Liz & Richard's 2010 African Adventures

The Flight

Toronto - Paris - Cairo - Khartoum - Nairobi ..... 33 hours in Business Class comfort punctuated by extreme unpleasantness.  Nice pic here over the Alps

When Liz booked the tix using Delta Points the only available Biz Class routing was via Paris/Cairo (with a 5 hour layover in the latter).  No problem - we thought - an opportunity to have dinner with our friend Ahmed - who had been our wonderful travel planner/guide for our Middle East trip in 2008. 

In Cairo the terminal transfer turned into a bureaucratic farce - Ahmed was waiting on "the other side" of security but we were unable to get there. 

Security personnel were so intent on extorting a "tip" from us that twice we walked around the scanners with our 15 pound backpacks - to no one's concern (well...except that we hadn't tipped them).

For a couple of dollars graft you could probably carry aboard 10 pounds of C4, 9 Grenades, 8 M16s and a suicide bomber in a pear tree.

So - only a flurry of texts between us and Ahmed - and we departed Cairo with our gift for his son Mohammed.

(After we finally got our Kenya Airways boarding passes and were allowed out of the bowels of Terminal 2 we sat with a crowd of airport staff and watched an Africa Cup game that Egypt was playing - that was a lot of fun)

Then a 3am touchdown in Khartoum (that was news to us) where security personnel body frisked the cleaning staff.

At last - Nairobi - where they lose our luggage ..... (we're thinking we should have tipped that guy in Cairo)....but after an hour of searching a wonderful man finds our bag and we walk out of arrivals to find Mutua (our pre arranged driver) who has patiently waited for us - all is suddenly much, much better.

A note on Nairobi airport arrivals.  Like the legendary elephants, this is where all luggage goes to die. There are piles and caches and troves of luggage.  Luggage in braids with handles chained to pillars; luggage hidden under stairs; luggage with "collector quality" stickers from PanAm, BOAC, CP Air and Vasco da Gama.  A veritable luggage graveyard (should have taken a photo but we were too busy looking for our luggage).

Mutua is charming - the Holiday Inn is our favourite kind of "bubble hotel" - room, A/C, food, pool, service - in other words no contact with the real world.

We repack our bags down into safari size, check the rest and we’re off to fly to Kilimanjaro Airport in Tanzania…….then we almost miss the plane.

We are coming to dread airports!

Arrival in Tanzania

After the drama in the Nairobi airport we are thrilled to see Felix, and his truck, waiting for us At Kilimanjaro Airport.  He will be our guide, companion, social commentator, translator and all round wonderful human being for the next 10 days.  The truck is important because we will live in it 16 hours a day, bouncing over roads that would challenge an Abrams tank.  There are 6 seats.  A battery powered fridge (stocked with water, juice and beer - GENIUS!!!! says Liz), 3 pop tops for viewing and a suspension system that must be made of titanium.  Note – the Toyota Land Cruiser is the standard here – not the Range Rover which Felix regards as a town car

And they don’t call it “Kilimanjaro Airport” for nuthin……Felix announces that the weather is unusually clear and you can’t always see the behemoth that is looming over us.  We snap a few not well planned photos….

We’re excited.

We have a real guide, in a real safari truck and we really are in Africa!

Off to the Plantation Lodge outside Karatu

We leave the airport for our almost 5 hour drive to Plantation Lodge (would have been shorter but the President was visiting Arusha that day so the main roads were closed – pic below).  The countryside is stunning – reminds us of Tuscany (no kidding).  Intensely cultivated – nice people – safe.

 

Of course the Plantation Lodge is wonderful – it’s a Liz booking.

Liz here – thank you Richard – we are booked at Plantation Lodge for 4 nights, from where we will travel to see Lake Manyara and Ngorongoro Crater as day trips.  It is an unusually long booking – which I’ve intentionally done as we prefer not to move hotels every day and are happy to drive up to 90 minutes to sight see to avoid changing hotels.  But it does have people scratching their heads – from the original travel agent to Felix to the check in staff - “4 nights?” they confirm. It was absolutely the right choice for us as we settled in and really enjoyed the Lodge and its staff. Back to Richard!

They upgraded us to a suite (4 nights!) – there are wonderful flower gardens and a fabulous kitchen garden.  The head gardener Bryson takes us on a tour and we see the vegetables we’ll eat that night being picked.  They also have a flock of free range turkeys – kept hoping for turkey on the menu.  Food and service are very good and it’s our headquarters for the next 4 days from which we’ll visit Lake Manyara, the Crater and a countryside tour.

Reception building, with dining room and great bar

View from bar

Onions hanging to dry in the Kitchen Garden

Pics of our Suite – the Blue Mountain

And lunch on the patio

Lake Manyara

First, the mandatory pic of Liz and Dick in the truck – binoculars and camera ready; beer chilling and Felix doing his magic.  We came to love the truck and have cherished bruises to remember it by

The Manyara reserve is relatively small, notable for its forest elephants, flamingos on the lake, hippo pool and other wildlife (plus lions in trees – which we didn’t see here, but stay tuned)

The elephants do not disappoint.  Almost immediately we encounter a rare 5 legged Tanzanian elephant

Yes, Virginia, this is a male elephant and the 5th leg is what you think it is.  A most spectacular organ.  He can whirl it, twirl it, curl it and tie it in a bow.  It is an aft version of his trunk and reduces mere primates to babbling envy.

After our penis envy display, we get down to the real game drive when Babar comes out of the bush – fast!  Now Dickie has his brand new telephoto lens on his brand new camera so he can capture this moment – wrong.  Babar is moving close – very fast – and Dickie manages to get to get a shot of Babar’s eye

He then brushes the truck and turns to laugh at us

And then takes a casual dust bath…..

There are large troops of Baboons in Manyara.  Raising young, copulating, fighting, eating and drinking.  Feeding them is forbidden so they don’t beg.  Since they are very agile and have 3 inch fangs, having one in the truck with you could be unpleasant

 

A sad incident as we’re driving – a feral dog has had an unfortunate encounter with an African Porcupine.  The quills are a foot long and the diameter of a pencil.  Felix predicts the dog will die in a few days

The Hippo pool is at the edge of the lake – they're like like half submerged U-Boats, waiting for an unsuspecting convoy.  The occasional male hierarchical wrestle provides a break in the torpor…..but then you remind yourself that hippos kill more people than any other animal in Africa…..more than crocs or lions or anything except that very tiny, little HIV virus.

 

There are numbers of black faced monkeys by the streams.  They are like miniature humans in really nice fur coats.  Safe within the park, they are losing their fear of humans and sit within feet of the truck.  A lizard on a nearby tree goes uneaten, much to Felix’s surprise – they must be well fed or they would have quickly eaten it.

We’re bird nerds (hey – Liz can tell a Blue Jay from an Bald Eagle).  Africa has a lot of aggressive ground birds – they can fly but basically they’re velociraptors with feathers.  A favourite is the Ground Horn Bill – turkey sized, tough, and now increasingly rare.

The Veld ungulates are also at Manyara – Wildebeest, Zebra, Buffalo, various Antelopes and our favourite – Giraffes.  We love giraffes…..the way they walk, their 11 inch tongues, males neck dueling, their incredibly cute young.  We’ll cover other herd animals later, but following are some Manyara giraffe shots…and a few elephant memories, because we love 4 to 5 tons of potential disaster up very close!

Tomorrow – the Crater!

Ngorongoro Crater! Part 1

Ngorongoro is the largest volcanic caldera on earth – with walls 2,000 feet deep and an area of 102 square miles. It is famous for the richness of animal life.  Richard has wanted to visit here since he was 10.  We made it!

From the rim the crater is an archetype from the “Lost World” saga.  The floor is shrouded in mist.  Strange bird calls echo and everyone speaks a little more softly than they have to.

 

 

We’re 10 minutes into the drive along the Crater Rim (it’s about 20 kilometres to the Sopa Road which descends into the crater itself) when the welcoming committee shows up.  A pride of 9 lions is perched on the side of a road cut.  This means that the ground they are sitting on is at truck window height.  We are not looking down.  We are looking across at 300 pounds of Mom, who has cubs, about 10 feet away – and we’re alone with them.

Following are photos from the first of our many cat encounters

Here’s Mom, at eye level:

 

 

 

And the juvenile male – just starting to grow a mane

And the intensely cute cubs, and we still cannot believe that the Tanzanian government would not let us take one or two home

And our memorable encounter ended when Mom got pissed off…. she considered smacking us, but decided to hustle the pride off into the bush.

The descent down to the crater floor takes us through a series of climates.  We particularly love the heath altitudes.

Once we hit the valley floor we have confirmed what we suspected – Felix has better radar than any modern navy.  Does he see them?  Does he smell them? Does he feel their vibrations through the ground?  Is he the spotting equivalent of Wayne Gretzky – he looks where the animals will be, not where they are?  Who knows, but animals just get served up for our viewing pleasure.

The spectacle opens with two rare black rhinos.   They’re at a distance – in fact we think they’re rocks.  Felix knows better.

In one corner (it’s a circular crater, Dickie) of Ngorongoro Crater is a lovely pool with hippos and – yes – other tourists (there is also a very clean washroom).  But other tourists do not have Felix, who has a picnic table and chairs hidden under the back seat of his truck and he has a “bush breakfast” from Plantation Lodge – and (Liz’s heart flutters) a french press and hot water to make fresh, hot coffee.  We dine in Eden watching the hippos and the birds

Liz discovers a new favourite animal – the warthog.  The Disney people are right – this inherently ugly beast is cute, perky and much fun – especially when they have young

After lunch Felix finds more lions – they’re hiding in some scrub brush, occasionally peaking at some approaching wildebeasts.  It is amazing how these big cats can disappear into cover no more substantial than a suburban garden. They eventually decide that we’re in the way of a successful hunt and leave in a huff.  We saw a lot of lions and they generally looked annoyed by our presence.

 

 

 

More in part 2………….

Ngorongoro Crater – Part 2

A nearby eagle, probably hoping for scraps from a kill, looks equally displeased by our arrival

The lions’ primary food are the herds of wildebeest and zebras – there are thousands of them

 

 

The wildebeest is a strange animal.  It’s not a type of cow; actually an antelope.  It looks like it was made from leftover parts of other creatures.  It’s not particularly fast or smart or fast breeding.  It’s the lions favourite prey, but for some strange menu of criteria it is an evolutionary success.  There are over 2 million of them in Tanzania

But strange as they are, a new born calf can still charm you. He/she is delightful, gambolling in the sun.  Felix points out that the young wildebeest actually look a bit like hyenas (as protection against hyenas) but still there’s a 3 in 5 chance he/she will be lion food in the first year

They can also be very photogenic when prancing in front of the thousands of feeding flamingos

We love the zebras.  They look like they’re dressed for the opera and have a bunch of fun traits.  Note the one on the ground in the following pic.  He is not dead.  He’s just having a rest while the other guys watch.  Their favourite place to flop down appears to be in front of the truck when rolling across the plaine.

They also like to stand neck to neck – this way they can see in 4 directions and one zebra’s tail keeps the flies out of the other’s face.

And of course their young are appropriately cute

There is a lot of other wildlife in Ngorongoro – elephants considerably larger than the forest elephants at Lake Manyara.

Plus Eland and Thompson’s Gazelles, and more warthogs and ostriches

 

 

 

We met an animal we’d see a lot more of later – the spotted hyena.  Here’s one cooling his butt off in a mud hole, only to have a warthog move him off so the hog could have the full spa mud bath treatment

We’ve not yet talked about the African Buffalo.  All animals we’ve met so far turn and leave when man arrives (hence our growing photo collection of wildebeest and zebra butts).  Even the lions walk away – pretending that they’ve other more important things to do.  But two species turn and face you when confronted – elephants and buffalo.

Based on experience and conversations the African Buffalo is up to a ton of extremely grumpy disposition, with a pair of scimitar horns and and armoured skull that would stop an anti-tank round.

The favourite Felix stunt in days to come – when Liz and Dick were getting cocky – was to suggest we see if he could get the buffalo to charge the truck.  The even better one was setting up our safari lunch within range of a buffalo her.  Dickie suggested we eat in the truck.

 

And one of Dickie’s favourite ground hunting raptor-like birds – a bustard

As we’re leaving there was a sad encounter.  An aging male lion, alone, possibly driven from the pride by a younger contender.  Note the wound under his left eye (not very discernable in the photos) – and he had another on his left haunch.  The Lion King redux – long live the king

At the top of the crater Felix decides we need a cold beer and lunch – Felix doesn’t drink – we love Felix.  Marabou Storks arrive (more dinosaurs with feathers).  They are our favourite Serengeti horror movie creatures.  They are big (note the size compared to Liz), delightfully ugly and aggressive.  We seem to be learning how to deal with aggressive storks.

 

And a quickie in closing – the storks that traditionally brought the babies and lived on the chimneys spend the winter in Africa – here they are

A wonderful day at the Crater!

A day of rest (well, sort of!)

We take a day off prior to our road trip to the Serengeti.  But we still go out and about!

We have asked Felix to see two things – a school and a market (local market, not a tourist-y one)

We start at the school, which is actually an orphanage for children whose parents died from AIDS. 

What is there to say?  We have so much.  They have so little.  We took coloured pencils and pads (bought locally) and made a donation to sponsor a uniform and other school requirements for one of the 20 residents.

When we arrive 11 of the 20 kids are away at school – the remaining 9 are kindergarten age.  They are all sitting at a picnic table with their teacher – doing math.  Serious math – way harder than what we perceive our kindergarten age kids do!

The floors are packed earth and they sleep 8 to a room.  They cook on open fires.  It is scrupulously clean.  What does one logically do?  Except the obvious – more!

And the most poignant shot…….

Want to read more or help?  It’s the Watoto Care Orphanage

http://www.homecomfortorphanage.blogspot.com/

After the orphanage we head to the local market – which was absolutely fabulous, but we have no photos.  The vegetables, meats and fruits were amazing but the vendors want to be paid for photos.  Felix urged us not to (that wasn’t difficult to convince Richard of that) so we have our memories! 

We also bought a few pieces there – two of the long, tall people as seen in a Plantation Lodge photo (we fell in love with them) and a Massai club….Felix has shipped it home for us.

And then we say – “a local bar” – that’s what we need!  Felix turns down a street and we find ourselves at the “Skyway Club Bar & Restaurant”.  Not a place we would have chosen unassisted (and we’re sure they don’t get many tourists!) but clean, functional, pleasant service and everything the right bar in the right place should be (beer was really cold, too!)

 

 

And then a very special stop at a piece of land Felix has purchased near Karatu – we were his first visitors and were very touched by that.  He has future plans and dreams for a B&B here – something we know he will achieve!  (Felix, we’re coming to the grand opening!)

View from what will be “our” room!

 

Thank you Felix for a wonderful day – we learned a great deal!

Into the Serengeti

Today we bid goodbye to the Plantation Lodge and set out for the first of our two mobile tented camp experiences (Liz looked longingly at the porcelain toilet in our suite at the Lodge before we left).

Serengeti Safari Camp is located in the Ndutu area of the Serengeti – about a 6 hour drive (but we turned it into a game drive so it was longer than a straight drive).

First up, you have probably figured out that Dickie is fascinated with the ground hunting raptor birds – dinosaurs in feathers.  Here is his favourite at a long distance – the Secretary Bird, named for its splay of writer’s quill-like feathers hanging from the back of its neck

As one of those strange “life list” kind of things that you always wanted to do, we stopped at Olduvai Gorge (or Oldupai as they’re now spelling it).  This is where Leakey discovered the earliest hominid fossils and established that we all did originate in Africa.

Then, as a real surprise, Felix drove us down the Gorge (road? who needs a road?)  It was a journey through history as we traversed the millions of years of strata.

This poor fellow’s last trip………..

Then, staying off road, we drove across a vast sandy area (Felix announced that only a “confident” guide drives in this area – what does that mean??!!) on our way to see the shifting sands.  We are fascinated by dunes – especially barcane dunes.  This one has been traveling across the plane for about 5 years – it has moved a kilometre – it doesn’t look quite as neat in the photo…unfortunately…but it is crawling across the plane like some giant amoeba, flowing with the prevailing winds.

We’ll talk about Felix’s eyes in more detail in a moment, but here’s an early example.  We’re bouncing along in the truck and suddenly Felix stops and tells us to stand up quietly.  At first glance we see nothing

Then we adjust and see

The baby is too young to run away from a predator so the mother has a signal she gives it to freeze – most predators use motion as their signal.  So we could get very close to the baby while it was in freeze mode.

Shortly thereafter we stop for lunch….we are officially nowhere.  The only requirement is that it be shady so we’re under the only trees for miles.  Tables and chairs are assembled; food and drink appear and we sit in the middle of nowhere eating a charming lunch (from Plantation Lodge) and being civilized.  This process will repeat itself with great frequency and greater delight over coming days.

Liz digression here – female readers may be wondering about the – ahem – facilities in the middle of nowhere.  As regular readers know, we are not experienced campers so I don’t regularly bound into the bush.  And when you drink as much coffee and beer (not together, of course) as I do – this issue was weighing on my mind.  But my genius friend April solved all that months ago with her present of “Pee Mates” (warning – possibly too much information to follow) – little plasticized tubes that mean you can stand and pee (I’ve always maintained that when women learn to stand and pee we can take over the world). Pee Mates are great – especially when the beer all comes in 1/2 litre bottles!

A Massai herding child appears (remember, we are nowhere) and Felix shares water and a photo opp with him.  The child should be at school but the parents choose to have him herd their cattle and goats.  Big problem for Tanzania and more specifically the Massai

Our “animal du jour” is giraffes.   We still care for lions and zebras and gnus and birds, et al .. (well except for the tse tse flies who have never seen an Off Repellant ad and are therefore unaware that they shouldn’t bite you when you have Off on (neat oxymoron)….but giraffes are the animals of the moment as we come down the from Ngorongoro highlands into the Serengeti plains.  There are a lot of them!

 

But the best part about giraffes is watching them move.  We keep meaning to take a video – will do so at our next opportunity but as we write this we have just returned from a fine lunch at a South African winery who had no giraffe on the menu.

Felix has a dangerous and fearless sense of humour.  We are watching giraffes who are standing digesting while Liz and Dick pontificate on the intestinal processes of African Ungulates.  Felix decides that we – and the giraffes – are getting boring, stops the truck and hops out and chases a large giraffe – resulting in the following series.

 

Time to discuss Felix – he’s not actually a human guide, he’s an acronym for a new Dick Cheney/Haliburton “Hunting System”

Find Every Lion In Xtremis

Felix – while driving the truck over the proverbial “roads to hell”, and answering Liz and Dick’s endless questions about the Tanzanian education system, and avoiding running over a snoozing zebra – is constantly scanning the plain and the sky.  Suddenly an announcement.

That rock on the horizon is actually a hyena and the dot in the sky is a vulture and both of them will converge – THERE!….and we’re off.  The truck leaves the road that isn’t a road and lurches across the plain.  After a bumpy ride we arrive at the first of many post kills.  The following is a video of the hyena and its meal

Following is a composite from various post kill photos.  There is a hierarchy of players – the primary killers (lions, cheetahs and quite often hyenas) the top of the food chain scavengers (hyenas) then at least 3 tiers of vultures (the big nasty brown ones, the intermediary spotted and the smaller browns).  At the bottom of the chair are the jackals and Maribou storks….and inevitably the insects and micro organisms who turn everything back to dirt (except the skulls….they remain). 

We’ve not seen an actual kill, so this phase is missing (we both admit to not regretting seeing Nate the Gnu or Wally the Warthog torn apart) – but hyenas and kill are common.  Their massive jaws can crack bone to eat the marrow,  The sound of cracking bone is the Muzak of the Serengeti

 

More videos to come in a day or so – we’re off to swim with Great White sharks!!!!!!

We interrupt the land based animals for the sea going ones (the ones with a LOT of teeth)

Went Great White Shark hunting today – here are a few pics and a brief video

Drove yesterday from Simon’s Town over to Gansbaai (about 3 hours) …. woke up this morning to grey skies and wind (after thunder and lightning during the night) – not great shark hunting weather.  We arrived at the outfitter at 8am and while the weather was improving (rain stopping/sun coming out) the wind was picking up.

At the outset the operators took a vote (a vote?) amongst the 26 of us to determine whether to go to the area where there were a lot of sharks (but it was very rough) or virtually no sharks (where it was very calm).  Not much of a decision when you’ve traveled a long way to get there. 

About a 15 minute run over to the shark area – we were a rockin’ and a rollin’ on the way there.  Then divers suited up to go in to the shark cage (no air – breath hold)  After watching the first group we decided not to do the cage – it was very rough and people were being bashed around.  We’ve spent a lot of time in the water with sharks (without a cage!) and were happy to view the sharks from up top in the boat (without going into graphic detail – it was rough and some people suffered for the whole time we were out there – fortunately Richard and I do not suffer from motion sickness).

We had some great shark encounters……

 

 

And here’s a very brief video (literally the last shark and the last video before the batteries died)…short but very graphic

 

More from the Serengeti!

The last Serengeti post ended with a hyena with his kill…picking up from there.

Felix uses the truck to separate the hyena from the kill so the buzzards can have a feeding frenzy.  They may be perfectly evolved to do what they do, but it sure isn’t attractive.  As much effort is spent pecking each other as the kill

The speckled vultures waste the most time attacking each other while the smaller brown guys lie low and keep eating

The large brown types are at the top of the vulture food chain and eat first

Lastly the jackals arrive to finish the scraps.  We like this photo for the expression on his face.

It’s another Felix alert!  We see stones – he sees 3 cheetahs.  They are a well known family of 3 brothers.  Because they hunt as a team they can take down wildebeest and not just the smaller Thompson’s Gazelles which are cheetah’s frequent prey .. but no hunting today.  They are beautiful relaxing in the sun

There are exotic birds everywhere – who knew that lovebirds were native to the Serengeti?

And a Francolin – another of the ground hunting species we find so fascinating

Plus what may be the prettiest bird we’ve seen in years =- the Lilac Breasted Roller

And another favourite – Guinea Fowl.  Always in pairs and only two dimensional.  When they turn end on they’re so thin they almost disappear!

Then a family of Hartebeests with calves to close the day – strange looking creatures

 

Soon tents appear on the horizon.  We’re almost at camp…and this is definitely not how I remember camp from Boy Scouts.