I was very worried. To begin with I don’t particularly like the dry season. The enormous amounts of dust kicked up by the rovers when traveling is constantly irritating, but more generally I just don’t like seeing the beautiful veld so dry and stressed.
The silver lining is that the cats are in their heyday, picking off weakened animals like flies.
We were ready to leave the crater at the end of the game drive when Tumaini noticed far away near the down road a huge group of wilde running down the side of the escarpment.
We stopped and turned around and with my binocs I could swear I was in the western corridor watching a couple thousand frantic animals in their endless search for better grass. But we were far, far away from that place.
Tarangire was much wetter than usual but cold as usual. The odd combination kept the tse-tse somewhat at bay but really reduced our finding the transitory elephant in the southern half of the park. The northern half was chock-a-block full of elephant as always, and that’s where the most productive game viewing was.
On the way to our Sopa Lodge we passed elephant fighting on the rim and arrived just before dark.
The day in the crater was wonderful. I love these margins of the season, when the tourist rush hasn’t yet totally clogged out the crater and a drizzle every now keep the beautiful yellow biden-biden blooming so that the veld is covered in yellow.
When we went down there weren’t many wildebeest. We saw lots of zebra and quite a few lion – all fat and sassy from previous kills – but as we ended the morning a long line of wilde ran down the side along the down road.
They were kicking and blarting and the males were still actively rutting, which should have already come to an end. I couldn’t figure out why so much commotion and such clear migratory behavior in these 400 or so wilde, since they were headed in the wrong direction!
But that’s … nature! With so many beasts there isn’t an uniform movement, and for some reason this group – totally healthy and enthusiastic – either got turned around by a bee or the smell of new grass on the crater floor.
Whatever it was it was great fun to watch them. I’m having a particularly wonderful time, since this is my family. I guide a family safari every ten years. This was the 4th one!
From here it’s on to my favorite place in the world, the Serengeti. Stay tuned.
[Apologies from the bush. My laptop is having serious problems, and I’m going to great lengths to post blogs. Will do my best!]
The State of the World, or … the fight between Nadler and Trump, is beautifully encapsulated by the volumes of reports being issued to mark this World Press Day:
We’re losing control of truth. Worse, we’re ceding our individual determinations of truth to media and the political leaders they support. This trend is most dramatic in Africa where in a mere five years the majority who vigorously supported press freedom no longer do.
Africa as my lifeway’s platform for roughly 5 months annually during the troubled times of the last few years has radically changed my view of democracy.
Last week Rwanda celebrated the first quarter century in possibly a thousand years without a mass genocide. The Sudanese Army fired on the Sudanese secret service last night to protect opponents of the government.
The avowed communist state of Ethiopia last year implemented a series of human rights protections that may be the most progressive on earth. All of these stellar human rights’ accomplishments were in totally undemocratic regimes.
The rains had finally restarted. For at least a month before they finally returned the buffalo in the crater wandered back and forth searching for every blade of grass that still grew. Cyclone Ida had stolen every drop of water from East Africa for her tempest against southern Africa.
The ton-heavy buff could withstand a month or so with little to eat. They’d spent their lives chomping down 20 kilos of fodder daily, building the most formidable muscles on the veld, and the crater still had good sources of water and salt.
Seventeen very intrepid and persistent safari travelers found the migration with me, today, big time. We figured out how the unusual weather has impacted the herds, and we spent several awesome hours just driving slowly through them, observing thousands and thousands of wildebeest.
The Old Man Giraffe was all alone. Easily stripping the delectable little acacia leaves from the healthy branches, his old tongue only occasionally got stuck on one of the thick thorns the tree used to try to deter him. In fact he had his choice of dozens of blossoming trees! He was the only giraffe we saw all morning long in Lake Manyara National Park. We usually see 20-30.
Climate change is not just hot and extreme weather, but peculiar weather. I walked into my tent in Tarangire National Park yesterday at 530p at it was 93½ F, about ten degrees above normal. Tarangire which should now be lush and green and fresh with blossoms is hot, dry and dusty.
But all over the place is water! The Tarangire sand river has running water! (It’s normal to be dry on top of the sand; water runs under the sand most of the time in Africa’s great sand rivers.)
There were ponds of water and wallows almost everywhere. My group had an exceptional introduction to amazing Africa as we watched for some time around 200 zebra race into a water hole, freak, race out, turn their funny heads back to the water in amazement there had been no lion or python, and race back into the pond! Again and again!
This strange situation, where the veld the temperature and air feels like a drought but the veld holds so much water, is precisely because in January and February there was too much rain.
This is really, really peculiar. Now the animals seem to be doing quite well with it. In addition to the hundreds of zebra, we watched with great excitement around 35 elephant saunter out of the river towards a very big sausage tree under which was trying to hide a very concerned lioness.
Ele don’t really see after they’re 12 or 13 years old, but their other senses are beyond belief. We watched anxiously until the one ele finally noticed the lioness.
The ele turned with ears out and flipped her trunk at the lion as if to throw a rock. After a single trumpet practically every elephant in view starting running towards the poor lioness!
She got away, of course, but she was very, very embarrassed.
The safari ended at the most popular foreign tourist attraction in East Africa, Ngorongoro Crater. Greener than nearly everywhere else we went, the veteran safari traveler who organized the trip, Steve Farrand, said it was the best game viewing on the safari and the best he’s ever seen in the crater!
Steve’s assessment reflects the current “almost-drought” situation on the circuit and the unique advantages that game viewing has when the veld is dry. I wish it weren’t so dry. It shouldn’t be.
We finished four days and hundred of miles through the Serengeti, found the migration in multiple places and ended for our last two nights at Tanzania’s famous Crater Lodge.
It’s unusually dry. Not yet a crisis it will become so if widespread rain doesn’t develop, soon. We arrived the crater in a rainstorm, so that was obviously good news. But the day that preceded our arrival was a dust bowl.
Equatorial weather is the most complex in the world: jetstreams tangle with each other from every direction. Weather forms but doesn’t move; the thunderstorm grows over you ominously and then dumps itself out of existence.
But climate change has turned the complex into chaos. We found the migration. Over two days we saw about 100,000 wilde and zebra; 400 eland; 10,000 gazelle and the count continues tomorrow as we head east from Ndutu onto the Lemuta Plains.
We enjoyed our final breakfast today at Gibb’s Farm in the highlands surrounded by tons of flowers.
Thursday I leave for seven weeks of guiding safaris in Kenya and Tanzania. Stay tuned! I try to post as often as I can!
A 19-year old who beheads an older man, then freely confesses to having done so, strikes me as less evil than desperate or dangerously manipulable. It’s a sign of our times.
The situation happened last week in Tanzania’s Tarangire national park, not far from the upmarket Swala camp. The area is at the edge of the park immediately outside of which is an agricultural village suffering climate change challenges. The boy was in a poaching gang and the village elder he beheaded allegedly had reported him to game rangers.