Seventeen very intrepid and persistent safari travelers found the migration with me, today, big time. We figured out how the unusual weather has impacted the herds, and we spent several awesome hours just driving slowly through them, observing thousands and thousands of wildebeest.
OnSafari: Safari Hunt
I don’t know why a hunter hunts. I have had very close friends and business partners who were hunters, and I’ve listened to them quietly and for long periods of time as they describe almost existentially “the chase” inevitably concluding that it is a first principal of homo sapiens to conquer all else living.
I’ve heard them wax about the raw wilderness and how a hunt requires them to understand its most intricate devices or succumb to failure. They speak of the beautiful mornings and operatic sunsets, the great expanses of landscape and endless sense of freedom that arises from “communing with nature.”
I don’t think they understand the wild.
OnSafari: Old Man Giraffe
The Old Man Giraffe was all alone. Easily stripping the delectable little acacia leaves from the healthy branches, his old tongue only occasionally got stuck on one of the thick thorns the tree used to try to deter him. In fact he had his choice of dozens of blossoming trees! He was the only giraffe we saw all morning long in Lake Manyara National Park. We usually see 20-30.
OnSafari: Tarangire Trials
Climate change is not just hot and extreme weather, but peculiar weather. I walked into my tent in Tarangire National Park yesterday at 530p at it was 93½ F, about ten degrees above normal. Tarangire which should now be lush and green and fresh with blossoms is hot, dry and dusty.
But all over the place is water! The Tarangire sand river has running water! (It’s normal to be dry on top of the sand; water runs under the sand most of the time in Africa’s great sand rivers.)
There were ponds of water and wallows almost everywhere. My group had an exceptional introduction to amazing Africa as we watched for some time around 200 zebra race into a water hole, freak, race out, turn their funny heads back to the water in amazement there had been no lion or python, and race back into the pond! Again and again!
This strange situation, where the veld the temperature and air feels like a drought but the veld holds so much water, is precisely because in January and February there was too much rain.
This is really, really peculiar. Now the animals seem to be doing quite well with it. In addition to the hundreds of zebra, we watched with great excitement around 35 elephant saunter out of the river towards a very big sausage tree under which was trying to hide a very concerned lioness.
Ele don’t really see after they’re 12 or 13 years old, but their other senses are beyond belief. We watched anxiously until the one ele finally noticed the lioness.
The ele turned with ears out and flipped her trunk at the lion as if to throw a rock. After a single trumpet practically every elephant in view starting running towards the poor lioness!
She got away, of course, but she was very, very embarrassed.
OnSafari: Dramatic Dry
The safari ended at the most popular foreign tourist attraction in East Africa, Ngorongoro Crater. Greener than nearly everywhere else we went, the veteran safari traveler who organized the trip, Steve Farrand, said it was the best game viewing on the safari and the best he’s ever seen in the crater!
Steve’s assessment reflects the current “almost-drought” situation on the circuit and the unique advantages that game viewing has when the veld is dry. I wish it weren’t so dry. It shouldn’t be.
OnSafari: Dry but not Drought
We finished four days and hundred of miles through the Serengeti, found the migration in multiple places and ended for our last two nights at Tanzania’s famous Crater Lodge.
It’s unusually dry. Not yet a crisis it will become so if widespread rain doesn’t develop, soon. We arrived the crater in a rainstorm, so that was obviously good news. But the day that preceded our arrival was a dust bowl.
OnSafari: Mixed Migration
Equatorial weather is the most complex in the world: jetstreams tangle with each other from every direction. Weather forms but doesn’t move; the thunderstorm grows over you ominously and then dumps itself out of existence.
But climate change has turned the complex into chaos. We found the migration. Over two days we saw about 100,000 wilde and zebra; 400 eland; 10,000 gazelle and the count continues tomorrow as we head east from Ndutu onto the Lemuta Plains.
OnSafari: Ele & Lion
We were besieged by tse-tse fly in Tarangire, and I was filled with adoration for my clients for toughing it out. So much was seen and so few complaints!
OnSafari: Flowers
We enjoyed our final breakfast today at Gibb’s Farm in the highlands surrounded by tons of flowers.
OnSafari: Listening Closely
Here’s why we should be concerned with what people think about us.
OnSafari: Marvelous Mara
The man who organized the safari I’m guiding has been with me eight times. Only four others of the 12 people have been to Africa before, and Steve had a list of favorites that he wanted to share with his close friends.
OnSafari: Close Leopard
For a million years the huge rock hill with steep sides stood undisturbed in the middle of the Great Northern Frontier, alone on 200,000 acres yet in the shadow of the sacred Samburu mountain, Ololokwe. Then, a camp was built on its top.
Just as the camp’s first customers arrived Ugali was born in one of the narrow caves pierced from the cliff side by the brief, slashing rains of April, several hundred feet below Tent 4.
The cliff side was perfect for her mother and herself. It was packed with hyrax for a light snack and baboon for something more substantial. There were also klipspringers, although their dexterity defied capture.
OnSafari: Samburu
Jim is out of touch with little wifi in Samburu National Park, but he was able to post this photo of a reticulated giraffe.
Politics & The Wind
Money can’t buy everything. By all accounts the four young Americans who were killed Sunday in a helicopter crash in Kenya were America’s finest: generous, innovative, energetic and … very, very rich.
Too starry-eyed to see the dangers, too ambitious to move slowly in a world where speed is death, the poor souls must now suffer the indignity of becoming a part of another Kenyan scandal.
Kenyan Karnage
OnSafari: NAIROBI. As I wait for my group to arrive it’s impossible to have a single conversation with any Kenyan that doesn’t ignite almost instant anger about corruption. Uber driver, hotel clerk, hotel maid, tourism executive … everyone is livid with recent revelations, and a few of them involve America.