Journey to the Serengeti

After breakfast, Adam made a large beanbag on which to balance his camera, and he asked Walter, our waiter for rice to fill it with. Walter brought the rice and when Adam asked how much, he simply said to just bring the rice back on our way home. Way to conserve AND flavor the rice with safari dust :)

Kassim, our guide, and Elias, our cook, picked us up in a Toyota Land Cruiser around 8:30 and we set off for a 9.5-hour drive from Arusha to Serengeti National Park. Sitting in the front seat next to Elias were two dozen unrefrigerated eggs...hmmm....

(Nearly every safari company comes with a cook because having good food is important for good recommendations.)

We stopped at a few places along the way and were shocked at the activity occurring around us. Imagine a two-lane paved road with overflowing minivans (public buses), safari land rovers, honking, swerving, and passing each other. Then, on both sides of the street are a constant stream of people walking, biking, pulling wheelbarrows, carrying everything from buckets of water to eight-foot long bundles of sticks on their heads, stray dogs, goats, donkeys, all just going on with their days.

Branching off the main paved road were numerous dusty dirt roads. We passed one roadside market, which was a mass of people everywhere, complete chaos. Elias braved the crowds and bought some bananas for our meals throughout the week. It was nothing like any town I've ever been in.

The poverty was breathtaking -- everyone around us was just surviving, working themselves sick just to put a meal on the table. People were wearing cut-up motorcycle tires as flip flops. It's very heartbreaking and very real. It's amazing how hard these people were working -- pushing bikes overflowing with bags of rice uphill, while carrying a child on their backs. Despite these hardships, it was not difficult to catch people laughing and smiling.



After passing many towns, we noticed more and more people wearing red and blue colored blankets for clothing. These individuals are the Maasai tribe, a traditional people who spend their days herding cattle, sheep, goats, and lambs. (Note that our safari company is a non-profit called Maasai Wanderings, and 70% of the proceeds from our trip help the Maasai people.) Their diet consists mainly of meat from the animals they herd. They all wear blankets that are draped across them in a distinctive fashion. These blankets have a simple pattern and usually have two primary colors -- red and blue. The red coloring is used to scare off wild animals (i.e., lions) from attacking their herds. These animals have now learned through numerous generations to stay away from red. The Maasai do not hunt or eat these wild animals; they simply protect their herds and if that means killing a wild animal that is acceptable.

The men carry a stick and/or spear to fight off wild animals, if necessary. The woman have intricately pierced and decorated ears, and they all have shaved heads. The Maasai live in bomas -- communities of huts, and they live in the plains where it is very dry. They drink the same muddy, feces-infested water that their herds do. This tribe can live in the national parks because they are partly defined by their peace toward wildlife (and it was their land before the parks were created). It was great to see the children waving to us as we passed. We are really looking forward to learning more about the Maasai when we visit a village later in the week.

We enter the Ngorongoro Conservation area, which contains the Ngorongoro Crater where we will spend time in a couple of days. The landscape changes from a dense forest to barren grassland within a couple of miles -- incredible. We finally reached Serengeti National Park after 9+ hours of driving (many of which were on bumpy dirt roads). Once we entered the park, Kassim popped the top of the Land Cruiser and we really enjoying standing up feeling the wind in our faces.

Without even looking for animals, just simply driving to our camp, we saw a wide range of animals: giraffe, zebra, warthog, hyena, baby hyenas eating the skull of an impala, impalas, Thompson gazelle, vervet monkeys, hippos, cape buffalo, dik dik, topeys, a road runner bird, buzzards, and pelicans.

Elias and Kassim set up our tent among the other campers and informed us not to walk to the bathrooms during the night because "animals can hide in the grass" and it might not be safe. When we questioned them about where they were sleeping, they said in the car to keep an eye out (and then turn on the lights/honk the horn) in case a "dangerous" animal walks through the campsite. The guides do not carry any sort of weapon. Yikes!






For dinner, Elias made popcorn, cucumber soup (so delicious), spaghetti with meat, vegetables and unique spices, and bananas for dessert. He's quite talented (went to culinary school in Nairobi, Kenya), especially since we're out in the bush!

Oh, and the bathrooms are quite interesting! Think of a hole in the ground. Great fun!