Tension in Tsavo

Tension in Tsavo

Tsavo is much drier than it should be, and coming now right after the last drizzles succeeded in falling, the veld is anxious and full of danger.

My second family safari of the season began with our arrival at Kilaguni Lodge in Tsavo after dark, and we really couldn’t see much on our drive into the lodge. No worries. After dinner, 30 elephant came to the floodlit water hole!

In this cold season it’s unnecessary to take a dawn game drive; almost unproductive. The advantages of waiting until after breakfast include not just that the animals and birds become active, again, but the majority of tourist vehicles are then off the road!

So we left Kilaguni at just before 9 a.m., and after a brief stop to view an ostrich, I saw lion up the road to the left. As we moved towards them, they raced away. That’s unusual for a Kenyan game park. Something was up.

We got close enough to see the entire pride of 7 adult lion skulking through the heavy bush, and even occasionally seeming to stalk a huge herd of buffalo that had crossed the road behind us. On closer inspection, though, there was no chance the lion were hunting.

Their bellies nearly touched the ground, they were so full. There was blood on their faces and thick red dust all the way up to their armpits. One female had an open wound on her left jowl.

Clearly, they had succeeded last night in a hunt of something big – maybe, a buffalo. Because even the gargantuan male (despite having hardly any mane on the top of his head and back) was totally full. They were all hyperventilating, and clearly, they needed water. They were heading to either the Kilaguni water hole, or another one nearby.

And probably so, were the buf. Therein was the true tension. Whether they had killed a buffalo or not from this family, there would be no love lost between these two competitors for Tsavo’s dwindling water.

Tsavo is probably one of the better parks for weathering the reverse of a storm, a drought. Because even as the grasses implode to dust, the many water sources usually flow to some degree, because they are fed by water off Mt. Kilimanjaro. Kili has benefitted from normal if better than normal rains this season.

But as we proceeded on our game drive, we could see the effects of no grass. We saw lots of hippo, including one in the Kilaguni water hole, but they were all dying. The buf looked weak, although I concede I would have expected them to seem weaker. Several reedbuck that we found at the now dry depression at Rhino Valley were limping, not as a result of being hunted, but the result of a pond animal’s joints hardening.

And there was not a single non-social weaver to be seen. Tsavo is generally filled with a dozen or more varieties of weavers, but they need fresh grass for their nests. We did see two social weavers: the white-headed and red-billed buffalo, but these weavers are messy house builders and comfortable with using dry twigs.

But everyone in Marion’s and Bill’s families were ecstatic, because the game viewing was so extraordinarily good. We must have encountered two dozen lesser kudu, many male, when usually we see none. Perhaps, this is because the thinning vegetation gives us the openings to see these diminutive creatures.

Zebra and impala still seem OK. Impala is a browser, and zebra will eat dead grass. Hopefully, they will continue to survive until the next rains.

Basically, anything fully reliant on grass might be doomed. I often remind my clients that it’s food – not water – which is the main arbiter of life on the veld. I counted 18 dead hippo during the day.

The water at Mzima Springs is only 6″ below normal, the normal at the underwater tank being just over 5′. It seems that Kili is still doing its thing. But the vegetation at this world renown place had been completed decimated. The bush was gone. Yellow-barked thorntrees were down and thinned out. We saw many crocs and monitors hovering around the dying hippo.

Later in the evening from Poacher’s Lookout we could see that the veld was beautifully green around the river that comes from Mzima and into the adjacent swamp. And lo and behold, in the same direction, it was thunder storming over the distant Chyulu Hills! Typical of this “drought”, there are areas getting very good rain.

It’s very hard to say what the threshold is here in Tsavo. I know from my last safari that the threshold in Samburu has already been exceeded. But here, where so much water remains available, it’s more difficult to judge.

Mind you the water is much less than normal. The Rhino Valley depression, the falling pools at Ngulia, Mzima as discussed above, and even Kilaguni’s own water hole are much lower than normal. But I doubt that like in Samburu, they will dry completely.

It is a time of predation, which for visitors is extremely exciting. And because of the thinned vegetation, the quantities and varieties of animals and birds that we saw on the first game drives was truly astounding!

But my heart aches for the veld.

Nairobi Museum

Nairobi Museum

For all the stress of Nairobi, the city, its stellar museum makes it all worthwhile.

My second safari of the season, the Howard and Godfrey families, arrived unusually altogether on Saturday night. Like most travelers to East Africa, what they wanted to do was see animals, so I’d been unsuccessful suggesting a two-night stay in Nairobi to begin.

Two nights gives you a full day to see all of the city’s attractions, and they’re really nice: in order of my preference: the museum, walking downtown and visiting contemporary art galleries, the Karen Blixen Homestead, Giraffe Manor and Kazuri Beads. There’s also the elephant feeding at Daphne Sheldrick’s orphanage which is wonderful, but the 11 a.m. schedule in the Langata area often makes any other additional option then difficult.

So I made the decision that on our first day out of Nairobi, hardly 12 hours after everyone arrived, that we would visit the museum and the city, have lunch, and then bee-line it down to Tsavo. After all, it was a Sunday, the quietest day of the week, and I knew traffic would be manageable. I was … sort of right.

But the morning in the museum was a hit. I start with Ahmed, the huge (“hugest” according to Dillon) elephant ever found in Kenya. Guarded until its death a generation ago, it is now fiberglassed for eternity, and provides an excellent place to begin the fascinating discussion of elephants.

We then visit the gourd pyramid, where gourds from ethnic groups around Kenya are beautifully linked together as a demonstration of how varied the people of East Africa are.

But my favorite room is the early man exhibit, including what I really believe is one of the most phenomenally valuable exhibits of any museum in the world.

There are a number of excellent early man exhibits in museums around the world, and South Africa’s Sterkfontein Cradle of Mankind museum is probably the overall best. But what I find so wonderful about Nairobi’s exhibit is that they seem to keep it contemporary. When Michel Brunet published finding Toumai, what may be the earliest hominid ever discovered (6 mya), the display in Nairobi was changed pretty quickly to reflect this possibility.

The long glass display case of casts of early hominids is excellent arranged, with perfect, concise description. And it all begins with a hands-on exhibit of what a fossil is.

But the gem is the smaller, square and often sealed-off room that displays the original skulls of 7 early hominids including both Nutcracker Man and Turkana Boy. These are two of the most important finds ever made, certainly vying with Lucy for the most important ever. I think of the protection that Lucy received during her recent world tour, versus the trust that museum officials in Nairobi accord their visitors who stick their noses up to the glass of these invaluable fossils.

I think everyone was pretty pleased with the tour. We followed it with a walking tour of Nairobi and lunch at the Stanley’s Thorntree café.

I hope they were, anyway. The subsequent drive into Tsavo on the “new” Mombasa road was a nightmare. The truck traffic was unbelievable. More on this in a later blog.

Migration Arrives!

Migration Arrives!

Tour operators and property owners await the wildebeest migration into Kenya’s Mara from the Serengeti like most Kenyans await the rains. Well, it’s arrived!

Kenya’s Maasai Mara at any time of the year is a fabulous place to game view. The gently rolling grasslands, numerous watercourses and occasional tall hill provide all the conditions for outstanding animal viewing. But it is the fact that the Mara is the wettest place of all East African protected wildernesses that seals the deal.

Last year I was privileged to be in the Mara on June 16 when the first several thousand wildebeest straggled across the Sand River towards Keekorok Lodge. The privilege continued this year with my first family safari of the season when ten or twenty times as many surged into the entire bottom southeast of the Mara on June 23.

Whitney, the grandfather, had been on one of my Serengeti migration safaris before, and he so wanted his family to experience something similar. I knew this, and he knew that a June safari anywhere in either Tanzania or Kenya is iffy with regards to the migration. This is because the migration is triggered by rains and no-rains, and predicting the weather – especially in this erratic period of climate change – is very difficult.

Whitney and Ada had experienced the optimum, so we all knew we couldn’t achieve that. Almost all the wildebeest herd is found in the southern Serengeti in March and April. In the best of years, less than half that number reach Kenya later on. But like so many family safaris, the schedule has to be determined by the children’s school year and summer schedules. So, we crossed our fingers.

As I’ve written many times recently, East Africa is in the second year of a dry spell, which in some places is a true drought. The Serengeti has experienced a similar patchwork of rains and no-rains, with the large majority of the area much drier than usual.

But the Mara is as wet as ever. Now an important word of caution. Many of the Mara’s river, including the Mara itself, are fed in the escarpments and hills west and north of the park where it’s been miserably dry. So the rivers are very low. I really must admit that I’ve never seen the Mara River so low, and this will likely have a number of significant effects.

But rain over the grasslands has not stopped. The grass in the southern part of the park is nearly four feet high. The Sand River, which is fed by run-off of the rains, is actually more than its usual trickle. That’s all the wildebeest needed to know.

I saw huge lines of wilde down the main Lobo road with my binoculars on June 24, so we decided to alter our program and take our morning game drive on June 25 towards the Sand River gate. This is the southeast most part of the Mara.

What a brilliant idea, even if I do say so myself! The massive herds – much larger than last year – were surging across the river into Kenya. We arrived around 7:30a, and I expect the surge began sometime the night before, because hyaena were having a heyday. I saw a jackal and a hyaena eating side-by-side! That’s ridiculous, and it meant there was so much food available that their normal enmity had been overcome.

There were rib cages, legs, feet, hides of wildebeest all over the place. This area of the Mara doesn’t usually have this high density of hyaena, but they knew, just as they know when birthing is about to begin.

This is an area of beautifully defined rolling grasslands that are separated by deep valleys. Most of the area was filled with wildebeest, “little black dots” as Ezra would explain. But yes, thousands and thousands of little black dots.

Getting close was so much fun. The wildebeest sonorous and quite varied speech is called “blarting” and is so enticing I’ve never had a customer who hasn’t tried to blart back!

We obtained permission to go through the gate towards Tanzania. Hardly 50m from the gate we encountered three lion, sated to the extreme, in the high grass. What was so comical was that there were several hundred wilde about 20 feet away from them! They couldn’t move, they were so full.

Later we’d see a beautiful male lion casually dining on a less than fully butchered wilde. His mane was among the best I’ve ever seen.

We drove up to the old, scratched cement sign which towers above the road and says, “You are now entering the Serengeti National Park. Welcome to Tanzania.”

That brought waves of nostalgia for the days before 1978 when we could proceed into the locus of the herds, which was undoubtedly between Balanganjwe and Lobo. But no longer. Since then, you can’t cross between the two countries at this point. So we turned back, yet euphoric at the wonderful experience we’d been having that morning.

Even had the migration not arrived, the Mara would have pleased us all. We found leopard, so wonderfully in the open during the morning, that you couldn’t have wished for better. We saw collections of animals – topi, impala, hartebeest, wildebeest, zebra, giraffe – framed by the little hazy mountains of a distant horizon that the Mara is so famous for.

But true, even in this economic downturn, the Mara seemed crowded. Much less than in year’s past, but infinitely more than during my migration safaris in March and April when we seem to have thousands of square miles to ourselves.

As the day ended on Lookout Hill above our camp on the Sand River, everyone paused to watch a spectacular sunset. A sun, hidden moments before by thick clouds, appeared just above the horizon as a deep red-orange orb that flared the sky with pastel blues and mauve and streaks of red. “We couldn’t have asked for better,” Whitney said.

I agree.

Dream Crater

Dream Crater

The crater just never fails. Even now when drier than normal, we had the game drive of our lives!

As usual, we were first down. Which is a substantial effort, especially now in the cold season when three sweaters and gloves barely keeps you warm. The rim was shrouded in thick cloud and there was mist.

When we got down on the floor and headed towards the Mugie River before the ranger mound, it was still pretty dark.

I saw a lot of hyaena. Too many hyaena for there not to be a kill nearby. We moved further down the road, and hardly 100 meters of the road were nine lion in a food feast.

They had killed a young wildebeest and were dispatching it with great efficiency. One female had had her fill and walked away with blood on her chops. She got another 100m away and started to call for her cubs, who seemed to pop out of the tall grass. She took them further away.

But the remaining eight went at it with vigor. A yearling wildebeest is not enough for a pride this size, so they ate much more of the kill than they might normally. Before it was over, younger cubs were taking legs away.

Towards the end of the feast, we saw a magnificent male with a huge mane appear from the Mugie River and start towards the kill. The lions on the kill seemed nervous, and the male stopped several times, as if he were being very cautious about approaching.

At first I thought it was one of the brothers who live together near the river. If so, there would be, as Ari put it, a “rumble in the jungle.” We all got very excited, and the cubs seemed to move away from the kill as he approached.

But I was wrong. His belly was full and he must only have gone down to drink before returning. There were some grumbles, but he was licked by the youngsters that he would have killed had he not sired.

That was only the beginning of a fabulous crater game drive! I was with Nicky and Ezra. Ezra went nuts at the kill and Nicky went nuts later counting wildebeest! We saw a lot of wildebeest, zebra, gazelle, another lion with very young week-old cubs, two big tuskers and a cheetah!

The crater just never seems to fail. It’s drier than usual, as everything is, but there are good fresh water streams into the central lake. Despite it being very small, there were still flamingoes.

Our experience in Tarangire, Manyara and Ngorongoro, suggests that there were heavier than usual and later than usual rains, but that there is a still a serious deficit of rainfall over the last several years. Let’s hope it improves.

Lion Failure

Lion Failure

There’s an impression from TV that lions are perfect hunters. We discovered otherwise!

On our day driving from Tarangire to Ngorongoro, we did the mid day game drive in Lake Manyara National Park. More than any other park, I love the forests here and would visit it even if there weren’t a single animal.

The forests contain a huge number of tree species, many towering into the sky and many wrapping around themselves like strangling figs. The leaves on many plants are huge, and Sykes monkeys and silvery-cheeked hornbills are everywhere.

We go here to see the hippo pool, and we weren’t disappointed. Clearly, all of East Africa has not had good rainfall, but this is not an area in drought. The streams are running well through the park and everything is green. Yet the lake is remarkably small, and there are even grasslands growing at places that use to have water. I hope this isn’t a long-term permanent phenomenon.

But there was plenty of water where the main stream meets the lake, and lots and lots of hippo. When I was here in March, it was parched, and there were very few. So there was a bit of recovery.

Afterwards we went towards lunch and stopped before the Msassa turnoff on the cul-de-sac that sweeps onto the plains. They were filled with wildebeest, zebra, and a line of giraffe walking slowly along the lake shore.

Then, we saw the lion. Lion in the grass. I was with our only real photographer on the trip, Michael, and he pulled out his long lense. Soon, we realized the lion were hunting.

Later we would learn that there were four mature lion downwind from the lead hunter who was crouched in the grass. This is a pretty standard hunt for lion: one places itself really close to the oncoming prey and will chase it into the others.

We were some distance from them, and so in binoculars and through long lenses it looked like a huge female giraffe walked right over the lion in the grass! Why didn’t she spring?

Because coming right behind was her teenager. Had the lead lioness waited all of three more seconds, I’m sure she would have pulled down the youngster, but she sprang too early.

The youngster bolted away, and mother came running back, her feet kicking before she even found the lioness. Other giraffe joined here. The mature lioness waiting downwind got up, dejected, and the lead hunter headed back to her cubs who were waiting patiently under a small acacia tree much nearer us.

The veld now knew the lions were there. Wildebeest and zebra ran way. The lions walked somberly back towards the cubs. They’d be able to do nothing, now, until dark.

Michael took 198 pictures of the event! How sweet is digital photography?

Bingo at Tarangire

Bingo at Tarangire

Yes, it’s dry, and that’s when Tarangire really performs. And boy, how it did on this safari!

We flew into the Kuro airstrip after several event less flights from Samburu, arriving in mid-afternoon with my Tanzanian crew waiting patiently. When we were flying in, I noticed a huge number of elephant at the Silale swamp, so about half of us went straight there.

No disappointment doing so. We saw about 250 elephant, and on the way back to Sopa Lodge there were a few charges, a couple hundred buffalo, untold numbers of impala, and in the fading light of the day, a mother lion with two cubs!

Tarangire is becoming a better and better park. Once thought to be extremely seasonal, good only when the dry season attracted the large number of elephant, it’s really matured into an all-year park.

Despite the guidebook remarks that it remains seasonal, I’ve seen hundreds of elephant here in the middle of the rainy season. But yes, in the dry season it’s unbelievable! We saw perhaps a total of a thousand elephant during our two days, here.

Ellery, Zancy and their mother, Joannie, and I were with my driver, Winston, for the next morning when we explored the northern half of the park. I can’t say a lot for the quality of Sopa Tarangire, but its location is the best of any lodge or tented camp in the park. It allows us to explore both the southern (Silalae) and northern halves in two days. It really isn’t possible to do so at any other lodge or tented camp.

We left at 630a with a box breakfast and headed along the eastern river road. Later, when the group visited the famous elephant researcher, Charles Foley, at his camp in the north, we’d learn that there is really a division between the elephants in the north and south, and that they rarely intermingle.

We had seen quite a few elephant before turning down the Lemiyon circuit onto the black cotton soil plains in the northeast sector. There we encountered large numbers of zebra and wildebeest, and then, 19 lion! Tarangire has only recently begun to support such large prides.

We then headed down a gully road and I saw a massive bull elephant coming down the road towards us at the top of the hill. We stopped under a tree, fully shaded. The wind was with us, off the ele. Ellery, Zancy and Joannie were terrific. There wasn’t a peep or a movement.

The ele came lumbering towards us unaware of our presence and stopped only about ten feet away. After a moment’s hesitation he drew nearer.

Zancy was standing up through the open top of the Landcruiser opposite the driver, Winston, and I was right behind him. The ele came up to the rover and put his trunk on the hood. I could no longer see the sky. All I could see was elephant.

Zancy didn’t move or utter a sound, but his eyes popped out of his head and his jaw dropped to his already very low Bermuda shorts. None of us moved. The ele scraped around the right side of the car and snorted. Ellery’s massive curls got a moment’s unexpected spa-like blow dry. Then, he went away.

Old bull elephants are always easier to encounter like this than younger ones, or females, or any in a group. But it’s not something you do casually, and it’s not something to be done without the utter discipline that my wonderful clients exuded on this terrific morning with the ele!

Beautiful Sasaab

Beautiful Sasaab

In the earliest days of African travel, visitors came to hunt. Later, they used cameras instead of guns, but animals remained the principal reason. Today travelers are more interested in a wider experience, and one that includes real R & R as well.

Animals remain the main reason an American would choose an African safari vacation. But today there is a growing interest in the peoples and cultures of the area as well, both historical and contemporary. I often think this has something to do with the incredible availability of wildlife documentaries and the growing sensitivities of our increasingly stressed planet.

But within the last few years another motivation has become to appear: just good R&R.

That’s what vacations were always intended to be. The educational component of vacations really didn’t appear until the 1960s. Many Americans traveled to Europe since the earliest parts of the last century, but rarely then did they visit museums or have cliff notes on politics and society. They normally took cruises that rarely docked or found a single splendid villa in Florence to spend a month. It was, afterall, a retreat from the pressures and demands of a working life.

The more exotic destinations like Africa were never presumed to have a spa. Boy, has that changed!

There is hardly a lodge or even tented camp in Africa, today, which doesn’t have a full-time masseuse. And as travelers became more and more enamored of such amenity, the spa has become a virtually essential ingredient of any good property. And some properties are beginning to emphasize the “retreat” to R&R and spa, above animals.

Such is the outstanding remote Kenyan lodge, Sasaab. It’s also a community based tourism project with the local Samburu, assuring a mutually beneficial success to its own investors.

Sasaab is located west of Samburu National Park, in a remote part of Laikipia on the Ewaso Nyiro River. My family safari just spent two wonderful days here. Nine gargantuan rooms with 40-foot thatched roofs and individual plunge pools were all set on a bluff above the river with fantastic views of hundreds of square miles of Laikipia. It is absoluely conceivable that you would spend four days here not leaving your own little villa. The architecture is northern African Arab, perfect for the warm climate. The public areas are all open. The food is unbelievable and the hosts, Tony and Ali Alport, become fast friends to all who enter the massive arched entry from the long bumpy road from Samburu.

The children adored the big pool, the camel rides, the visit to the Grevy’s zebra orphange, and the climb to the top of a flat rock for sundowners. We did see game, including elephant, but it seemed secodary to the relaxing if breath-taking experience. Annie spoke for all the adults in the family when she said, “This is the most beautiful place I’ve ever stayed at.”

Dry Samburu

Dry Samburu

The weather in the Northern Frontier continues to tease us in a mean way, and I fear that a real drought has taken hold.

It use to be that droughts came about every ten years, were horrible for about two years, then quickly faded into memory. The last 4-5 years in East Africa has not seen the devastation of the last real drought of 1992-94, but more agonizingly, has hit certain areas even worse, while flooding others.

This extreme patchwork of weather is a blessing on the one hand, but is beginning to foment real fear among the local population that farming can no longer be planned. Northern Kenya starting around Mt. Kenya has been hit pretty hard since the heavy rains of 2003 flooded much of the area. And year after year since then, there are sections that have been utterly devastated.

This year it appears that one of those areas will be Samburu and Buffalo Springs national parks. Even as we watched heavy rains on Mt. Kenya to the south, the angry winds were creating dust storms in the parks.

From the Aberdare we headed to the Equator and stopped for the great fun demonstration of the coriolos effect. Then, to bargaining! Tourism is way down and prices are too, and India in her endless quest for all things orange, picked up a beautiful beaded shawl for ten bucks!

We then stopped at the Nanyuki Weavers for a full tour and the kids took time to disrupt the school day of the local primary school. As I’ve written before, I discourage “charity” of the sort most tourists would like to evince, (see blog of February 20 of this year), but on-the-spot generosity is heart warming.

The kindergarten kids literally mobbed Nicky, Phoebe, Emma, India, Ellery and Zanzy. They grabbed their hands, wanted rides on the shoulders of the older boys and posed for many of Ellery’s photos. Then towards the end of the “gathering” Nicky asked his mom, Hillary, if he could give them his football.

As the blue-and-white slightly undersize football soared into the playground to endless cheering, I think, too, a few of my clients souls soared just as high.

We continued on the Chinese road, a most amazing story that I wrote about in the blog of March 15 of this year. Its rapid development has slowed slightly, and so there are deviations along the way that take us back to the old road. Nicky delighted in these “bumpy” times!

For the time being, anyway, game viewing isn’t so bad despite the drought. In fact, there were some very unusual sights that worry me, but very much pleased my clients.

Grevy’s zebra is an unusual species found only in the northern frontier. It is seriously endangered even though its numbers have increased nicely in the last 4-5 years. There are now about 2700 individuals. In Samburu park, there would normally be around 200.

We saw at least 400, and in truly analogous behavior, they were herding. Grevy’s are normally solitary. This could mean that they are trying to migrate out of the dry area into the fresh and well watered areas of Mt. Kenya and Meru. On the other hand, it might just mean they’re all coming to the dry river’s edge, because that’s where the last grass is found.

I think they’re trying to migrate. But they’re going to have a difficult time this time, as the Chinese are completing construction of a main road from Isiolo north into the desert, and there is increased traffic and a lot of heavy equipment commotion. It’s still possible, but will undoubtedly confuse them.

Vulturine guinea fowl are the beautiful cousins of the very common helmeted guinea fowl, but this time we saw dozens more vulturine than common! In fact, we estimated seeing nearly 2000 vulturine guinea fowl. These are a desert species in the best of times, and their unusual congregation must mean that the drought is deepening.

We also encountered good numbers of oryx, Grant’s gazelle, lots of impala and baboon, and reasonable numbers of elephant. On the east side of the park, the Isiolo river continues to flow pretty well, actually creating a flowing stream under the Archer’s Post bridge and keeping alive the Lorian Marsh. The river is fed by underground streams and aquifers created by Mt. Kenya, an indication that the rains there weren’t completely bad.

And the wildlife in that area is wonderful. We found three cheetah on a Grant’s gazelle kill, and many beautiful reticulated giraffe.

But east of there, where our Larsen’s Camp and most of the other lodges and tented camps are located, the river is completely dry, since this area is fed by the Aberdare, and the rainfall there has been sporadic. Where elephant have dug wholes in the now dry Ewaso Nyiro River, the lodge staffs are beginning to. It’s the only way to save most of the animals.

Normally Kenya’s Long Rains end in June, but it continues to rain on parts of the Aberdare and Mt. Kenya. It won’t be able to break the dust of the drought of Samburu, but if it can restart the Ewaso Nyiro River, total devastation might be avoided.

Never to worry about the monkeys, however! India and Anne’s tent was invaded early one morning by the ever present vervet. The early morning cookies were taken, but according to India, Anne’s demonstrative screams saved them from further monkey destruction!

Forest High

Forest High

The Aberdare Forest is the perfect way to begin an exciting safari. There is a lot of game and beautiful scenery.

Most visitors to the Aberdare National Park travel only to one of the famous tree hotels, which we did on our second night. But our entire first day was spent deep in the park all the way up to the spectacular Karura waterfalls.

The Aberdare is a huge park, stretching almost 100 miles from Thomson’s Falls (Nyauhuru) in the north to east of Naivasha in the south. About 50 miles of east-west tracks link the west side with the east side, and the habitats traveled over this route are astounding.

We didn’t traverse the park, but rather entered from the east at around 7000′ through the Moi Nyayo Tea Estate into the middle forests just below the bamboo line. There was a lot of evidence of elephant, but we saw none.

We climbed through the bamboo forests, which were horribly dry and brittle, and encountered our first family of elephant at around 9,000′. The family of eight individuals was literally encased in white flowering bush shrubs that must have hidden a small marsh.

We continued onto the moorland bumping into Jackson’s francolin all along the way, but it was very dry and we didn’t see the mountain reedbuck as we usually do. Instead, we encountered bushbuck above 10,000′ which is rather odd. Once again, I think the unusual weather is contributing to the unusual animal situations we’re finding.

Near the top of the road, though, rain had fallen and it was quite green and lush. So the waterfalls were lovely, and it is a welcome half-hour trek from the carpark to where several viewing stands have been constructed. On the way back we had our box lunch.

The kids were much more adventuresome with our lunch than their parents! I showed everyone how to bite off the top of a passion fruit and suck in the seedy fruit, and India fell in love with the taste. She began trading parts of her lunch for fruit from others.

Ada remarked on how beautiful the park was, and that’s half the reason for the day’s outing. Peter said it was the most beautiful place he had ever been. It was a bonus when we descended into the heavy forests near the park’s edge and began seeing great game. We encountered several elephant families, a lot of buffalo, and more bushbuck and baboon.

But the highlight of the whole day was seeing several families of colobus monkey. The first sight of a colobus brought screeches of delight from Emma and Phoebe. Phoebe immediately pronounced the monkey the best animal in the world! They are truly striking, thick black coats covered with a long white manes. Their very long, bushy white tails fly among the forest as they leap from tree to tree.

We got to The Ark tree hotel just as a number of elephant arrived. After Zanzy got his requisite tea down, we went immediately to the bottom turret and watched fabulous elephant encounters as multiple families came to dig for salt.

Later, in fact, more than 30 elephant congregated on the salt lick at the same time, with remarkable behaviors as certain families met or remet others. There were very young babies, and the mothers combined to try to keep all the males away.

Until super-Ele arrived! One of the largest male elephants I’ve ever seen, he must certainly have approached six tons and stood 11-12′. The females didn’t try to move him out of the salt lick, and he went politely among the different families introducing himself to the special delight of the youngsters.

The day ended after dinner with giant forest hog and hyaena. Everyone left their buzzers on, which awakens you to anything special, but the day had been so exciting, not a soul stirred the whole night long!

Driving on Safari

Driving on Safari

A flying safari with no overland experience isn’t a good enough travel experience.

It’s become more and more popular, today, to fly from game lodge to game lodge in Africa and avoid the sometimes trying overland travel through Africa’s deteriorating cities and towns over some of its horrendous roads. That’s just as bad an idea as sending a kid from boarding school to boarding school, and moving up from suburb to glen to city skyscraper. You can move through life without ever knowing how most people live.

We’re all members of the Family Man on planet earth, and I think it extremely important to at the very least have a glimpse of how most of the world lives. One of the best ways to do this on safari is to drive – at least partially – from place to place.

In Kenya that’s an enormous challenge, since the country’s roads are in such poor condition. I thought it particularly funny this week that following the government’s announced budget where the ministers of various departments were told they could no longer have SUVs, but would have to use more fuel efficient, smaller cars, that there was an outcry from many of them. Some complained that it was beneath them to drive cars that “teenagers drive” while one minister in the government said in absolute irony that a small car wouldn’t do well, “because Kenya’s roads are so bad.”

My family safari began overland. I make a point to leave Nairobi only on Saturday or Sunday, when the traffic is only mildly chaotic. We traveled north past another slum, past the main city prison and then past the huge sports stadium on the outskirts of the city, which not even the poorest Kenyan resents having been built.

It takes a terribly long time to reach anything approaching “country.” Those who had read the book or seen the movie, Flame Trees of Thika, are startled when I tell them we’re approaching this supposedly idyllic country town. All the way to Thika is now urban and slum sprawl.

But shortly thereafter the highlands do present a picture of real beauty. Fortunately, this area has received a decent rainfall. The majority of Kenya hasn’t, but the central highlands look good. The banana and paw-paw trees, the blooming red flame trees and oodles of bougainvillea splashed on hills cut by running streams is a picture to remember.

This was Saturday, the biggest day for the Karatina Kikuyu open-air market. Everyday the market is incredibly colorful, run mostly by big Kikuyu women dressed to the nines, in colorful big poko-dot dresses selling as many varieties and colors of beans as the poko-dots on their dresses. There are stacks of custard apples, oranges, apples, figs, passion fruit. I bought everyone fresh slices of new pineapple that were delicious!

The market has a very small curio section that is mostly Kikuyu baskets often purchased by people in the highlands. They are gorgeous, and Ada, Joannie and a few others bought up the most beautiful ones. Whitney wanted one of the beautifully beaded belts made here, but unfortunately according to the wonderful lady who made it, he had eaten too much and she had none that would fit. She told him to change his diet to lemons and come back when he had shrunk enough!

Interaction with locals, wherever you travel, is an essential ingredient for understanding where you are. Without it, you simply carry your TV screen around the world. The Karatina market was a wonderful way to do this, but even just gazing out the window passing the confusions and blisters of a poorly emerging nation helps, too.

Global warming has given Kenya a patchwork of drought. From Nairobi to Karatina, the country was beautifully green as it should be after the Long Rains. But north of Karatina, including the Aberdare where we ended the day, is suffering a serious drought.

The dedicated staff of the Aberdare Country Club made it wonderful even in the midst of a drought. After we checked into this historic manor, some of the group walked with a guide through the backlands of the estate where there were many giraffe, waterbuck, warthog and impala. The lush grounds of the estate with its endless bougainvillea and mature flowering bushes was still good enough for a variety of beautiful sunbirds.

But even in this most protected of animal habitats I could see distress, particularly among the waterbuck, the first to suffer. It’s now been almost a year since they’ve seen rain.

Kids on Safari

Kids on Safari

Children will make just as big an effort to get on safari as adults!

Traditionally, American family safaris operate almost exclusively within the summer school vacation window, July and August. I try to push mine a bit earlier, since the game is better and the veld not quite as dusty and dry.

The Addington family really pushed themselves to meet this opportunity. Nicholas and Phoebe, 9 and 7 years old, with little sister Jane (4 yo) and Mom and Dad left school Thursday afternoon on its last day and a few hours later were on a plane from New York to London, and arrived Nairobi Saturday night!

The teenager triplets, Alex, India and Ellery (16 yo), and their little sister Emma (9 yo), crammed all their finals at school into one day (it was usually three), so they could be in Nairobi Thursday night to be able to sightsee in Nairobi, Friday.

We spent all of Friday touring Nairobi and environs. My Nairobi entry activities are all optional, because some people really need to wind down. So Saturday was split in two: morning and afternoon sightseeing. The morning sightseeing began at 9 a.m. Everyone was there, after having not hit the sack the night before until 10:30p.

We started at the national museum. A wonderful, unexpected attraction was to see the lines and lines of Nairobi school children on an important field outing. I explained to the kids on my safari that most Kenyan children never see a wild animal. One of the main attractions for them is the central exhibition hall with its huge display of stuffed big game.

We raced through the museum, noting the brilliant exhibit of the different gourds from around Kenya, representing the different cultures, tribes and languages. The floor-to-ceiling pyramid of more than 150 beautifully decorated gourds is an impressive lesson on how diverse the people of Kenya are.

It was then to the Early Man Hall. As I’ve written before, this is one of the finest exhibits in any museum in the world. The Cradle of Humankind near Johannesburg gets close, but Nairobi actually displays for the public seven of the most important original early hominid fossils, including Turkana Boy.

We then went into the city and walked the streets from Parliament to the Stanley Hotel. I’m able to describe history, politics and relay many funny stories on this section of the trip. We were really lucky to have such a beautiful, fresh day, too. At the Stanley we enjoyed their famous coffees, pastries and Stony Tangowizi for the kids, and took some time to look at the beautifully restored early colonial bar on the second floor.

An unexpected bit of excitement was when Ellery was stopped on the stairs of the New Stanley by a reporter from Nairobi’s hip talk radio, 91.5. Ellery is a soccer star at school, and the reporter wanted to know his impressions of the recent sale of Ronaldo from Manchester United. (Ellery thought the transaction was a bit excessive.)

The afternoon began at 2 p.m., with hardly an hour free time in between, and once again everyone was there. We traveled to the suburb of Karen and started at the Kazuri Beads Womens Cooperative before visiting Giraffe Manor. Even smaller Phoebe was photographed stroking the giraffe head which was easily twice her entire size!

I feel very strongly that visitors to East Africa need to see more than just animals, and this first day in Nairobi opens many eyes and hearts to the hopes and miseries of this wonderful place. You can’t drive to Karen from Nairobi without driving past some slums. And the traffic — what locally we call the “jam” – is an unbelievable reality of modern life in Africa. One porter at the Norfolk Hotel told me it takes him nearly 2 hours each way to commute to work, when five years ago it was only 30 minutes.

Needless to say, everyone was exhausted. Great way, I think, to attack jetlag!

Kenyan Youth?

Kenyan Youth?

The talk on the streets in Nairobi, today, is that all the Kenyan leaders have to go. Wipe the slate clean. Out with the old!

Kenyans are absolutely fed up with their government. No one’s attempted a poll, but my informal and unscientific survey of my friends here suggests 90% of Kenyans don’t like or want their leaders. And the remedy? Universally, everyone says young people must come forward to assume the reigns of power.

Of all East African countries, Kenya is the most tribal. The British colonial government supported the Kikuyu over all other tribes, giving them a leg up on development. The west supported the Kikuyu during the Cold War. So the ethnic divide was encouraged, even nurtured by the developed world. The old “divide and conquer” mentality.

It is striking that no matter how educated a Kenyan may be, their allegiance starts with their tribe. They buy their tribe, marry their tribe, socialize with their tribe and vote their tribe. Peace in Kenya comes when power is satisfactorily allocated tribally.

And like all historic tribal conflicts – northern Ireland Catholics or Balkan Muslims – over time these socio-religious divisions ultimately become economic ones as well. In Kenya, the Kikuyu are the rich and the Luo are the poor.

That’s a generalization, and to be sure, Luo politicians aren’t poor. But even as they race around town in their Mercedes, they champion those in the slums, those out of work, and those whose attempts to disengage from poverty seems hopeless. Because the majority of the poor are Luo. But there’s plenty of poverty to go around in Kenya, and of course it extends to many Kikuyu. But Kikuyu politicians are the free marketers, the small government champions, the ones who break the white collar laws the most often. The generalization that the Kikuyu are the rich and the Luo are the poor is more important than its qualifications.

But all politicians are rich. About the only project on which leaders from different ethnic groups cooperate is how to pay each other outrageous salaries.

And it may just be that this rich-poor divide is prying open the eyes of many Kenyans. Luo and Kikuyu leaders are all rich. And all are elected by a majority of people who are poor.

But what to do? Kenyans may universally disavow their leaders, but they seem unable to disengage from the tribalism that keeps taking them down the same, doomed path. No tribal-less leader has ever emerged. No man or woman has ever tried to appeal to a broad swath of Kenya. They all emerge from their own ethnic groups. When they finally reach positions of power, their main fortress is their tribe.

The wisdom of the street in Nairobi, today, is that everyone old has to go. Youth has to emerge. There is a real hope that some of the student leaders might emerge as the new political leaders.

I doubt it. In March, a hotly contested battle at the University of Nairobi for student council president, between David Osianyo (Luo) and John Ngaruiya (Kikuyu) was even financially supported by the country’s two main political parties, the PNU (Kikuyu) and ODM (Luo). The dissident student protest in March of this year, which disrupted traffic for a day and led to some serious police violence, was orchestrated by student David Otieno (Luo), and it was Kenya’s Prime Minister Raila Odinga (Luo) who gained most by the affair.

That’s sad. If the new “youth” leaders can’t come from the university, where will they come from? High schools?

Kids on Safari

Kids on Safari

Today I return to Africa for six weeks to guide two families, including some very young children. I’m often asked, is a safari a right experience for a kid?

I’m guiding two back-to-back families, one of my favorite guiding gigs. Kids are fabulous on safari. They’re uninhibited, socially immature, reactive – all the things we would want for a technicolor experience! They’re honest.

Parents and grandparents are constantly asking whether children can (a) take the long flights, (b) take the long rides, (c) have the attention span, (d) will eat the foreign food, and (e) will get sick.

The fact is that these are questions in many cases that the adults are asking about themselves. They are valid questions, but they don’t apply any more to children than adults.

Children are much more flexible than adults, and that’s probably why they do so well on safari. I’ll be guiding more than a dozen kids in the next 6 weeks, 10 of them are under 10 years old, and 2 of them are 5 years old. Frankly, I think an African safari is a better trip for a 5-year old than visiting European capitals!

Parents and grandparents often seem very concerned about whether the kid “is old enough to remember anything about the experience.”

There are quite a few seventy-year olds I guide every year who remember nothing. Some kids will remember; some won’t. (My own children seem to remember more about what they did on safari when they were 5 and 6 than I do!)

But more importantly, remembering an experience is not necessarily the most important thing. There must be thousands of important experiences a toddler will never recall, yet which shaped his personality and character. I can think of few better things in today’s myopic if xenophobic age than to thrust toddlers into alien, exciting environments, and to foment the idea that “different is good.”

And just as important, it’s what the parents or the grandparents will remember. The lives of parents and grandparents don’t stop just because they suddenly have children to care for. It’s part of our existence, our evolution to nourish and nurture, but not just our offspring, ourselves as well! We, too, learn from our children, and their perspectives during an African safari are absolutely some of the best there are.

I have often seen parents and grandparents reaching near moments of epiphany on safari as a result of something that a young child sa1d or did. That’s priceless.

The family safari is for everyone, not just the kids. And I can’t think of a more synergistic vacation, one that is likely to achieve a more memorable and lasting result, than an African Safari!

Is Kibo a good company?

Is Kibo a good company?

From TopNotcher22@

Q.    What do you know about Kibo Tours in Tanzania?

A.    Kibo is one of northern Tanzania’s better and more reliable companies, and also one of its more successful businesses, so if you’re planning a safari with them, you’re on the right track.  Like a number of equally good Tanzanian companies, though, it’s two main problems are that it offers no good services in any of the neighboring countries –  such as Kenya or Rwanda – and that it has no representation outside Tanzania.

Oil Spots

Oil Spots

A Tanzanian conservationist is denied entry to a Manyara tourist lodge, because it’s a “no-go for natives.” Can someone tell me what century we’re living in?

The immediate fault is with the Chinese, an almost off-handed exportation of the racism and exclusionism in their own society. The secondary fault is with corrupt Tanzanians, who are proving they’re almost as bad as the Kenyans. And the way was paved for it all by the fight for democracy by the west!

Let me link the dots in this wadoadoa.

Madoa mbukubwa
Last month, David Maige, gathered some of his family for an afternoon outing to Lake Manyara Lodge, one of the most beautiful places in Tanzania to enjoy a cup of tea. The lodge is perched on one of the most dramatic examples of the Great Rift Valley, directly over Lake Manyara National Park with spectacular views.

He was stopped at the gate by guards who told him that the hotel was a “no-go for natives.”

Maige, who was born and raised in Manyara and is now an employee of the national parks, reported the incident to Tanzania’s Minister for Tourism, Shamsa Mwangunga. As reported in Tanzania’s Guardian newspaper, Maige said, `Honourable Minister, as domestic tourists, Tanzanians are facing discrimination at the hotel. We are not allowed to approach the facility, let alone getting in and being served.”

Ms. Shamsa hightailed it up to Manyara, made a surprise visit to the lodge and confirmed the barrier policy. Over tea over the Great Rift, Ms. Shamsa was told by two property heads (again as reported in the Guardian), “Our hotel is close to a residential area, and so we felt it necessary to control unnecessary influx, taking into account that we have suffered three robbery incidents.”

Kali ya wadoa
The first three lodges built on the Tanzanian northern safari circuit were in the early 1960s by a Swiss company: one in Ngorongoro, one in the Serengeti, and the one under discussion at Lake Manyara.

By today’s standards they’re very simple, often called plain, but I’d rather think of them as Frank Lloyd Wrightish. The problem was that as soon as travelers began using them, they stopped working. The outside was beautiful, but the inside didn’t function. Water supplies had been poorly engineered, and it wasn’t too long before water rationing at all three lodges was in place. Sometimes not having a toilet is better than having one that doesn’t flush.

Less than a decade after they were opened, Tanzania and Kenya had the great fight that sealed the borders between the two countries. Kenya embraced Wall Street. Tanzania embraced the Rising Sun, and terrible shortages of all things necessary to hotel management were no longer available in Tanzania. Things went from bad to worse. Water rationing no longer occurred, because there was no water at all.

In those fateful days of the 1970’s, EWT would often bring food and water with our safari vehicles if we were staying at those lodges, which at the time were the only lodges there were.

Bad engineering. Loss of patrons. Complete lack of use. At 20 years old they were already museums.

Wadoadoa wa PingPong
As I’ve often written before, the 1980s heralded the RETURN OF CAPITALISM to all of Africa, including Tanzania. Today, Tanzania has some of the most beautiful lodges in Africa.

In days of swank and style, it was even harder to do anything with these three poor lodges. Most of the time, they were owned and operated by the Tanzanian government. You could get great deals and stupendous views without water.

To its credit the Tanzanian government tried everything to offload the albatrosses. A number of good companies partnered with the government to try to rehabilitate the lodges, including several very reputable South African companies, and even the giant French Accor company (that owns Sofitel and Novotel). But to no avail. Ownership went back and forth between hopeful private enterprises and the Tanzanian government.

Kidemokrasi kidoa… labda, kidogo
While all this was happening, prior to the end of the Cold War, the west had opened the bank vaults to any country willing to embrace “democracy.”

President Reagan instituted a new and very important officer in all embassies world-wide, the “Democratization Officer.” Democracy meant capitalism. The World Bank insisted that everything, even small little parastatals like organized big game hunting, be privatized. Aid flowed virtually without any accountability, if only the country gave the U.S. embassy’s Democratization Officer and the New Capitalism a rousing welcome.

Tanzania privatized mining. Airlines. Electricity. Big Game Hunting. But every day the American Democratization Officer came to work, those three historic lodges were still owned by the Tanzanian government. Shame, shame. More money, please.

U.S. Aid financed engineering consultants, business consultants, financial partners, ecotourism partners, and soon everybody was getting a little bit of American money to do their thing for these poor three lodges, and there were so many routes for funds that nobody could count the total.

Unbounded, unaccounted for, U.S. Aid. So lots of private people and companies owned, at least for a little while, these three lodges.

Still, no water.

One report by the IPP Media in Dar-es-Salaam estimated that the total inflow and outflow of U.S. and other western capital for these poor three lodges could have rebuilt the entire tourism industry in Tanzania multiple times over. What happened to all this money?

Not only in tourism, but in any industry with such rampant transfer of unaccounted for funds, a lot blew into the opened pockets of people positioned along the route.

Mafuta madoa
China has had a historic presence in Tanzania starting in about the 6th Century. Later, they built Tanzania’s railway. But the surge in capitalism in China meant China needs oil. BP Shell had long given up on the East African coast, but not China.

I’ve written recently how China may have discovered (or think they will) oil in northern Kenya. With mind-boggling speed, they built a road 300 miles into the desert to get ready. I have wished and dreamed for this road for 33 years. It happened in six weeks between two of my safaris!

In Tanzania, they’ve been looking and looking and looking for oil. Capitalism works best when you don’t admit it. But I must admit I can’t find hard evidence for the following presumptions, so in the spirit of true capitalism, here goes:

In January, 2007, I took one of my safaris into the Ngorongoro Wildlife Lodge (one of the poor, little hotels) for tea and a terrific view. We had heard the lodge had just shifted ownership, again. There was a bunch of young Indian Tanzanians in the lodge looking very hopeful. I asked what they were doing, and one gave me a card that said “Hotels & Lodges, Ltd.” and identified himself as the new owner. But he wouldn’t give me his name, and there was neither a name nor contact address on the card!

The rumor on the circuit — recounted to me multiple times — was that an Indian Oil Exploration company that was owed a lot of money by the Tanzanian government to help China find oil, was given these poor three lodges instead of cash. If I didn’t have to spend so much of my time finding lions, I would be deeper into Google to prove it. Any help will be appreciated.

China’s method for doing business in Africa is exemplary capitalism: “International observers say the way China does business—particularly its willingness to pay bribes … and attach no conditions to aid money—undermines local efforts to increase good governance,” claims the Council on Foreign Relations in its excellent June, 2008, monograph on China, Africa & Oil. Sounds like the Chinese would make excellent Democratization Officers.

Mwisha Madoa
In March last year, I took my group again to the Ngorongoro Wildlife Lodge for tea and the great view. There were guards at the door who didn’t want to let us in, this time.

There was construction going on, they said, and it might be “dangerous.”

I saw workmen. They were Chinese workmen. And they were wearing pyramid straw hats. I managed to get in, anyway, and I was told that tea was no longer Tsh. 1000/- (about 10 U.S. cents), but now U.S. dollars 5, because it was “now good tea from China.”

I paid U.S. dollars 5 for each glass of tea. It wasn’t any better. The view was outstanding as always. And in between looking over breath-taking Ngorongoro Crater, I chatted up the barman who said the Chinese now owned the hotel and we’re remaking it for Chinese tourists expected to flood into Tanzania faster than crude out of the Zanzibar reef.

“Can I come back?” I asked meekly.

He wasn’t sure I’d be let in the next time.

I’ll be trying again in a few weeks. I’ll let you know.