Drought Deepens

Drought Deepens

by Arusha ♥ 2 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Border Opening?

Border Opening?

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mara Family

Mara Family

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crater of Cats

Crater of Cats

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Manyara Saturday

Manyara Saturday

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fabulous Tarangire

Fabulous Tarangire

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Overland Attractions

Overland Attractions

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tension in Tsavo

Tension in Tsavo

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

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

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

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!

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

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

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

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

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

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

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

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

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

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

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

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!