The Magic of the Serengeti

AUGUST 2014

On the Great Plains

The Serengeti. The name alone conjures up magic. The great expansive plains dotted with isolated trees. Big skies and burning red African sunsets. The Great Migration of millions of wildebeest.

I’m sure Sir David Attenborough would have been responsible bringing the Serengeti into our living rooms and into our lives. But I never dreamed of being here myself.

It’s a 300km drive with our good man Freddie from Ngorongoro to the Serengeti and on to the next lodge. Although before we even get there we’re exposed to some of the less agreeable side of tradition and tourism.

There are no Maasai living in the national park itself so before reaching the Serengeti we stop at a supposedly traditional village. They’re clearly expecting us, and immediately line up to perform some ritual singing and dancing, including a “jumping dance”, a competitive show of strength. Toby and Kevin are coerced to join in, and subsequently prove that white men indeed cannot jump.

We’re then taken to see the inside of one of the homes – very small, low-ceilinged, dark and smoky. Our guide begins to talk about various Maasai traditions including polygamy, and both male and female circumcision. And my moral compass is sent a-spinning. We westerners like to believe in preserving traditional cultures and traditions, but what about when those traditions clash with our own moral standards?

Freddie previously mentioned this visit was “pre-paid” so we have already paid to be here – even if we didn’t know it. The guide however makes it clear that he expects a tip. And we’re then shown around ‘the market’, and encouraged to buy various ‘traditional’ bangles, necklaces, bowls and various other trinkets. It all feels depressingly commercialised.

The Maasai are even exploiting each other. The women make the trinkets, but it’s the men who have been to school in Arusha, who speak English and who broker the deals. So when we agreed a fee for an assortment of figurines, bowls and bangles, our fixer requested that we pay the woman two thirds of the price and give the rest to him once we’re outside the village where the transaction cannot be seen.

As we motor on, each Maasai village we pass has a couple of tourist Land Cruisers parked outside so the whole process goes on countless times each day.

We eventually reach the entrance to the Serengeti National Park, and although we stop only for a few minutes while Freddie does the paperwork, we’re entranced by the (still) superb starlings and the agama lizards, with their dark blue bodies and bright pink head, neck, and shoulders. That’s the male apparently – the females are dull as pants.

The central plains of the Serengeti are relatively flat and featureless and it begs the question of how on earth you’re supposed to spot anything in this vastness. But as we drive further north – with a brief glimpse of a cheetah on the way – there are more and more kopjes (outcrops of rocks) and those wonderful symbols of Africa, the flat-topped acacia trees. And there is just more and more wildlife – giraffes, zebras, gazelles, bushbucks, hartebeests, reedbucks, waterbucks, topi, eland and impala. Suffice to say that aside from the obvious – the giraffes and zebras – it takes Freddie to identify them from one another. And he could be making it up for all we know.

One of the things we’d hoped to see was part of the great migration although I suspect that we may be a week or two too late. But then we encountered a large herd of wildebeest and zebra crossing the road just a few yards in front of us, strung out a long way in either direction. It certainly isn’t on the scale of the mass migrations you see on tv – probably only a few thousand beasties – but it is spectacular enough. A fantastic sight.

Our accommodation in the Serengeti, is the Lobo Wildlife Lodge, nestled in among the rocks of a kopje. The staff are warm and friendly, the electricity again sparse, and the swimming pool tastefully incorporated into the natural rocks. Yes, the swimming pool. Probably not the most environmentally-sensitive facility on site, but the views over the plains from the pool bar are gorgeous. As we’re unpacking, five giraffe stroll by the bedroom window. And that’s not something you can say every day. There are baboons on the grass out the back, and hyrax running around all over the place.

You’d expect the hyrax to be treated like vermin but they seem to be welcomed, even tolerated. They’re fascinating buggers. They’re often mistaken for rodents, but are more closely related to elephants, namely in that male hyraxes lack a scrotum and their testicles remain tucked up in their abdominal cavity next to the kidneys, the same as elephants, manatees, and dugongs. Interesting eh? Good job somebody worked that out cos they look bugger all like elephants to me.

Nervous creatures

We’ve barely left the lodge the following morning in search of wildebeest and we’ve already seen banded mongooses, guinea fowl, hornbills, Kirk’s dik-dik’s and klipspringers.

At a pit-stop, Freddie casually mentions that the hill behind us is in fact in Kenya. We’re more or less on the border of Tanzania (and the Serengeti) and Kenya (the Maasai Mara). The border here at Bologonja has its own rather forlorn customs and immigration office in an attempt to control who and what goes across the border, although apparently it has not been too successful. Nowadays it is little more than a foul smelling toilet and a collection of animal skulls.

Continue on all the way to the Mara river, where we find a large herd of wildebeest amassing, clearly readying themselves to cross the river.

We watch. We wait. We eat lunch. Watch some more. Wait some more. Wildebeest are nervy creatures at the best of times, but faced with crossing a river populated by hungry Nile crocodiles they become positively terrified. They move further down river. We move with them. Watch. Wait. Finally a zebra leads them to the water’s edge. The wildebeest follow. One wildebeest gets to the water’s edge. The herd follow. Will they go? The suspense is killing. And then…

He bottles it completely, turns around, and heads further down river. And all the others follow. We watch them for a while but sense that we could watch all day and see nothing. So we turn our backs on the world’s most indecisive creatures and head for home.

There are more elephants on the way back, cooling themselves by spraying muddy water onto their backs, in the middle of the grassland set against a big, big African sky, which goes some way to making up for not seeing a wildebeest eaten by a crocodile – which, let’s face it, is what we all wanted to see.

In search of a leopard

We’d planned for our safari gear to include some 1970‘s sky blue Roger Moore-style safari suits, but of course we never got round to sorting that out. Safari gear nowadays is disappointingly dull by comparison, all beige and khaki, gilets and cargo pants, overflowing with pockets and straps. Which may be preferable to the woman who appeared for breakfast one morning and then went out on safari wearing leopard-themed animal prints.

The last remaining item on our safari quest is the famously reclusive leopard. As we head towards the central plains we spot not a leopard but a cheetah, slinking along with a hyena skulking along behind, and nervous gazelles scattering left, right and centre.

Freddie has been keen to educate us about the wide variety of acacia trees and his favourite seems to be the whistling acacia. He stops to demonstrate how the ants that live on the whistling acacia protect it in a symbiotic relationship between landlord and tenant. So much so that they vigorously attack him and force him to abandon his demo. It’s cruel but you couldn’t help but laugh.

We visit another river full of very vociferous honking hippos. But then the great leopard hunt just seems to drag on and on as we effectively drive around for close to three hours without seeing anything other than the usual gazelles, zebras and a few giraffes. There’s the rather sad sight of a lion cub wandering around on its own, mewling for its mum, clearly lost and alone. As he wanders off into the grasses you can only hope he finds his family.

More hippos, secretary birds, zebra, elephants. You don’t mean to be blasé about such wonderful things and I honestly could watch elephants all day, but when you’ve been driving around for so long looking for one specific thing, other things become a little ordinary.

We’re contemplating calling it a day. But a few minutes later we encounter four lionesses and eight cubs dozing by the roadside, with five of the cubs actually seeking shade underneath another Land Cruiser. The driver is revving the engine to move them along but they again appear utterly unfazed by the throbbing engine or indeed the presence of people. One of the females parks herself beside our rear wheel and she is so close you could reach out and touch her – if you want to risk having your arm ripped off of course. Fair enough these creatures are the kings of the jungle and I’m sure they know it but it’s staggering how calm they are in the presence of people. Utterly unfazed.

One of the adults then rises to her haunches, head still, eyes locked onto a zebra taking a drink in the river. She leaps forward, accelerating rapidly over fifty yards, but she’s either a little inexperienced or a little hasty and the zebra has time to turn and flee before she is close enough to make a serious lunge.

And that’s just about it. Freddie turns the vehicle towards home. Then stops. He pulls out his binoculars and points at a tree. And there it is. A leopard. It’s sitting erect in the tree before lazily stretching itself out along a branch. So one minute we’ve been driving for three hours seeing very little, the next we’ve had a pride of lions, a herd of elephants and a leopard in less than an hour.

A magnificent end to what has been six magnificent days in the company of nature’s best – that’s the animals, not Freddie and the rest of our crew.

Our final Out of Africa experience is to catch a light aircraft from Lobo Airstrip back to Arusha. The airstrip is a cleared and flattened patch of grassland, with a windsock, a toilet, and nothing else. No signs, no seats, no officialdom. No lounge. The plane arrives, buzzes the airstrip to make sure there are no large animals in the way, then circles back to land.

It’s Cessna 208 single-engined turboprop plane, seats twelve, and seems to be piloted by a fifteen year-old. But the low altitude flying affords us final views of the vastness of the Serengeti plain, and a stunning view of Ol Doinyo Lengai volcano.

And I suspect that really is the end of a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Yes, we may go on safari again, but then we’d probably go somewhere different, see something else. And that is fine. Experiencing Ngorongoro and the Serengeti once is privilege enough for me.