Nants Ingonyama Bagithi, Baba

These are the opening lines to the “Circle of Life” from the Lion King. Did you know this actually means, “Here comes a lion, father”? And that it’s actually in Zulu as opposed to Kiswahili (even though the Lion King takes place in the Serengeti in Tanzania where Kiswahili is spoken)?

Or maybe I’m the only one who was never obsessed enough with the Lion King to look these things up when I was seven.

Anyway, we’re back from safari and I’m now almost embarrassed for how reluctant I was to go when the trip was first planned at the beginning of the summer. I initially thought that the day safari my family had taken in Zimbabwe in ’99 was enough to last me a lifetime. I don’t think I’ve ever been so wrong.

I’ll just start right in:

Tarangire:

After stopping by Shoprite—an expat’s dream of a grocery store and the beginning place for every safari company, apparently—for our water, we began the 3-hour drive to Tarangire National Park. Our tent was set up for us at the campsite (an enclosure in the savannah surrounded by a rather barbaric-looking wall of rocks) near a particularly ferocious pile of some sort of termite-looking insect which we were assured would, “go down into the ground at night,” we were on our way.

Almost as soon as we began betting on what would be our first animal to see, we began seeing elephants and wildebeests. We were all so excited, heads eagerly popping out of the top of the safari Land Rover, cameras poised in preparation for all of the awesome shots we were about to get.

So the way a safari works is you basically just drive through the park and stop along the way to take pictures. Okay, duh, I know, but you can have your guide stop for as long as you like while you take scores of shots of the same herd of zebra in succession. You also have a personal cook who makes you breakfast, lunch, and dinner, which is great.

Call me ridiculous, but I found it so odd that all of these different types of animals lived in such harmony with one another. I never would have expected zebra to share grazing space and live so symbiotically with the wildebeest, for example. Perhaps we have something to learn from them (#clichésallday).

Highlights:

Feasting Lion: One of the things we noticed on safari is that the more jeeps stopped in one place has an exact correlation to how cool the sight is. For instance, during our first experience with halted jeeps we got to see a male lion eating a zebra. Considering seeing lions is not very common in Tarangire, we were incredibly lucky to see such a sight, even though it was rather far away.

Zebra: We must have seen hundreds of them on the first day. They’re really fascinating creatures. I never got tired of seeing their strangely-striped coats. I also had this odd fixation on wanting to ride one.

Lunch: It was our first Wali-Kuku-less meal in quite some time, so it was particularly pleasant.

The Park: This was my second favorite of the parks. Tarangire is mainly savannah, and the terrain is absolutely gorgeous. Zebra, giraffe, and elephants are in abundance here. Watch out for tsetse flies. They cause African Sleeping Sickness. This was the only park in which we encountered an enormous amount of them.

Manyara

Lake Manyara National Park is near a town aptly named Mto wa Mbu—River of Mosquitoes, though we were assured they did not carry malaria in this region. This park is particularly famous for its bird population. Almost entirely forested, it was quite a surprise that Manyara was so different from Tarangire. I wasn’t quite sure what I had expected, but I didn’t expect such vast terrain differences between the two places.

Highlights:

Okay, here I have to admit that I was very bad during this trip, and slept almost the entire way through.

I know. Please feel free to gasp and tisk as needed. The thing about Manyara is that it offered a lot of the same animals as Tarangire. After a particularly restless night—I’ve found that I can sleep anywhere but tents—and an entire day of safari-ing the day before—and maybe a tsetse fly bite or two—I just couldn’t manage to keep myself awake.

I will admit that the lake was quite a beautiful sight and it gave us our first flamingo and hippo sightings!

While in the Manyara area, however, you can pay to visit a Maasai village, which we did, although that excursion deserves a blog post all its own…

The Park: Most guide books will tell you that you do not want to end your safari with Lake Manyara National Park. While the park promises tree lions, it is rather difficult to see any animals, as the trees provide them with much more cover with which to hide from the scary, freakish safari jeeps. If you can’t visit one anywhere else, the Maasai village visit would definitely make it worth it, though.

Ngorongoro Crater

After two days of straight driving and animal watching, I was entirely unconvinced that the third and final day was going to be any better than the previous two. Most people we had heard from said that Ngorongoro was their favorite of the parks, but I couldn’t quite comprehend what that meant since, up until then, they had all been rather similar.  I had even less hope when we arrived at the park at around 8:30 am and the entrance was almost entirely obscured by fog. And when I say fog, I mean the kind where you can’t see a foot in front of your face. After driving for about 20 minutes our guide stopped briefly at the “Viewpoint” which we couldn’t see. Because of the fog.

As we drove farther and farther and the fog burned away in the wake of the rising sun and we could finally see the crater my mouth dropped open just wide enough for me to put my foot in.

I have never seen anything so beautiful anywhere in my entire life.

Despite the altitude-induced cold and the blowing wind, we rode the rest of the way down standing out of the top of the jeep so as not to miss a second of the beauty. I can’t even begin to describe it, but I’ll give it a shot.

The park is surrounded by mountains on all sides with an exceptionally interesting cloud cover that hugs the top of the mountains and looks ready to roll over the side. The terrain was an incredible mix of rain forest, savannah, and lakes that provided the most beautiful colors and the most diverse mix of animals we had seen thus far.

Highlights: We got to see all the best animals up close at Ngorngoro

Flamingos: You can spot their brightly-feathered bodies from kilometers away. What starts out as a reddish haze in the distance is only more spectacular up close.

Hippos: Are such odd creatures. So fat and cute yet so dangerous. You never really want to see these from too close up.

Lions: Our second massive safari jeep pileup resulted in yet another lion sighting, but this time the lions were only a few feet away. There was a lioness and a lion and though the lion was sleeping, we all just stood there watching in awe. Once the lion woke up (and tried to mount the lioness until she attacked him) you could hear the cameras clicking like mad, overpowered only by the collective groan as he knelt down and went back to sleep.

The Park: I’ve never had such an overwhelming revelation of the beauty of creation before. This park was by far my favorite, and the only one I don’t think I could ever tire of seeing. Seeing Ngorongoro easily overtook my disappointment at not getting to see the famous Serengeti. Leaving the park, we all stood up and watched the retreating terrain as we climbed higher and higher out of the crater. Silently, we reflected on the inexplicable beauty of what we had just seen and each confirmed that we would have to come back again to see this.

Tips for Safari-goers:

·      Bring binoculars.

·      Bring a zoom lens, extra batteries, and your camera charger (there are outlets in the jeep)

·      Don’t wear white

·      Don’t wear shorts (you’ll look like an idiot)

·      Don’t wear safari gear (see above)

·      Don’t eat in the car (it will attract animals)

·      Don’t make loud noises when you are stopped near elephants (they will attack you)

·      You can, in fact, take showers at the camp sites (although a Wet Ones bath may work just as well)

·      The tea, hot chocolate, coffee, and popcorn they give you when you sit down to dinner is, indeed, free (although soda and alcoholic drinks are not)

·      Wear a hat or cover your hair (trust me)

I will reiterate the guidebooks here and tell you not to end with Manyara. I’d say if you’re going, you might want to start from there. That way, things will only get better. Or, you might just skip it all together and just do the Tarangire-Ngorongoro-Serengeti circuit. But whatever floats your boat.

Now, I know that all any safari-goer really wants is to see a lion (don’t try to deny it, it’s true), but if you ever have the chance to go on a safari, just do it. There’s nothing like waiting with bated breath as you wait for a herd of elephants to cross the road. Nothing like watching a group of zebras riding off into the sunset. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing like watching sleeping lions or hunting lions or eating lions, but the raw magnificence of the untainted terrain is really something I think everyone should experience in their lifetime.