OnSafari: TSA Unhappy But Unarmed

March 2, 2015March 2, 2015 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

It’s not just America arming itself to fight extremism. Lesson learned in Schiphol today.

I’m on my way to Africa for two months of guiding safaris. (Follow this space for some of the most fun and exciting safari stories you’ll find!) But yesterday and today is the dread of all far-distant travelers: traveling, that is.

It will take me just under 18 hours in an airplane to get to Joburg, my first destination, and I was enormously relieved when Congress funded DHS at least until I and my safari clients got out of the country. I actually chatted with one very disgruntled looking TSA agent at O’Hare.

It was a provocative question I posed: are you a Republic or a Democrat?

He almost laughed and then caught himself, but he managed as most any public employee within a hundred miles of Chicago would say, “Democrat” but then added looking away from me, “but all those bums ought to be strung up.”

I worry about TSA and other supposed security frontline personnel guarding us travelers when their livelihood is so threatened. What the powers-that-be don’t understand is that even the finest middle class, hard working souls in this day and age often live month-to-month.

A halt in pay, even temporary, is not fun.

My second surprise came in the lovely country of The Netherlands where I’m waiting now for my next flight. The airport has armed guards.

Of course I remember this from the other times I’ve flown through Schiphol, but I forget it quickly. I don’t remember our TSA armed, although some may be.

The war against whatever is worldwide and it’s scary, and it seems to me one of the best strategies our would-be enemies might employ is simply feeding some right wing Republicans a red meat enticement, like … your immigrants are going to take you over!

On to Africa!

Pretender or Defender

December 16, 2014December 16, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 3 Comments

Once upon a time going on safari meant two weeks in a Landrover TDI110 “Defender” literally in the bush: no roads.

You found trails, usually elephant paths, and plowed your Landrover TDI110 “Defender” into the wild.

With roads and government tariffs and mercantile competition and especially, with tourists who are terrified that traveling off roads is what al-Qaeda wants you to, who need room for 30 pounds of cosmetics and hair shampoos, who schedule their spinal epidurals depending on air fare sales, who are allergic to Wonder Bread and need additional room to bring their sleep amnea machine and additional plugs in the cab for their kids’ Xbox …

… the “Defender” has died. “Long live the memory of the Defender!”

I still manage to slip real bush into some of my safaris, although I often play it by ear because many of my clients today would have a heart attack if a little cricket jumped on them.

But in the main I don’t. Nobody does. You don’t fork out ten grand to feel like you’re riding a jackhammer.

Once upon a time, we didn’t mind, but no one would tell you that the Defender was comfortable – it wasn’t. But that was a machine! You could drive it up a boulder. (Coming down was the problem.)

The Defender was expensive. Being so tough meant that we constantly challenged it, and so often man the ultimate defeated the machine and the machine had to be fixed. That was difficult: it was soooo expensive.

Even 20 years ago a simple universal joint exceeded most safari’s net costs. And it was hard to explain to clients that it was noble that, in fact, they couldn’t move for a while.

I mark that as the point at which Landrovers began to decline in popularity. It was about 20 years ago and spare parts were so expensive that clients would often get into the car and then not be able to go on safari because it wouldn’t start.

So in comes the New World, that is the new world of automotive mercantilism which in English is “Toyota.”

And shortly after “Toyota” came “Nissan.”

And Defender was overwhelmed by Pretender. They were so cheap. And besides, there were now roads, and the Toyota stretchie does pretty well on roads and it can easily be modified to carry cosmetic cases.

Modified is the key. Yes the Defender could be modified, but it was hard work, because it was thick metal. Toyota’s and Nissan’s metal is a tad better than aluminum foil, and there are a myriad of things you can do with such pliable material: origamy, for instance.

You can also add extra seats and stretch the sides and stretch the length, ergo the nickname “Stretchie.”

You can cut out the roof then put it back on extenders so people can stand up and pretend they’re on the subway.

You can have all sorts of kinds of seats: pillows and cushions and even ones that warm themselves.

Windows is a problem we’re working on. When a vehicle is changed so much, the preformed window sometimes doesn’t work so well, but not to worry, stand up and look out.

So what has happened to my Defender?

Landrover is not to be displaced from modern times. It began after World War II, a copy of a military jeep, which farmers needed in Wales to defend themselves against Northumberlers. Ever since that courageous moment of birth, Landrover has evolved with the times.

So today, you’ll find these legendary machines mostly in mall parking lots, because it is today what the Landrover does best, defend its owners against obscurity.

On safari, we’ll make do with the “Pretender.” Bring on that Lacombe! We can handle it!

But ode to awesome, what a machine that was!

OnSafari: Dispatch from Ethiopia

September 12, 2014September 12, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

Bleeding heart baboons, some of the rarest animals on earth and some of the most stunning scenery, together with Africa’s very ancient culture. That was Ethiopia hosted by EWT owner, Kathleen Morgan, completed today.

They then spent two days in the very remote Simien Mountains.

“The Simiens were wonderful. Incredibly beautiful scenery,”Kathleen emailed.

The group had a “wonderful” experience with the Geladas, the rare (although not endangered) “bleeding heart” baboon found only in these mountains. The EWT group basically sat in a field amongst them, taking pictures and watching them interact.

They also saw the endangered walia ibex and perhaps the rarest of all, the Simien Fox!

Few visitors ever see this rarest of the world’s wolves. There are fewer than 400 and, in fact, most of those are actually found in a southern Ethiopian range, the Bale Mountains, so this group was particularly lucky!

There is only one lodge in the Simien. “The lodge is ok, but it was absolutely freezing. The water heater and underfloor heating are charged by solar panels. Only two rooms had hot water, one had warm water, and the others had only cold water. Everyone’s floors were freezing. We had lots of blankets and duvets and hot water bottles! The food was ok,” Kathleen reported.

While there are not safari vehicles in Ethiopia of the sort common in East Africa, it was necessary to use 4-wheel drive Nissans to climb the 11-12,000′ into the high roads of the Simiens which Kathleen described as “awful!”

“Narrow, barely allowing two normal cars to pass, and all this with a steep drop at the edge of the road – thousands of feet down to the bottom of a valley. The drivers were incredible.”

“The drive out of the park and to Axum is stunningly beautiful,” she continued. They stopped to photograph colobus and vervet monkeys on the way. EWT guest Joan Lieb who is a veteran traveler of Africa and wild parts of the world, said the villages along the road were the poorest she had ever seen.

Ethiopia was the only country in Africa never colonized, and so it retains absolutely intact its ancient culture. That culture is eclectic, a mixture of very ancient Christianity and animism.

The common “cultural triangle” begins in the city on the southwest tip of the great Lake Tana, where ancient Coptic island monasteries are still overseen by native priests who speak and write a language, Gheez, that has existed for more than a thousand years.

On the northeast corner of the lake is Gondar, where some of the first European settlements (in this case, Portugese castles and churches) built as 15th and 16th century missionary priests, mostly from Portugal, tried to find the mythical Prester John.

After the Simien Mountains, the group spent two days in Axum. The priests who oversee the Church of St. Mary’s claim to be stewards protecting the Arc of the Covenant. When Kathleen’s group arrived, the choir was singing and chanting with their drums and sistra because it was a holy day.

The EWT group was beckoned forward into the choir area. The women sat off to the side, but they motioned Ed Walbridge over to a bench amidst the singers. They gave Ed a prayer stick (those tall ones you can lean on) and a sistrum. He stood and swayed and paid very close attention and swung his sistrum at all the right times.

“Everyone thought it was wonderful!” Kathleen emailed, although Joan Lieb and Kathleen expressed serious disappointment when the priests brought out a precious 500-year old Bible to show them and seemed not to treat it with the care of an antiquity.

After Axum the cultural tour ends with its climax at Lalibela. In the 13th century the dynasty of kings in Ethiopia changed when the rebel Lalibela successfully came to power, claiming he was actually more closely related to the Queen of Sheba than the previous kings.

In thanks to god he vowed to build a new Jerusalem in Ethiopia. This was Lalibela. It took 32 years and begins at the top of the ground and goes down as far as 80 feet, eleven churches carved out of a single massive sandstone.

The combination of very rare animals, remarkable scenery and ancient culture is not something easily experienced on an African safari, but Ethiopia is the place to do so!

On Safari: Prohibitive Costs

July 29, 2014July 29, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 4 Comments

Is it moral or fair that only a tiny percentage of people can experience the Serengeti or Glacier Bay?

The question applies to all great protected areas, where taxpayer resources are used for management.

Devil’s advocates point to the huge tracts of earth still unregulated, open to anyone who dares to enter. Just flying today from Juneau to Seattle, or earlier from Chicago to Fairbanks, reveals uncountable square miles of Mother Earth plastered with nothing but trees, interrupted by giant snow-covered peaks, separated by raging rivers and massive lakes.

A lot of Africa is still open land. Anybody can explore these areas, right?

No, it takes more resources to cross Kenya’s northern frontier or transect the Yukon than to visit Samburu or Glacier Bay parks for a day. The great remote and untouched parts of earth aren’t really any more accessible than our protected areas.

Protected areas are generally close to civilization. Glacier Bay is only 50 air miles from Juneau, littered with old mining camps and fishing villages. The Serengeti is only 150 air miles from the crowded half million people of Arusha. Its northern tip, Kenya’s Mara, is only 130 air miles from the 4 million person metropolis of Nairobi.

Preserving original wilderness is a no brainer. The human is no more a creation than a tree. The mysteries that created both are hardly annotated in full. Tampering much less eliminating wildernesses jeopardizes our own survival.

We know that biodiversity is critical to our health. We know that the air we breathe, the food we eat, many of the medicines we use are natural products of the wilderness.

Protecting these so scientists can better understand their ecology should be an unchallenged responsibility.

But what about wilderness as recreation? Or as an educational or spiritual experience for the rest of us common folk? Apparently we’re hard-wired to love wilderness; it’s where many people reboot and become inspired by what we feel is its beauty.

My little camera photo above of the yacht we used last week in Glacier Bay National Park, floating five miles in front of a giant 4000-passenger cruise ship represents the angst but also the success of American national parks.

Our beautiful 12-passenger, six-cabin adventure yacht carried a zodiac, kayaks and a wonderful cook and professional naturalist. The 91-foot, 12-foot draft vessel let us move into the tiny fjords of the park, sit close to calving glaciers and get remarkably close to wildlife.

Our experience thrust us much deeper into the wilderness than the cruise ship passengers that bring more than 97% of the people into the park.

We were immersed in this wonderland. But we represent less than 1½% of the visitors to this 3½ million acres of protected wilderness.

Similarly I think of my own guided safaris into remote wildernesses in Africa.

Over the last decade between 150 – 200,000 people annually visit the Serengeti. But less than a few hundred travel into the remote places I take people, like the Lemuta Plains or southern Manyara.

My guiding obviously provides considerably more depth and insight than for the 97+% of other visitors. Just like our experience now in Glacier Bay.

Does than make me, and my clients, decadent and arrogant? Simply because we can afford to pay so much more?

Yes. You just can’t get around this. You can provide pro-bono services, raise funds for not-for-profits that bring the under-privileged into the wilderness, but in the end the percentages change insignificantly.

One of the most cited critics of national parks, Canadian Lisa Campbell explains:

“White people are much more likely to engage in public parks than people of colour.

“Being able to retreat from the city is a luxury that few working class people of colour have the privilege to afford. On top of this history of exclusion and colonial discourse, National Parks cater to the status quo by providing history from the winner’s perspective, and excluding intercultural dialog.”

But at least in America I think we’re trying to mitigate this exclusivity of the wilderness to the elite. At the turn of the last century, American national parks commissioned a lengthy study to create a fairer mission for the 21st century.

“Rethinking the National Parks” concluded a more generous posture to the native Americans who first lived there, and to the rest of Americans who want to visit.

Together with aggressive independent research about First Nation peoples currently residing near but not in Glacier Bay, American National Parks sided with successful court actions that gave some Tlingit peoples new (mostly hunting and harvesting) rights within Glacier Bay National Park.

(Contrast that with recent new forced resettling of Maasai from Serengeti areas, quite against their desires.)

And that 21st Century mission of the National Parks increases access for those who can’t afford the more in-depth experiences or resource rich outfitting by building more roads, reducing some fees and providing more free literature, and – specifically in the case of Glacier Bay where we just visited – increasing large cruise ship availability.

Seven-day cruises are available into the park for just under $800 per person. Princess Cruise’s ships that enter Glacier Bay carry between 2 and 4,000 people. Along with other slightly more expensive lines, these ships represent more than 97% of the visitors annually into Glacier Bay.

Now it’s not quite what we paid for. These larger ships cannot be in the park for longer than 24 hours; we were there for six days. Only two of these larger ships may be in the park at any one time. While in the park, they are controlled by park rangers, not cruise line captains or employees.

Cruise passengers can’t leave their ship; we were often off the yacht as much as on it. Cruise passengers can’t hike or kayak.

There are many critics of this approach. More use jeopardizes wilderness, however regulated that use is. Cruise ships are notorious for running into and killing whales. Just no way you can get around that, either.

But comparing the negatives with the positives, frankly I think our national parks are doing a great job. There are plenty of us out there to scream if that changes. And right now I’m a lot more proud of the situation for all peoples in Glacier Bay than in the Serengeti.

On Safari: Glacier Bay

July 27, 2014July 27, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

A week intimate cruising within Glacier Bay National Park on our beautiful little yacht reaffirmed all the lofty maxims of the many wonderful people who had the foresight to preserve such a treasure: our souls were refreshed!

My Alaskan safari began with The Far North in Fairbanks in the wide-opened tundras of Denali and ended in the unbelievably lush rain forests of Glacier Bay.

The six days private cruise began with a splash as we took our first of several kayaks. Over the course of the week we’d kayak in secret little coves among towering mountains, along intertidal cliffs laced with starfish colored like a rainbow, among icebergs crashing down from great glaciers and through literally tens of thousands of seabirds!

I can’t imagine exploring Alaska without a kayak. Even for the uninitiated, it’s simple and safe and our group chose mostly to go in two-man kayaks, although I stuck to a single one. It doesn’t take long to learn to push instead of pull, and once achieved you sail through the waters like a dolphin.

Several of our group even kayaked among humpbacks. Glacier Bay is famous for its whales, and we learned of tails of joy and misery with them. On the path leading to the dock at Bartlett Cove is the skeletal remains of “Snow,” a 40-year old whale killed by a cruise ship. Our leader, Kimberly Owen, told us numerous stories of whales including some spiritual stingers precious to the First Nation Hoonah peoples who inhabit Glacier Bay.

We probably saw 20 whales or more, including one group of three that just wouldn’t stop breaching! I counted a dozen breaches in less than fifteen minutes!

Every day we hiked. Some were longer and harder than others, but everyone made it and returned without sore joints! Hikes were up mountainsides, above glaciers, through rain forests, on beaches and among great pieces of ice!

We saw dozens if not hundreds of fabulous sea otters and learned about their near extinction and recovery, one of the great (and few) stories of successful wildlife reintroduction.

At one haul-out of stellar sea lions, I counted more than 750!

And we saw bears, and experienced the narrative of a four we saw on a beach that included two juveniles that just couldn’t leave Mom even as Mom was laid out on her back nursing a new cub.

Sea birds galore. Tufted and horned puffins. Marbled and Kittlitz murreletz. Even murres! Thousands and thousands of kittiwakes, and many glaucous winged gulls and oyster catchers. And of course many grand eagles. We kayaked under goofy pigeon guillemots that treated us like welcomed guests and sailed among loons and cormorants!

But I think the grandest wildlife experience was as we sailed beneath some steep cliffs looking for mountain goats.

We found them, high up but close enough to see clearly even without binocs. They went about the terrifying cliff edges nibbling away, and we watched a little one following mother having just learned that a large percentage are lost to slipping!

Then someone noticed a goat freezing. They’re not hyper but usually constantly on the move, if for no other reason than to maintain constant balance. But this one froze as if we’d taken a picture.

It stared in one direction and we knew something was going on. Following the goat’s line of sight, we then saw a hoary marmot racing onto the top of a rock, standing up and looking towards us, then quickly twisting around and looking away, and then racing to the left, then to the right as if it just couldn’t figure out what to do.

We sailed slowly around the tip of the peninsula and there was a wolf! Obviously what had happened was the marmot saw the wolf and freaked, then the got saw the marmot and froze. It was a wonderful example of how everything is marvelously connected!

Our trip is coming to an end. Stay tuned as we sail into our final hours!

On Safari: Somewhere!

July 25, 2014July 20, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

We’re somewhere in magnificent Glacier Bay National Park on a beautiful 12-passenger luxury yacht looking for lots of things, including bears! But I have no signal. Stay tuned! You’ll have a report as soon as I have a signal!

On Safari: Far Far Away

July 24, 2014July 20, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Sorry folks, still out of touch! No signal but stay tuned, we are in Glacier Bay on a beautiful private yacht that can take us into very remote places. Stay tuned! You’ll have a report as soon as I have a signal!

On Safari: Oops! No internet?

July 22, 2014July 20, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

We’re somewhere here! But I’ve no internet signal, which is really unusual since I can go practically ANYWHERE in Africa and have a signal, but you’ll have to wait for my report.

Stay tuned! As soon as I have a signal you’ll have a report!

On Safari: The Great One

July 21, 2014July 20, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Today we picked up three little planes and flew from the northwest side of Mt. McKinley to the southeast side … with our fingers crossed!

And we made it! Pilots say the chances of flightseeing around North America’s largest mountain are about 10%, but I figure they low ball the truth to make many clients feel better. My own experience is about 50%.

Certainly, it’s chancy. But there are backups. And even if you can’t see the mountain, cutting out the return 6-hour drive from the great western lodges to the rail station is worth the price of admission.

Backup Plan A is to simply fly straight east, not tempting the mountain’s own fickle weather, to the rail depot where you pick up the train journey.

Backup Plan B is to do what 90% of all the people who stay at the western lodges do, take the 6-hour bus ride back to the train.

But we lucked out. This group is bringing us a lot of good karma an we were able to fly all the way from Kantishna to Talkeetna, with jaw-dropping, breath-taking flightseeing en route!

Lots of photos were taken, of course, but everyone agreed that you just can’t capture the majesty of this “thing” on film. Example: Sarah Taylor and Becky Krantz were sitting in the back seat of our little single-engine Cessna as we seemed to be crashing into the side of the North Face!

The North Face is over 20,000 feet high and we were planing out around 11,700′. After a bit of a little scream and request through our intercom to the pilot if we were, indeed, crashing, he said we were still 8½ miles away from the rock face!

We flew in and out of Peters Pass and other divisions between the two great peaks of the North and South. We flew along the 11,000′ sheet near vertical Wickersham Wall that only a handful of climbers have even tried.

So we left Kantishna at 1030a and arrived Talkeetna at just before noon. We then had fours before the noon train from Denali arrived, so we wandered this amazing little town, whose ubiquitous bumper sticker reads, “Talkeetna: A Drinking Village with a Climbing Problem.”

This is where all the real climbs of McKinley begin. I used some of my time to wander to the Alaska Mountaineering School, the principal guider and outfitting of professional McKinley climbs.

They were just wrapping up the season. The last few climbers were scheduled to come down today. A total of 1246 climbers tried it this season (AMS outfitted about half of them) and there was a 36% success rate to the summit, better than normal.

So after visiting Nagley’s General Store and its remarkable antiques set against animal furs, and trying the great Roadhouse ice cream, visiting the Ranger station and little museum, we got on the train to Anchorage for our final moments in the Great North.

Now – on to Glacier Bay! I’m afraid there’s no internet on our luxury yacht in Glacier Bay, so I’ll be silent most of this week. But stay tuned! You’ll get a report as soon as I get a signal!

On Safari: Denali

July 19, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Yes you’ll see some wildlife, but Denali National Park impresses with its massiveness, scenery that simply exists nowhere else on earth.

We spent two days in the park, which is what all casual visitors do. Denali attracts the serious backpacker and hiker as well, and I can only imagine what a wonderful adventure that would be, but probably 95% of its million visitors annually are two-nighters who step in and step out rather quickly.

The park is a long, narrow protected wilderness with North America’s largest peak, Mt. McKinley at its far western end. There is a single road that stretches west from the train station at the parks main entrance, about 90 miles west to the tiny town of Kantishna which is just outside the park.

Kantishna was once a roaring mining town, and in fact we would see dozens of small mining operations that still exist when we flew out of Kantishna two days later. But today the town is mainly the service depot for the three lodges that exist on this far western side of the park.

This is where I take my groups. There are only about 300 bednights here, compared to the 3000 bednights at the train depot. This is also where Wonder Lake is, and some of the most magnificent hiking a “casual visitor” can undertake.

Most visitors staying on the eastern side buy a park pass for a day. This allows you to ride the regular park buses between the four ranger stations along the route, where you can disembark and hike as well as enjoy park ranger presentations.

For those of us staying in the west we take a lodge bus that picks us up at the depot and travels across the entire park, making stops at ranger stations and for wildlife. The ride takes about six hours.

No matter what month of the summer that I travel this route: June, July or August, my experience has been pretty much the same with regards to wildlife.

We’ll see a dozen or caribou, usually at several hundred yards. We’ll see 3-5 bears, often much further away, and dozens of dall sheep, but sometimes miles away on a distant rockface. In my many trips here I’ve also seen wolf, wolverine, pica, porcupine and fox, but only a couple times and this is considered rare.

The closest animal seen is the moose, and we saw our requisite couple, although last year I remember a third one practically sticking its nose through our bus window.

Unlike Africa, the buses – whether lodge or park – are all school bus types, not very comfortable and not particularly good for photographing, although their height off the ground is helpful.

So seeing wildlife should not really be an object of your visit to Denali. It doesn’t have to be!

The scenery is well undescribable. The stops at ranger stations where you can go wandering for a few minutes take you into an unbelievable land, a primeval cartoon as I see it. Distances are unfathomable. The sky – even when overcast, which is mostly the case – is spectacular.

And for our full day at the far western end, most of us went hiking. Excellent guides take small groups in a variety of directions, but wherever you go, however strenuous you wish to make it, the concept of panorama takes on new meaning.

So much of our planet must be like this. I’ve seen it, of course, in the remote parks of Africa and many lucky souls experience in even more remote places like Antarctica. Why this seems beautiful to us is a question that has plagued me all my life, because it is essentially not a quest for understanding as much as an acceptance of the foundation of the definition of what beauty is.

The closer you come to grasping this natural immensity, the more insignificant your person becomes. And frankly, I can’t really think of a better result for any of us.

As is almost always the case, our weather was not sunny and clear. It was heavily overcast and often misty. But it stopped none of us from thrusting ourselves into the wide open spaces and refreshing our souls.

Tomorrow we’ll try to fly around that great mountain! Stay tuned!

On Safari: Mastodon to Muskox

July 15, 2014July 15, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

The ecology of Planet Earth’s Far North is mysterious and often perplexing, sometimes hilarious but more often terrifying. Our first full day in Fairbanks introduced us to the remarkable biology of this Far North.

I love to start in Fairbanks, and most of my clients spend a full two nights here, and quite a few, three nights. There’s plenty to do, and it’s an important introduction to the Far North ecology of this remarkable part of the world.

It’s also an active scientific point where climate change is more readily observed and terribly respected. We’re going to Kantishna tomorrow, the west side of Denali national park, where one of the three lodges was washed out by record floods and rain only a few weeks ago.

Chief Curator Angela Linn, Pam Lopes, Becky Krantz & Sara Taylor.

Here’s where the ice cap and glaciers are disappearing, where the coastline is eroding fast, where oyster farms are dying because the water’s getting too hot.

Here’s where today I got lost inside the University of Alaska campus because of another sink hole detour (they’ve had three this year), as a result of the permafrost melting.

In addition to the flashy but fun tourist attractions like the Riverboat Discovery, today we went a bit deeper and more academic.

Curator of Collections, Angela Linn, gave us a special behind-the-scenes tour of the University of Alaska’s remarkable collections: more than 1½ million items! We were able to feel mastodon fossils and gaze through security alleys filled with ancient Inuit sleds and snowshoes.

The Museum is a centerpiece of the university, a real research station for anyone doing Far North science. The part which is open to the public, the Museum of the North, is one of the finest and most digestible science museums I’ve ever visited.

Afterwards Dr. John Blake, the university’s veterinarian and director of its Large Animal Research Station (and 9 other life animal research stations) walked us through the station’s extensive grounds describing the work being done on reindeer, caribou and muskox.

Dr. John Blake describes the muskox habitat.

Reindeer are originally Russian caribou that have been domesticated for a long time. But it was interesting learning about their differing biologies: the reindeer are much more biologically precarious, growing antlers sometimes at the rate of 2″ per day! The mystery is why, and how relatively rapid domestication produces such variance with the wild animal.

Dr. Blake then told us the remarkable story of what may be the most interesting of the Far North animals, the muskox.

Now farmed for its exquisite qiviut wool, the muskox was probably extinct in most of the Arctic by the 1900s, probably a mixture of over hunting and disease. Today there are nearly a half million and many are farmed for their extraordinary wool, a dozen times warmer (more insulating) than sheep’s wool and softer than cashmere.

There are few animals that thrive at -40F and get sick at 50F. That’s the muskox, and needless to say may be as threatened as the polar bear by global warming.

Tomorrow we head into Denali. Stay tuned!

On Safari: Roundup

June 30, 2014June 30, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

The Kisiel Family safari ended with great drama this weekend. Here’s what happened and how future safaris might also achieve such success.

The sheer numbers were impressive: 90-95 lions (we had some controversy regarding counting cubs), 4 leopard, 4 cheetah, African Wild Cat (somewhat unusual); thousands of elephant; dozens of thousands of gazelle and antelope; hundreds of giraffe; and possibly more than a hundred thousand wildebeest and zebra.

And there were five or six specifically dramatic events that really made the trip stand out. Why?

I’m afraid the most important answer may be a very simple one: the Kisiel’s arranged a safari that was a third longer than the average. They were on safari for 13 days and nights. The mean today is just around ten days.

That small additional time, in my estimation, is worth far more than it seems. It relieves the pressure on our planning and means that optimizing opportunities is much easier.

Enthusiasm. You’ve got to have enthusiasm to do a safari right, and the Kisiel’s did! Every time I offered a long day or a short day, they chose a long day. Quite simply, this like the length of the overall safari increases our opportunities.

Almost as important was global warming, and that of course, will continue. In the tropics in Africa global warming means far more severe weather, and that means when it rains it rains more. Tanzania’s northern safari circuit is a rainy circuit and so in an ironic way, it benefits from global warming.

(It’s also suffering. Flooding is taking a serious toll: see my blog last year about the destruction of Lake Manyara’s national park entrance.)

Finally, there’s luck. Yes, it’s true to some degree that you make your own luck, and I guess the Kisiel’s are masters!

STAMPEDING BUF
At least 650 literally stampeding African Buffalo stopped our attempted quick exit from Tarangire National Park as they stormed in front of us just before the main road bridge around 9 a.m. one morning.

Buffalo numbers are hard to come by since conservation organizations grew disinterested as their populations increased throughout the last quarter century. But in the last five years or so, populations have stabilized or declined and led to some troubling research about viruses and other diseases the African Buffalo seems to be spreading.

At the beginning of the noticeable decline, lion researcher Craig Packard identified a virus that was weakening if not killing many buffalo (which subsequently led to lions dying that were taking advantage of the weakened population and succombing to the same virus).

Packard’s study inspired other research and more recent findings by the National Institute’s of Health and veterinarian scientists at the University of Pretoria have documented both viral and bacterial infections that seem to be spreading continent-wide among the Buf.

Large groups of buffalo are common because they are a close herding animal. But we have come to presume a large group is around a hundred, and this was six or seven times larger.

In addition to just the great drama of seeing this it motivates us to return to current research to try to determine if this was simply a very rare anomaly or something more meaningful.

FLAMINGO FLYING CARPET
East Africa has both the greater and lesser flamingo, the latter being more pink but considerably smaller. Throughout the continent the lesser flamingo is considered “near-threatened” because of habitat degradation and erosion. (The greater flamingo has a much larger range and considerably greater numbers and is still considered healthy.)

I recall in the 1970s a number of East Africa lakes were completely saturated with lesser flamingoes: Nakuru, Baringo, Elementaita, Bogoria and Manyara in particular.

If you’ve seen the 1985 movie Out of Africa and sat through the credits at the end of the film, you’ll see an unending stream of flamingoes overflown by the camera aircraft.

But flamingo are very sensitive to the alkalinity of the water they require. Their entire food source is a small shrimp that feeds on a certain type of algae. Too much rain or drainage of their lakes alters this sensitive dynamic. Global warming and agricultural development have noticeably impacted what we’ve seen on safari lately.

Until this trip! We pulled into the south end of Lake Manyara and witnessed one of the greatest collections of flamingos I can remember since the late 1970s. At one point a mass too large for me to estimate took off coloring nearly our entire field of vision.

This end of Lake Manyara has undergone a radical agricultural transformation in the last ten years that has led to an explosion of rice and sugar cane farming. Because it has so positively transformed the communities here, it was hard to criticize. Has global warming actually balanced out this dynamic, at least in Lake Manyara?

CHEETAH ON CAR
If global warming and the resultant more rain in the highlands is helping Manyara, it may be harming parts of the Serengeti.

Global warming isn’t just more rain as the ice caps melt. It’s also more severe droughts. Really, it’s better to recognize global warming as making weather more severe, rain and drought. And that’s what happened to us in the Serengeti. It was particularly disappointing for me when a completely unusual dust storm in the southeast Serengeti prevented us from visiting the area.

But the karma was with us, and the extra time we had to game drive in the park’s southwest led to a young male cheetah jumping on our car. In the car was Camden Reiss and it was his birthday!

It’s not unusual for cheetah, mostly male, to do this. They want a better view and I believe are among the most inquisitive of the big cats.

THE MIGRATION
Everyone wants to see the migration, of course, and the amount of disinformation in the media and travel industry constantly dumbfounds me.

I’ve written so much about this, rather than link you to a dozen previous blogs simply click the Index tab to the right for the list of posts. Historically at this time of the year the migration would mostly be in Kenya, and in fact Kenyan lodges and hoteliers reported a mass arrival very early this year, in late May.

But when we arrived the central Serengeti about a week ago, bingo!

Now it’s very hard for any first-time visitor to judge if they’ve really seen the migration or not. Even those of us guides with decades of experience struggle with estimating large scenes of animals.

I figured we saw about 20,000 animals, and that was plenty enough to fill the plains in our view. Steve Taylor, guiding for EWT at the same time, reported the same situation when he was in Seronera a couple days before us.

Why? That was simple. There had been unusual rains and the grass was green. Wilde do not hard-wire migrate like birds. They move where there’s food, and there was plenty in and around Seronera.

But it wasn’t over when we moved north! On our last day we saw considerably more wilde and witnessed crocs pulling down two wildebeest from a daring and dramatic file of animals trying to cross the Mara River.

Excitement unbelievable, but for me, confusion, too. Were the Kenyans bluffing?

No. I spoke subsequently to both tourists and hoteliers and I believe the Kenyans, and I believe that the great majority of the migration is in Kenya’s Mara right now.

But the rains have been extraordinary and the population is healthy, and right now a large and visible part of the migration is strung all the way from northern Tanzania back to Seronera in the center of the park. It probably won’t stay much longer, as the rains do seem to be subsiding in the south. But I won’t be surprised if next year’s Frankfurt Zoological Society estimate of the population breaks records.

LION SOCIOLOGY LESSON
On that same day that we saw the river crossing, we also witnessed what to me may be the highlight of the trip. I wouldn’t expect my clients to embrace this conclusion, but this was a very rare and important experience.

We watched first-hand a mother lioness trying to kick out one of her sons from the pride. It’s a long understood part of lion sociology and biology that the mother has to do this before the son gets bigger than she is. Full grown male lions are 50% larger than females.

And there are plenty of documented videos to show it. But I had never personally witnessed it in the wild.

It’s always difficult to predict anything in the wild. But with sufficient time and patience, together with careful planning, most safaris can achieve the wonder and drama that the Kisiel family enjoyed!

Safari Njema!

On Safari: Migration Drama

June 27, 2014June 28, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

The Kisiel family’s last two days on safari featured the great migration at its best, including a croc feast of a wildebeest river crossing.

We expected to find the migration in the north, and we did. We flew from the central Serengeti into the far northern Serengeti landing virtually in sight of the Kenyan border. Although our lovely Kuria Hills tented lodge was a half hour south of here, we spent most of the time game viewing in the north.

Five minutes after we left the airstrip in the Mara Region of northern Tanzania we were skirting the south and west banks of the great Mara river. Crocs so big I call them “dinosaur crocs” were everywhere, waiting for one of the two meals they eat each year.

We saw one monster that John Kohnstamm said was 24 feet long. Close. But on that first day, no wildebeest near the river that we could find. So we headed south to camp through absolutely beautiful Mara grasslands and rolling hills.

That afternoon we saw our first oribi, not something many safaris see. It’s a gorgeous little, somewhat hyper antelope with large black face spots.

We also saw a number of wonderful birds in addition to the common headliners like the lilac breasted roller. Add the gorgeous cliff chat, rosy-breasted lark, perhaps a hundred red-cheeked cordon bleu among many others.

The next morning – the Kisiel Family’s last morning – we packed a picnic lunch and left before dawn.

We stopped on a ridge that looked north into Kenya and waited for the African sunrise. We had flushed out many square-tailed nightjars having listened to their woeful scream in the night. Then about ten minutes before dawn the omnipresent ring-necked dove began to fill the veld from horizon to horizon with its hypnotic song.

And then a few minutes before sunrise the whole veld exploded with bird song, and Africa’s giant sun peaked up blaring a perfect red-orange orb through the thick morning haze.

We traveled all the way past the southern Sand River border of Kenya and began searching along the Sand River. There we saw what will always be one of my most precious safari events.

We were driving somewhat hidden in the heavy bush at the top of the 15-foot embankment of the Sand River, which unlike the Mara, usually has an all sand bottom with good and copious amounts of water flowing under the sand.

But there has been so much rain that there were actual streams in the sand river bottom.

We came upon a lion pride eating a recently killed wildebeest. There were two lionesses with seven cubs in two different litters, plus a young and magnificent pridemaster, plus a slightly younger juvenile male that already was bigger than Mom and was sprouting a wonderful new mane.

What was specially interesting was the fighting that we watched between Mom and this juvenile male. She would not let him eat.

He could easily have whooped her, since he was bigger and stronger, but her motherly instincts knew it was time for him to be kicked out of the pride. Not too long before we had seen two other males about his age, sulking on an anthill starving as a ring of wildebeest surrounded them.

Young males don’t know how to hunt. They have to teach themselves, and if they don’t, they starve. It’s the reason there are more females in the overall lion population than males.

So the juvenile male that had somehow managed to stay with the pride was trying a new tact. But it wasn’t working.

Any move he’d make, even the slowest and most methodical attempt to raise his leg on the embankment to scoot away, and Mom would snarl and attack him. Finally, he slipped away.

We had seen in about twenty minutes what wildlife photographers take years to document.

But believe it or not, the best was yet to come.

Thinking we’d seen it all, sated with experiences, we began to head home along the river. Lo and behold there was a small group of wildebeest and zebra that looked like they were ready to cross the great Mara River.

And below them, to the right and left and side and bottom, were giant crocs waiting. They were steady in the water despite the strong current, or on the embankment, or on the island rocks, just waiting … waiting.

So… we did, too.

Roy Stockwell kept saying to the wilde across the river, “Come ‘on guys, the grass is much sweeter on this side!”

Whether it was Roy or not, they finally came, in a sudden leap from the bank followed by leaps across the great river.

The crocs moved in from every side. One dinosaur sailed straight for a calve and pulled it under and another on the other side took down a yearling.

Both started screaming and the mother of the calve turned around and jumped back in the river, literally pouncing on top of the croc, but it was no use. He took it under and she leaped exhausted back onto the shore.

The larger yearling drew many big crocs as they started vying among themselves for the feast.

Camden Reiss, like many many kids and adults as well, didn’t like what he saw. And it is a terrible moment, and yet when we as the real king of the beasts step back to let nature do her thing, we realize there are as many wonders as catastrophes.

“Can’t get better than this!” Grandpa shouted.

He was right! We were headed home.

On Safari: Unexpected Migration

June 26, 2014June 27, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

At Seronera for two days we were engulfed by part of the wildebeest migration, something totally unexpected.

Historically the wildebeest would be much further north by late June/early July, and the reports out of Kenya were that they were. In fact, the crossing of the Sand River from Tanzania to Kenya was reported in early May.

But here we were, 120 miles further south, surrounded by wildebeest and zebra day and night. The saturation of the herds on the veld extended from just south of our camp at the northern end of Rongai, just south of Mawe Meupe and north to the western corridor junction road.

The western portion was bordered by the Moru Kopjes and the eastern portion ended before the Maasai kopjes.

It’s very hard to estimate the numbers but I’d guess between 50,000 and 100,000 animals, or about one-fiftieth to one-twenty-fifth of the entire population of zebra and wildebeest in the Serengeti/Ngorongoro/Mara ecosystem. Where were the others, the 2+ million?

All accounts suggested they were well into Kenya and that they had moved there quickly and densely through the eastern edge of the Serengeti. But numbers like this are hard to grasp, particularly if the veld is the least broken by hills or forests.

In effect that small fraction of the wildebeest was a grand migration for us, and it wasn’t at all expected. Late and heavy rains has made the entire veld from Seronera north green. On our charter flight today to the border with Kenya, there was hardly a piece of land that wasn’t green.

Unlike birds, animal migrations are triggered strictly by food. If the food source is good, as it apparently was for the tale end of the great migration this year, they will linger and stay behind.

During our two days in the area we also saw two dozen lion, a hundred or more elephant, a leopard with a new kill in a tree, countless hyaena and many defassa waterbuck and hartebeest. We traveled south into the Moru Kopjes and saw little game but enjoyed the sacred stories of the Maasai at Ngong Rock and the morani cave paintings.

Seronera has always been an exceptional place for game viewing, but as a tourist you’ll pay handsomely for it, and not in dollars. It’s very crowded. At each sighting of a lion or leopard there could easily be 20 cars.

We have enjoyed a safari so far in remote and beautiful places with good game viewing and very few other cars. But it’s impossible to do this in Seronera, and I personally feel Seronera should not be missed.

The wilderness today in Africa has been saved by tourism. Seronera represents a core of intense game viewing with a multitude of accommodation alternatives. One positive way to look at it is that no one would have the opportunity of visiting any part of the Serengeti if the revenue received from visitors going to Seronera weren’t included.

The Seronera river valley is where we saw a dramatic half hour scene of 3-400 zebra cautiously drinking from the river then exploding out when the least sign of danger was sensed. Only here in the central Serengeti is a river system large enough to attract so many resident animals.

It’s also a reality check. Lion ignore us in the remote Kusini Plains where there’s no other vehicles but our own. But they come from generations of animals that have been habituated to cars, principally in places like Seronera.

So I wouldn’t exclude Seronera from an itinerary, and that attitude is what allowed us to truly experience the great migration when it had neither been expected or promised. That was luck, certainly explained in part by climate change, but mostly by where the extended rains fell.

And it seemed they fell right on our camp just before we arrived!

Stay tuned! On to the great Serengeti North!

On Safari: Serengeti Dust Storm

June 24, 2014June 23, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

On safari: Serengeti Dust Storm

A terrific dust storm swooped down from the crater highlands onto the Serengeti aborting our plans to visit a number of sights on the southeastern plains.

One of my personally most favorite days on safari is when we leave Ngorongoro for the Serengeti. Whether it’s during the rainy season when we’ll travel through hundreds of thousands of animals, or the dry season when the dusty plains reveal fascinating secrets, it’s hard to beat.

I normally stop just after the crater rim to demonstrate the symbiotic evolution of the giraffe and the whistling thorn tree, then my exciting lecture on early man at Olduvai Gorge, then the mysterious walking hills of the Shifting Sands.

And then the immense seemingly endless Lemuta plains with views you can’t imagine.

So yesterday we struggled out of the cars on the crater rim walking to a grove of whistling thorns against a gale force wind. It wasn’t just that it was cold, it was so strong.

When we arrived shortly thereafter at Olduvai I knew I’d have to rethink the day. The wind was at least 40mph and the dust was obscuring everything. The gorge and the museum were packed solid with visitors, so we decided to leave early.

At Shifting Sands the dust was so bad that Sophi and Hadley, the two teenage girls, wouldn’t leave the vehicles, and that was my sign that the day had to be replaced.

It wasn’t that I was worried we’d get lost in the dust, but there were no views, and it was near impossible to open your mouth without being filled with dust no matter what direction you turned.

So we turned back to the main road and regrouped. It was tough to give the day up, because the storm ended at the main road, confined it seemed to the eastern half of the Serengeti. But we continued to our lodge at Ndutu, arriving 5 hours early but to a very welcoming staff, clear air and cold beer!

On the impromptu afternoon game drive we saw the Masek pride of lions which included three sets of cubs, the youngest about six weeks old. I really wonder in this start of the dry season if those cubs will make it.

We then watched a puff adder wiggle across the entire lake bed of Masek! It was accompanied by double-banded coursers and an immature augur buzzard I presume making sure it didn’t go astray.

This morning we headed out to find cheetah, and boy did we! Two young adult brothers gave us every angle of pose and then jumped on the car where the kids were! College sophomore Jeffrey was right up there popped through the raised roof to photograph its every whisker!

“Good Godfrey!” Grandpa Mark exclaimed. “It can’t get better than this!”

We then watched a larger female cheetah on a failed hunt of Thompson’s gazelle. Only about 20% of cat hunts are successful, but even so it was exciting.

It’s extremely dry around Ndutu where we currently are. On our trek to Hidden Valley I was surprised there wasn’t a drop of water left. And yet the grasses are still a little bit green. It must be the dry, cold wind.

We now head north for two nights in the central Serengeti before two nights in the far north, where I expect it will be greener and filled with animals. So stay tuned! But I’m leaving internet availability so it may be several extra days before I can let you know what happened.

Africa Answerman

Sharing the beauty of African life today. Adventurer. Conservationist. Owner of Explorers World Travel.

Category: OnSafari