this morning from Amy who is planning her safari honeymoon. Honeymoons are a large part of any tourism business, and according to lovecarnival.com, more and more couples are not going on the honeymoon right after the wedding, but rather waiting until “just the right time.”

Honeymooners also spend more on their trip than the average tourist, and more than they will spend on future trips in their near future. So honeymooners, especially, want to get it all right. So there’s no better person for me to answer, “When’s the best time to go,” than the soon-to-be-married Amy!

So I haven’t answer, yet… I loathe this question, but Amy has motivated me. It’s time to try. But beware, this isn’t going to be easy.

First of all, “best” reflects an incredible personal bias. “Best of what?” Best animal viewing? Best weather? Amy understandably wants to end her trip on a beautiful East African beach, so that helps immensely in giving her an answer. She obviously doesn’t want to celebrate her marriage on a beach when it’s storming. East Africa doesn’t have hurricanes, but it has pretty awful coastal storms from about the end of April – the middle of August. So for Amy, at least, no summer trip.

But then “best of what” next? I’m continually amazed at all the bad advice posted on sites like TripAdvisor. For a safari, it seems that whenever anyone goes is the “best” time. Well, it obviously was for them, and that’s the point.

There’s virtually not a time in the year when people aren’t on safari, and virtually all of them are having a great time. And that’s because a safari is so dynamic and exciting, no matter when it occurs.

Cop out. Well, sort of, but I’ve lived there. I’ve spent my life there. What if I asked you, “When’s the best time to visit your home town?” I suppose we all have our preferences, but then we start to think about a bit more carefully.

Yes, it’s 20 below outside my window in January, but my gosh how beautiful it is! And if you like snow – well, we have skiing, skating, snowboarding, and it’s the best time of the year to see bald eagles! Then, again, right now in the fullness of summer, the forests are outstanding, the hike along the river trail…..

So you see, it’s simply not easy to answer. But there are many wrong answers:

Don’t trust any advice from someone who’s been only once or twice. They’re probably very earnest, but they just don’t have the experience. They might be very worthwhile in directing you to an expert, but they aren’t the expert.

Don’t read travel brochures. All they want to do is sell you something.

Beware about magazine and newspaper articles. They used to be very unbiased and good, but in today’s media crunch, they’re more often infocommercials than real information.

Guide books can be very useful, but make sure they’re current. A Lonely Planet guidebook can lose value in just a few years. This is as true about the weather (with global warming) as about the best lodge (decaying with time).

My personally favorite time to go on safari is March and April. That’s when I schedule my migration safaris, and when I’ve most enjoyed guiding for the last nearly 40 years. And here’s my bias:

1) It’s the wet season in northern Tanzania, and that makes it the most beautiful time of the year. Quite apart from wild animals, the landscapes are at their most spectacular.

2) It’s the only time of the year when the entire wildebeest migration is concentrated in a single area: the southern grassland plains of the Serengeti. This is the greatest wildlife spectacle on earth.

3) It’s a low season! Yes, that’s right! So there are fewer people and prices are lower.

But I’ll be quick to qualify my bias. In April many of the better camps and lodges close, because there just isn’t enough business. Keep in mind this has nothing to do with game viewing or weather or anything else except that April and May worldwide are the months with the fewest travelers.

So someone insisting on “optimum comfort and style” every single night should not join my April safaris.

I think the best game viewing occurs in March and April, but this is mostly true just for the great plains where there aren’t any trees! A lot of East Africa is bush, and during March and April game viewing in the bush can be challenging. The forests are full and dense, and the animals are dispersed, because food and water is available, everywhere. At the height of the dry season (October) a 12-day safari normally finds between 60-70 lion. During the wet season (April and May) it’s usually only half that.

So someone whose “best time” means “seeing the most lions”, then I’d advise traveling in October.

What about babies? The most animal babies occur in February and March.

Temperature? Hottest times in January and February; coldest times in July.

Rain? Forget about this. It absolutely doesn’t matter if it’s raining or not.

Snakes? Best time during the rains, in … oops.

Birds? Best time is when the largest numbers of migrants can be found: January – March.

Elephants? During the dry season: June – October.

Prices? Cheapest March – June; most expensive around holidays and July & August. This is as true for on the ground services as for your airline tickets.

So now that I’ve totally confused you, let’s make it simple. My favorite time is March and April, but it may not be your favorite time, for all the reasons above.. and many more.

The best way to get a straight answer is to ask a straight question. Make sure before asking you know, like Amy, some important things that you want or are expecting. Then, the answer will be easier, too!

Tourism Plummets

Tourism Plummets

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As tourism to East African continues to plunge, Kenya’s mistaken approach is to lie about the statistics.

Last week Kenya’s Central Bank reported that “tourism continues to do well” and that visitor numbers were up nearly 55.4% over last year. Read a bit further. Actual revenues, which the CBK can’t lie about as easily, dropped 6.5%.

Last year saw a precipitous decline in Kenyan visitors because of the political violence at the beginning of the year. Revenue numbers are inflated by the CBK’s use of Shilling/Dollar conversion techniques.

The Kenya Tourist Board states it more truthfully. Annual numbers this year are likely to be 60% of those in 2007, before the political violence.

The truth is further told by the tourism companies in Kenya. Major companies like Cheli & Peacock, Abercrombie & Kent and Sarova Hotels have instituted 20% pay cuts, and reduced work schedules by 20%. At first this might seem like a fair if generous move, but it’s basically to avoid paying the high severance fees mandated by Kenyan law.

And with nothing at all to do with lying statisticians, Kenya’s drought is devastating tourism even further as many companies (like EWT) substitute Kenyan itineraries with Tanzanian ones.

Uganda reports a decline of 30% in tourist revenues.

Tanzania seems to be fairing the best, but it’s nothing to write home about. At the end of June, eTurboNews reported nearly 30% of Tanzania’s tourist industry workers have been sacked and that revenues are likely to drop by nearly 10% this year.

I’m a numbers’ guy, and I’m frustrated that none of these numbers adds up. You don’t cut 20 or more percent of the working force if revenues are only dropping by 10%. But the cutting is real, can’t be disguised. Tourist numbers can’t be increasing by half, with revenues decreasing by 10%, despite impoverished explanations that discounting prices explains this.

It doesn’t. It can’t.

The truth on the street exceeds the institutional mumbo-jumbo. Nairobi and Arusha are awash with bottom feeders at the moment, like the U.K.’s Pathfinders, representatives of whom were seen scouring all the mid- to up-market properties that are currently stressed. The soon-to-open Holiday Inn in Arusha has reps on the street not just promoting the new property, but looking for other properties they can consume and rebrand.

The biggest rumor on the streets in Nairobi is that Canada’s Fairmont Hotels wants to off-load two nonperforming properties, The Ark tree hotel and the Aberdare Country Club, for under two million. Holy smokes! When Fairmont bought the properties 5 years ago they were valued at $6.5 million.

The reality pressures are building. I fully expect the premature publishing of 2010 rates by most major properties to be revisited, and that actual prices will fall even further.

Drought Deepens

Drought Deepens

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The drought in Kenya is seriously effecting many game parks, and may be headed for catastrophe by August.

The current drought is not universal across the region, and much of Tanzania seems normal if a bit dry. But Kenya, which is found in the two-rainy-season region of East Africa, is definitely reaching a crisis stage.

Yet there is also the continuing mystery of rains – sometimes heavy – that are falling out of any season over very small areas. Nairobi, the east central Aberdare, and the Chyulu Hills are receiving rain, now, during the normal dry season. This is great for many farmers in the central province, especially tea and coffee. But it’s outside the big game parks.

The two-rainy-season region, locally known as the Short Rains/Long Rains, is normally areas north and east of Nairobi. The single-rainy season region, locally known as the Dry Season/Wet Season, is normally areas south and west of Nairobi, including virtually all of northern Tanzania’s game parks. (You can learn more about the area’s climate, which for years has been misinterpreted by most tour companies, from earlier blogs.)

The huge Ngorongoro/Serengeti/Mara ecosystem – which may account for more than half of the entire region’s tourism – has been OK, at least until now. They are dry, but drought hasn’t yet occurred there as in Kenya.

Most of the entire area of Kenya and Tanzania has had weak rains over the last 2-3 years. It began with the mini-drought of February, 2006. This was normally a wet – although reduced wet – season for northern Tanzania, and virtually no rain fell. It returned to normal by the end of March, 2006, but never recovered the deficit of those previous six weeks.

In Kenya, the first indication was the failure of the Short Rains in central province and areas north of there in November/December 2007. This was exacerbated by the failure of the Long Rains over the same slightly expanded areas in March, 2008. The Long Rains of November, 2008, seemed to be normal in these areas, but just as they failed in other areas, including virtually all of Kenya’s north.

Of Kenya’s principal game parks, Samburu/Shaba/Buffalo Springs and Amboseli are currently the most seriously effected regions. The healthy animals are leaving or sick. The area is dust.

Elephants in Samburu have gone to Baragoi and towards the Aberdare. Hoofed stock and many birds have dispersed widely. Those that have remained are sick and the first dying can be seen. For the first time in my memory, I saw Maasai cows mingling with the last of oryx and Grevy’s zebra, as if they had collected as common refugees from a horrible catastrophe.

The Ewaso Nyiro River (which arises in the Aberdare) is still flowing from time to time, especially east and outside of the park proper, and the Isiolo River (which arises from underground rivers off Mt. Kenya). But this late dose of water can do nothing for the parched landscape that would normally have nutrient grasses and many browsable bushes and trees. Some acacia were trying to bloom, but I saw lots of dead ones.

According to researchers at Cynthia Moss’ elephant camp in Amboseli, only about 10% of the elephants are left there, and most of those are sick or dying. Amboseli is heart-wrenching, mostly dust with its swamps nearly dry. One of the researchers at Moss’ camp wondered if the park can ever recover.

The park’s swamps have never been lower. As much as 80% of the animals have left already, and many can be seen in desperate congregations along the very busy Nairobi/Mombasa highway, breaking farm fences and nibbling the last grasses and leaves in irrigated areas. It’s really rather amazing that we saw ten times as many giraffe at the side of the highway as we raced between 18-wheelers unable to stop to watch, as we did during our full two days in Amboseli.

In two days in Amboseli we counted 8 elephant carcasses and only 48 live elephants. All the swamps are remarkably low, in several cases showing their muddy bottoms. We saw no buffalo carcasses, but I expect that will shortly change as most of the buffalo we saw were sick. No weaver birds remain. The great majority of the park is grassless dust. We found a mysterious exception in the northwest part of the central park near the airstrip, where it must have rained for a day or so about a week ago. There was decent grass, but few animals. The hoofed stock had already left.

Rain will not normally fall anywhere in East Africa, now, until August at the earliest, and November throughout the whole region. If this dynamic holds, Samburu and Amboseli will be bereft of most life by mid-August.

Next worst hit is Tsavo. Tsavo is fed by numerous underground aquifers off Mt. Kilimanjaro, as is Amboseli. But Tsavo’s flow seems normal at places like Mzima Springs. Amboseli’s flows are not normal. It could be that Tsavo is benefitting from being out of the mountain’s rain shadow. Amboseli is just in the mountain’s rain shadow.

So Tsavo is receiving a supply of water the same way that Samburu is receiving some from its sand rivers, but Tsavo has had no rain, so there is no grass. Every hippo we saw was dead or dying, including 3 carcasses at Mzima Springs.

Tsavo is famous for its elephants, and the continuing availability of water might be able to stabilize that population. We saw enormous congregations of elephant by the Kilaguni waterhole and near the Severin Tsavo Camp swamps. They didn’t look particularly healthy, but they weren’t dying.

As were every buffalo we saw and many of the few zebra. We even watched baboon dying. I wonder if this episode will turn Tsavo into an elephant-only park.

The exception to Kenya’s misery is the Mara. At least until now, the rain has been normal or heavier than normal. The Mara and Talek rivers are the lowest anyone can remember, but they both arise out of escarpments to the west and north that are definitely in a drought. But the wildlife here is fabulous and healthy, and the wildebeest migration has arrived more or less on schedule. It’s now just a matter of whether the rains will continue – as they should – through September.

The drought could not have come at a worst time. Tourism is way down because of the economic downturn. We wait anxiously the possibility of the light rains that normally fall in isolated areas in August, and then the beginning of the heavy rains in November. But until that happens, most of Kenya’s prime tourist areas are dust.

Border Opening?

Border Opening?

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Overland border crossings between Kenya and Tanzania have been restricted since the late 1970s. Are things about to change?

While in the Mara for the last three days I talked with a border policeman at the Sand River Gate. He said that in the last week, Kenyan customs and immigration officials have arrived with new vehicles, housing materials and new radios.

He claimed that the Sand River Gate, which links Kenya’s Mara with Tanzania’s Serengeti, is about to reopen after more than 30 years.

This corresponds with COMESA’s (the organization of East African states) announcement last month that trade in many industries, including tourism, was going to be facilitated by reduced tariffs and import/export regulations.

This would be fantastic. We could again accomplish our circle tour of both countries, without encountering the huge local air costs now associated with doing so.

My family safari, for example, was at Ngorongoro Crater before ending in the Mara. The Mara is about 160 miles north of where we were, through the Serengeti. But instead of this obvious direction, we had to double-back to Manyara, fly to Kilimanjaro Airport, then fly to Nairobi, and then take a third flight into the Mara. This was not only time-consuming, but very expensive.

The history of the closed border goes back to a dispute in the late 1970s. That dispute no longer exists, but Tanzania discovered that by closing the border it could accelerate its own tourist development by excluding the dominant local Kenyan companies from monopolizing the market.

That was a very reasonable position to take, particularly 30 years ago when Kenya was the economic giant in the area and Tanzania was a crippled, failed socialist republic. And the strategy worked. But now that Tanzania is becoming its own powerhouse economy in the area, with agriculture and mining much more important than tourism, the jumpstart could be over.

The economic downturn demands these types of radical reorientations. Stay tuned. We’ve all got our fingers crossed!

Mara Family

Mara Family

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Family safaris usually occur at a difficult time for optimum game viewing. But the Mara won that game for us!

Understandably, most family safaris are scheduled for the summer school holiday. Spring break is often too short, and there are often kids in the same family with different spring breaks. And with U.S. schools starting earlier and earlier, especially the sports programs, the family safari usually takes place from the first of June through the end of July.

That’s not at the optimum time for game viewing. I still maintain that the game viewing in East Africa at any time of the year is better in East Africa than at any time of the year elsewhere, like in southern Africa. So for game viewing, in a sense it doesn’t matter.

The optimum game viewing in East Africa occurs in March and April (in the Serengeti) or in September and October (in the Mara). Variances in weather can extend or contract these windows. Our safari – like many family safaris – is happening in early July.

Quite apart from the anomalous drought that is happening, this is a tough time for experiencing the big herds East Africa is known for. No problem with elephants, but wildebeest, zebra, and the many other ungulates and antelope are widely dispersed as they navigate the end of a rainy season searching for better grasslands.

The best place to end a safari at this time is in the Mara. We ended it by exclusively occupying a wonderful luxury semi-permanent camp right on the Sand River. I’ve only been going to Sala’s Camp for several years, but it’s quickly becoming my favorite family safari camp for this time of the year.

Consider this. On our way from the Keekorok airstrip at around 430p, Monday, we managed to have a lovely tea stop on a hill overlooking vast stretches of the Mara, find six lions posing for photographs, plus find three cheetah on a recent Tomie kill beautifully framed by a dramatic sunset.

The cheetah kill was particularly fascinating. There were at least 150 vultures which had dropped out of the sky and were menacing the poor cheetah. Vultures hunt by sight, and this was their last opportunity before dark.

Cara Hopcraft, the camp host, was ready with a special welcome of hot towels, fresh lime juice, and hot water for showers! The camp is mildly lighted by solar, so as dark as it was, the tent was warm and welcoming.

Each tent is beautifully furnished and includes flush toilets. I especially like the little touches which I feel might not be so expensive or difficult to arrange, but indicate a care that so many camps lack. There was a little vase of local wild flowers on the vanity counter, the water bottles were beautifully beaded, and the clothes organizer was a simple drop-down canvas box considerably more useful than a huge chest. Flashlights, bug spray, and three kinds of shampoo and conditioner! Most importantly, for those of us who shave, the mirror was perfectly placed under the solar light to avoid before dawn lacerations!

“I really didn’t expect this,” young Dillon said, truly on behalf of everyone. But as I explained to everyone, “camping” in East Africa has morphed into something else. Part of the reason are the extraordinary fees that the park authorities demand for the right to camp in any fashion. So once that expense is incurred, the upmarket becomes the only reasonable demographic.

We stayed in the Mara for three days and nights. The first two mornings we had an early breakfast and then took a long 6-7 hour game drive. Our location right on the Sand River couldn’t be more beautiful, but it is somewhat compromised for optimum game viewing in the Mara. So the longer drives were necessary.

At this time of the year in the Mara, it is very cold. Ari and Hayley wrapped themselves in several Maasai blankets. The gloves that are on our preparation list, appeared at last.

We had fabulous game viewing. For one thing, the migration was arriving. Two weeks ago I greeted the first wave at the Sand River, and now more was on the way. It’s still very much the beginning, and the herds won’t concentrate until August, but everyone was very impressed. “I never expected this!” Leo told me waving his Tolstoy hat at a line of running wilde.

I was especially surprised and overjoyed to find rhino! Yes, authorities have been trying to reintroduce rhino to the Mara for years and years. We found a mother and calve who were very leery of us and disappeared after a few minutes in deep brush. We also found the tracks of another single rhino. This is impressive and certainly a highlight of this southeast area.

Add to the rhino a bevy of lion, cheetah, and for Carl and me, some very impressive birding. We definitely (I stand by it, fellow birders) found the black coucal and banded snake eagle, two extraordinary finds.

But probably for the family, as successful as was our game viewing, the volleyball games with the camp staff on the Sand River, and the trampoline antics in the afternoon were just as memorable. I sat one afternoon with Grandma Marian on the cliff above the river watching the kids (and their parents) having extraordinary fun. But we all stopped short of insisting that Conor perform his famous break-dancing; he was, after all, a few years out of shape having joined his folks on safari from the boondocks of Guinea where he is a Peace Corps volunteer.

It was hard ending the safari. Everything seemed to have worked so well, and the two families who didn’t know one another before the trip had now become very close. As a last hurrah and fabulous surprise, Irene had carved out of the river sand two remarkably realistic crocodiles! We’d seen them on the Mara. At first glance it was kind of scary!

A good vacation anywhere broadens beyond its theme into memories that could be created anywhere in the world. A good family safari must have the wonderful game viewing we accomplished, but it doesn’t have to be the best game viewing of the year. Good lodges and camps, memorable occasions like sundowners and relaxing conversations around an isolated camp fire, and the warmth of new friendships might occur anywhere in the world. But when it happens in East Africa, ending at a place like Sala’s Camp in the Mara, it ranks right up there with the best family vacation possible anywhere!

Crater of Cats

Crater of Cats

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This is not the best time to visit Ngorongoro, because so many of the animals have left during the dry season. And that meant for us, lots of cats!

Travel brochure description is a communication form that is often low on truth. And economies often motivate the travel companies to use the same description of a place – like Ngorongoro Crater – regardless of when during the year a visit might occur.

That might be understandable, given Americans penchant for exhaustive competition for the best price in travel, but once unmasked the reaction is often just as wrong. You can’t go on safari at any time of the year in East Africa and be visiting the many places you should each at their own best times.

Ngorongoro and the Serengeti have their lowest animal concentrations in the last half of the year, during northern Tanzania’s single one long dry season. But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad time to go. If you also visit the places that are at their best when you go (as we did in the Mara), you’ll find that even the less-than-best times elsewhere can be lots of fun!

Many animals don’t leave. Like the cats. Our visit to Ngorongoro started as we drove up the driveway to our lodge, Sopa, on the west side of the crater. We were greeted by two young male lions walking down!

Their bellies were empty and they looked a bit disgruntled. Their new manes were yet to color, so they had an appearance almost of being angel lions! Clearly, they had been recently kicked out of their pride, and they apparently were contemplating becoming the new pridemasters of Sopa Lodge!

Our game viewing in the crater was truly wonderful. It was cat dominated, although we did see several rhinos, many resident wildebeest and had a beautiful picnic breakfast beside a lake filled with hippo. In fact, the lake was so beautifully filled with hippo that Bill tried to capture the whole scene by stepping further and further away until we had to corral him back.

Even as we ate breakfast, a cat hunt unfolded within view! We watched several females who may have been hunting zebra and buffalo that were hardly 150 meters away.

We also found one of the big tuskers near the forest, which I regret to report is diminishing so quickly that I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s gone in just a few years.

And the scenery of the crater, of course, never gives up its premier position in our memories. Chris is a painter, and her sketchbook start to fill with several pages of beautiful crater landscapes.

But the cats abound! Males on kills, females with cubs, disgruntled youngsters… it was truly a crater of cats.

Manyara Saturday

Manyara Saturday

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Saturdays are crowded in Lake Manyara National Park, but we still got a couple hours of fun game viewing in.

One of the really encouraging signs in Tanzania is how Tanzanians are using their own national parks more and more. I remember not too many years ago, you’d never see anyone but a foreign tourist exploring these national treasures.

Of course, development and time have helped. So have many foundations, like the William Holden Wildlife Foundation which take Kenyan school children into the national parks.

But it means that weekends are crowded. So I try to reduce the game drive to its main features, and that’s the hippo pool and views of flamingoes on the lake.

The hippo pool was much better than two weeks ago when I was here. Another mystery, since the lake was down. But again, the streams into the lake were flowing better than two weeks ago, the pelicans and yellow-billed stork were back (which means there’s fish in the lake, again). And so there were many more hippos, and they looked healthy… unlike Tsavo.

The cars were parked at one point three astride as visitors, locals and many school kids put their arms on the wooden fence and watched the 60 or so hippos in front of a backdrop of many other animals and birds.

At our picnic lunch Hayley jumped up screaming! Well, it wasn’t a cobra (remember, we’d just been at the snake park), but it was ants. And fortunately, not the really bad kind, just the really annoying kind.

We stopped at the viewing point on our way out of Manyara towards Ngorongoro. It seemed greener, although the lake was lower, but the few westwards along the escarpment was worth a portion of Bill’s camera photo chip!

Fabulous Tarangire

Fabulous Tarangire

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While much of the rest of East Africa is suffering in the midst of a serious drought, Tarangire though dry is still fabulous.

We entered the national park in the late afternoon at the northern gate, and we’d traveled hardly three minutes before we encountered the Watermelon Club.

The watermelon club is composed of 20 or so magnificent and giant elephant bulls that in a truly wild situation would not be hanging out, together. Now mind you, I think Tarangire is one of the wildest parks in Africa, but inevitably the park ends and civilization begins.

Tarangire’s civilization is composed of a lot of watermelon farms. We know from the elephant dung that a lot of these watermelons are ending up in the bellies of 6-ton tuskers. During the day the hang around the northern edge of the park and don’t seem to mind the thousands of photographs that ensue. They sleep, meander a bit, knock down a few trees, and wait for sunset.

Then, they raid the area’s watermelon farms. It may seem comical to us visitors, but it’s anything but funny to the farmers. It’s become a serious regional issue. Researchers like Anna Estes are trying to document the incidents and figure out what to do.

Everyone loved the encounter and we headed a bit more quickly than we intended to down to the river. Like all the freshwater rivers I’ve seen in East Africa this year, it’s flowing well. This one is born in the Silale Swamp, which the next day we would find appearing dry. Yet it’s flowing well. Similar to Mzima Springs and later, the streams that run into a now nearly completely dry lake in Ngorongoro Crater. Is this late rain? Or more ominously, the slow desertification of East Africa?

We continued along the river and encountered huge numbers of zebra, beautiful light, many giraffe, more ele and buffalo. The park was fabulous for both our days, here. It was also, VERY COLD. People don’t think of Africa as cold, no matter what our preparatory literature might tell them, and the truth is that it isn’t snowing. It’s more like the upper 50s. But without the air-conditioning and heating that we’re all accustomed to at home, the upper 50s feels like it’s snowing!

Pulled into Sopa at 7 p.m. Gathered at just before 8 p.m. and had a wonderful debriefing and then a pretty simple if awful dinner. Afterwards, Conor wanted to talk, so I did, including learning about his proposed bike trip across Mauritania. Didn’t get to bed until 10:30p and slept like a log.

Our second morning we were out at 6 a.m. in the BITTER COLD. But what a reward we had at the Silale swamp. Before we returned around 1 p.m. we’d seen about 200 elephant and as many buffalo. I was with Carl, Tim, Marley and Conor, and the others really empowered Carl and I to bird, so we found chinspot batis, red-faced crombec, crowned hornbill and all sorts of other things.

For “team mammal” we saw honey badger, not an easy find.

In the afternoon we were going to take it casually and end up on Tarangire Hill for the sunset, but as I was riding along in Tumaini’s car, we got word that a leopard was on display at Silale – exactly where we’d been that afternoon. We raced over the Boundary Hill Ridge and sure enough, a beautiful big female leopard was on display in classic pose on a lower branch of an acacia. It was stupendous. Charles raced back then again to the lodge to retrieve Hayley, who had stayed behind, so that everyone finally got a view of this most elusive of the cats.

We then completed our plan, perhaps faster than we should have, but there was time for everyone to stick their head into the hollow trunk of the Poacher’s Baobab, and to click quite a few pictures of a beautiful landscape and sunset from Tarangire Hill. That should have been it, but it wasn’t.

The road off the hill is tangled in high now leafless bush. It’s a narrow road, and we found that dusk was a time that the elephants used the road to climb the hill for the night. We waited in my car a long time before coasting silently down the road, but it didn’t work. One large female trumpeted and charged, stopping just meters from our car.

Tarangire’s wooded landscapes are beautiful. Its elephants are unbelievable and exciting, and the terrain including Silale Swamp one of the most magnificent on the circuit.

Overland Attractions

Overland Attractions

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

There’s a lot more to coming to East Africa than just to see animals, as I’ve often written. And overland travel increase those options even more.

Our day of travel from Kenya to Tanzania (from Amboseli to Tarangire) was made easier by the enthusiasm of everyone to do everything on the way! So we left very early, around 7 a.m. I was mightily impressed by this gun-ho group demeanor. The drive out of Amboseli reminded us of how bad the park is: parts of the drive were really little more than desert. I was reminded of villages in northern Cameroun near Chad.

And to make matters worse, we were on Kenyan roads. Now granted that there is a lot of road building going on right now, which has an appearance of something better than the last 25 years. But there was no road building from Amboseli to the Namanga border, and our three courageous Landcruisers were traveling with accomplishment over some of the worst dips, potholes, gutters and canyons I’ve ever seen in something dared to be called a road.

I suppose it was inevitable. I was with James in the front car and we stopped at a giant termite mound when the cell phone reception stopped and we could no longer see Bonface or Sammy in their respective Landcruisers.

Finally, there were a couple of antennas on my phone and I got through to Bonface. His car “had been defeated.” He had enlisted the help of a nearby Maasai village, but no one could restart the vehicle. Ari, Dillon, Marley, Tim and Hayley all piled into Sammy’s car which was on its way. We turned around immediately and headed to their defense.

It was only a few minutes and Sammy’s car was racing towards us like a true Kenyan matatu, now with 11 people in a 6-passenger vehicle, plus everyone’s luggage! According to Ari the Maasai weren’t very helpful, and during the attempt, she “killed eight flies.”

Despite the setback we actually got to Namanga pretty early, which is a definite plus, since border crossings between Kenya and Tanzania can take hours. Fortunately, this time it didn’t. Tumaini, Charles and Justin were waiting for us with our new set of Landcruisers; we pretty much sailed through customs and immigration on both sides when…

We met the Tanzanian road builders! The road from Namanga to Arusha is completely torn up, with heavy equipment looking even more enthusiastic than I’ve seen in Kenya. But torn up is the key phrase, and we lumbered to Arusha when we should have been sailing.

The drought effected areas continued most of the way. Erosion is one of Africa’s biggest problems, and just north of Arusha huge hunks of earth have been lost to overgrazing followed by erosion. Encouraging, though, was the area just north of Arusha which is being reclaimed by local landowners and citizen groups. Combined with new irrigation in the area, it transformed a desert into pretty agricultural landscapes. Kudus for Tanzania!

So despite all our problems we were at the Arusha hotel more or less on time, and several people walked around the town for a while as others changed money. We then headed to Meserani, as nearly everyone wanted to see the snake farm. We had a wonderful guide, and at the end of the tour, Marley, Bill, Dillon, Hayley and Ari got themselves draped with a (non-poisonous) snake for a few exceptional photos.

Marian teaches at Bank Street U in Manhattan and among her classes are some in museum use, management and design. She took several of her family across the street to the Maasai Cultural Center (the ticket for the snake farm allows free entry, there) and said she was pretty impressed.

After wolfing down our lunches and shopping at the curio store and Tinga Tinga gallery, we finally started our final leg into Tarangire National Park, arriving the welcoming baobab tree at the park gate around 4:30p. Game viewing hadn’t even begun and it had already been a pretty full day!