Camping Trip of a Lifetime

Everyone woke up at 4:45 with very high expectations for our expedition to the world famous Serengeti. We packed clothing, rain coats, sleeping bags, and Tupperware only half consciously, with the other part of our minds imaging cheetahs hunting gazelle, zebra grazing in an ocean of grass, and wildebeest stampeding by the hundreds of thousands.

 By this time most of us have the incredible ability to sleep despite a wide variety of jarring road conditions. In fact, the unpaved roads are my personal favorite, rocking the car and sleepy me right off to a REM cycle. So essentially, I caught up on my beauty sleep for a decent amount of time before arriving at Ngorongoro Crater. I doubt you’ve ever heard of this little paradise in Northern Kenya, and that is honest to god so unbelievable. How has this place been kept a secret?

The crater was formed by a massive volcano which erupted and is the source of the rocky soil covering this region. The steep edges of the crater causes humidity clouds to burst, providing the crater with a pretty constant source of water, way more than most areas of the region. The higher amount of rain water and already high water table allows hundreds of tropical trees and enormous grasslands to thrive while also supporting a pretty impressive lake at the bottom. Essentially, Ngorngoro Crater is a paradise inside of a cereal bowl. The lions, black rhino, zebra, antelopes, wildebeest, and buffalo, ect. that live within the crater have all of their essential needs catered to them and never have any reason to leave. Interestingly enough, there are no giraffes within the crater because they cannot lower their heads to walk down the side as it would cause serious cranial pressure which would kill them. So Ngorngoro = perfect observation paradise minus giraffes. We just drove through on our way to Serengeti but will spend an entire day within the crater later this week.

Sleep commenced until we pulled up into the Oldupai (Olduvai) Gorge. We stepped out for a lecture on the history of the gorge which was given by a bit of a tour guide and was honestly, pretty lame and pathetic. He was much more interested that we visit his huge curio shop. Highlights of the lecture – Olduvai was spelled wrong by those darling white folk and should have been spelled oldupai which is the Maasai word for the Sisal. Also Serengeti should be spelled  Siringet and means wide open grassland. As far as anthropology facts go – its amazing – but really, look it up in a library book. I’d rather not butcher it here. They had a small museum with absolutely unbelievable fossils. You have no idea how big impala were a few million years ago. Their bounding was probably not nearly as cute and graceful when they were 4 tons.  There was also a very interesting bicycle on display owned by a Dr. Yoshiharu who traced the migration of mankind across the continents using just this little rudimentary piece of machinery. This includes through frigid snow drifts and suffocating hot deserts. I recommend looking him up, it’s a very captivating story.

And then we were on the last leg of our drive, and I was way to excited to sleep any more. The top three goals of the trip were seeing cheetahs, leopards, and wild dogs. The past group who had traveled to Serengeti a few months earlier had not seen any cheetahs, so we were trying not to fill our fragile little conservation hearts with hopes. Are you ready for this? We drive into the park to find a leopard lounging on a rock. We are ecstatic and use up way too much camera battery. Once our heart rates have slowed down we continue the drive to our campsite. Oh wait, is that a cheetah sitting perfectly poised on a rock? Yes, it is. And we have the second heart attack within a dangerously short period of time. Our professors and staff keep saying OH MY GOD YOU ARE SO LUCKY. And we know we are. And we are satisfied. And then my land cruiser almost slams into another cheetah about a half an hour later. We literally almost hit the sweet thing as it was crossing a road. It really didn’t look fazed as our driver burned rubber inches away from its face and it sauntered silently past down the length of the car and past the back fender to stand on a lookout rock for a photo shoot. I doubt many people have experienced euphoria the way we did in those 5 or 6 minutes. We were like small children who had opened up the best Christmas present ever, which we didn’t in a million years think we were going to get. We were the most satisfied and spoiled American students within the entire park.

Unpacking blab la bla. Eating blab la bla . There were an unbelievable amount of hyenas around our campsite at night. Their howls are something very unnatural, eerie, and beautiful all wrapped up into one. I was able to get a recording, and can’t wait to share it with everyone. At one point an ascari bopped a hyena on the head in order to send it away from our kitchen, which it was raiding. Throughout the entire trip we were privileged to have guest lecturers by the tourism manager of the park, head veterinarian of the park, and a bush meat lecture by one of our own. They were all very interesting. Day 2 and 3 were filled with hours upon hours of game driving. We saw leopards, hyena with pups, a very cheeky jackal, hippopotamus, cheetah, lazy lions, huge crocodiles, mongoose, rock hyrax, topi, hartebeest, wildebeest, zebra, giraffe, elephant, antelopes, buffalo…. It was unbelievable. I would go into detail but there is too much detail. Just too much detail. It was incredible. We stopped and climbed onto huge rocks which are made of some kind of special geological specimen and when you bang them with a stone they make a metallic sound. There was a beautiful bolder sitting on a ledge covered in small niches which had been worn away by ancient people who used the rock to create their own type of music.

Highlights of the trip include: Elephants fighting which was unreal. The elephants run at their opponent, locking tusks and shoving each other while their trunks flail around on their opponents foreheads. We also saw cape buffalo vying for territory and females. They bash horns, twisting them together while wrenching their necks towards the ground, trying to put their opponent at a disadvantage and eventually exhausting the weaker of the two. A local hippo wallow was filled with huge crocodiles and lots and lots of baby hippos (which seriously may be the sweetest looking pigs you’ve ever seen). The hippos make the weirdest sound, honking and squawking at each other while blowing water out of their noses and slurping their big heads under water. A jackal trotted very bravely towards our car, getting close enough for us to get fantastic photographs. A herd of elephants walked right up to our car, so close that they made me nervous before crossing the road. The elephants would place their sensitive trunks on the ground, testing the small drop off between their unfenced habitat and our well used vehicle paths, before slumping their large bodies down and strolling to the other side. About 25 elephants walked past us, including several little infants, holding their mothers tails the way you have always imagined. It was like being in a dream.

At night we set up a motion sensor camera and captured many hyena and a giraffe walking directly through camp right in between our tents.

However, the highest of highest or seriously souring highlights of the trip had to be this: After returning from a fantastic lunch and a day of swimming complete hot showers at the five star lodge we found a surprise waiting for us at camp. And I am dead serious on all of this. While we were gone a cheetah took down a female impala no less than 100 meters away from our campsite and had spent the rest of the day consuming its prize. We arrived to find the cheetah still there, with bloody muzzle and very satisfied eyes. I’m pretty sure most of us stopped breathing for a world record amount of time. Too many eyes did startle the animal and he abandoned his kill under our pressure. We set up our night camera and were able to get picture of the cheetah returning and finally hyenas dividing the kill amongst themselves and dragging it away. This didn’t happen while we were sleeping. All of this natural animal activity occurred while we were around the campfire, 100 meters away, enjoying our own dinner. This all sounds very cool, but make sure you see the pictures to really understand the gravity of this situation and the incredibly rare experience I’ve now put into my mental bank.

At this point, it was time to return home and we were really bummed that we had not been able to observe the wildebeest migration, as the animals were still in the very southern tip of Serengeti. Have you forgotten we are the luckiest safari group that’s ever existed? On the return drive home we passed the 3 different sections of migration. The wildebeest graze first, followed by zebra, and the grants gazelle bring up the rear. Seeing that many animals so close together is incredibly beautiful. It’s hard to put into words what its like to watch hundreds of animals grazing, always alert, walking with their nose down trying to survive day by day. At one point we watched 2 abandoned wildebeest infants stumble around and walk past 9 hyena with only 25 meters between the prey and the predator. So we are the luckiest safari group, but those are the luckiest baby wildebeest. If those hyenas had been hungry we would have had another experience of watching those predators take down and dismember an entire carcass in less than half an hour.

We are finally home at camp, and our second round of exams begins in less than a week. It’s crunch time again, but we have 2 day trip expeditions to Ngorongoro crater and Manyara national park  within our study period. Could my next post be as exciting as this one? Hopefully!!!

 The power here has been trembly, but stable. I wanted to say an extra special thank you to Colleen and Erin! Thank you so much for your letters! I LOVED them.

Love,

  Chelsea

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