Safari - 5 days into the heart of darkness with the Keystone cops

re-edited plus photos

So after much research we have booked a 5 day 4 night safari. This is after being stalked and heckled by safari teams throughout greater Arusha area for the past 3 days. Justin has a friend in Alaska who highly recommended this guy Nixon, Nixon owns a safari company and he gave us a deal. He was not the cheapest but was recommended and we got a good vibe from him. So at 8am our driver and cook arrive to pick us up and start on the adventure. Our driver Eddie, is a tall skinny, fast talking Masai guy who wears glasses and has a very theatrical way of speaking to us, I'm not sure if its normal or just for showmanship. He constantly laughs nervously and says yes to your questions before you have completed the full question. Our cook, Benson is shy, not Masai, gracious to a fault, full of smiles and has limited English. He also answers yes to any and all questions. "What are we having for dinner?" Yes...get the picture. The vibe is good these seem like good guys and everyone has warned us the safari is all about the guide. Eddie states, “when you are happy, I am happy.”

Best buddies

So we have booked a budget camping safari. There are several ways you can go on safaris from $100pp/per day to $2000pp/per day. The later is fly into the park on a private charter and stay at a $1300 per night exclusive resort with a vista over the game and be driven around by a "great white hunter" in a land cruiser. All safari's surround the central concept that to see the game you need to be prepared to ride around in a land cruiser for several hours a day over very shitty road conditions. The food and accommodations are better with some than with others, but at the end of the day everyone is chasing the same game in the same parks unless you are at a private reserve.

So we set out with our driver and cook for Lake Manyara, there were several provisioning stops and by midday we had arrived at our designated camping spot. This was basically a KOA campground outside Lake Manyara Park, we dropped off Benson and headed for the reserve. We did an afternoon tour with Eddie. Very cool park where you transit heavy jungle to spit out on a flat plain bordering the northern end of Lake Manyara, the western edge of the park is the rift valley escarpment. A 600m cliff that runs north south and serves as an amazing backdrop. We saw Baboons en mass, Giraffe, Wildebeest, Warthog, Cape buffalo, Impalas and assorted antelope variants. Plus the hippo pond was a nice end to the day, 40 hippos frolicking in a pond that you can walk up to. No cats, no Rhino's.

So the amazing thing about these parks is you just cannot imagine the density of the game in an enclosed area. There is nothing like it anywhere in the world. In Yellowstone, you might see a couple of bears, some elk and deer, maybe a moose or two. Here, everything I mentioned above is in the hundreds if not thousands. They take little notice of everyone driving around in cars and it's basically like you just landed on some other planet, or traveled in time back 1000's of years to the world in it's pre-human state.

So day one safari is complete, we are satisfied and head back to the camp. It is basically in a village on the border of the park enclosed with security. I was worried about security and the idea that predators would be walking around us, not a factor here. There is a pool, I jump in after walking across the street to get a very short haircut. This is not roughing it. By budget camping, I mean when we show up our tent is set up, sleeping bags placed and we have a dinner table set up and Benson is serving up a three course dinner. He is an excellent cook. Standard dinner starts with a soup, main course, salad and desert. We stocked up on S African wine prior to the trip. Boys, this is living!!! Benson serves as cook and waiter, Eddie as the "guide" joins us at dinner and we recap the day and discuss plans for tomorrow. We get to know Eddie a little, I find out one of his favorite American actors is Chuck Norris (we chuckle), and his favorite movie's are Delta Force I and II. I am not entirely familiar with either film (they both star Chuck Norris), surprisingly Eddie is not familiar with "Walker,Texas Ranger" a long running Chuck Norris series. Though not intimately familiar with Walker, I know it involves Chuck wearing a cowboy hat acting as, you guessed it, a Texas Ranger doing some karate moves to a loosely organized plot. Eddie is excited about the prospect of a new Chuck Norris production and we spend the rest of the evening fielding his technical questions about Delta Force II. By questions, I mean how planes, helicopters, missiles work. Eddie lacks some basic knowledge of physics, so we go over, lift, drag, gravity etc. Unfortunately I think most of these guys have about a 4^th grade education, but all speak several languages. I am starting to understand how someone could have a weird impression of America and Americans if their only source of cultural context is Delta Force II. In the back of my mind I think Eddie is a character, and who cares if he doesn't get physics, he wears a Masai Shuka (checkered blanket) around with authority so he must be good in the bush. Plus he's been guiding for 6 years.

Day 2

Up early, hot coffee, toast, eggs, and crepes. I'm really beginning to like Benson. We pile in the Land cruiser to head to the Serengeti. This is a long ass drive. We need to go through NgoroNgoro, go around the crater and then across this huge plain. Anytime you go through the parks, you need to pay the fees at the front gate. This is Africa so this is a very time consuming and bureaucratic system. The fee's are high they comprise about 1/3 of our total safari cost or about $50-80 per person per day. Of course there are fears of corruption so you must pay with Visa or Mastercard. So after this headache we start through NgoroNgoro and Eddie gives a somewhat contrived and pre-planned speech about the crater that begins with “Welcome Friends”. We then start a 6 hour off-road trek through NgorogNgoro and the Masai tribal areas and then on to the eastern plains where we get to see the annual Wildebeest migration. NgoroNgoro is breathtaking and the Masai tribal areas are amazing, these guys are walking around herding cattle with no shoes and a couple of blankets and a walking staff in Lion country.

As for the Wildebeest migration I cannot do justice in words to this experience. For 90km we drove through 1.5M migrating wildebeests, 500,000 zebra, and 400,000 antelope.  You are on this endless lush green plain, with no trees, just grass from horizon to horizon and for 2 hours as far as the eye could see in either direction we drove through wildebeests and zebra and antelope. We stopped along the way to help someone change a tire as the animals watched, but basically is was nonstop beasts in every direction for two hours. Finally we arrived at entrance gate to the Serengeti. Eddie turns to us and in his best efforts at showmanship announces, "Now the real safari begins!!" I am psyched. I really want to see the cats, I've been cooped up in this frigging land cruiser for the better part of 6 hrs for the past two days on unpaved roads, my kidneys have long since turned into jelly.

We pull off the road, take some photo's of the Serengeti park entrance, just as an off-road truck pulls up that has come straight out of the bush. The guys in the truck are ecstatic and are jabbering in Swahili. Eddie translates, that they have been stuck in the mud for the past 7 days, I look out on the horizon from where they came and see 6 other land cruisers stuck. Whew, glad I'm not them.

I am not sure but I actually think Justin and I high-fived as we turned off the road and popped the top up on the land cruiser. Well we get about 5km into the "safari" and come across another land rover full of Canadian tourists up to it's rear axel in mud. After helping fix a tire on the way here, it is only natural that we lend a hand. Justin and I share a cautious glance, I believe one of us said, Eddie better be careful that ground looks pretty soft. I am no expert on these matters but have dug a fair number of cars out of snow, mud and sand. That being said, Eddie did not distinguish his driving prowess on day two of safari. I think one of us shouted “don't go back any further” about the time he got our rear axel stuck in mud. So now we have two land rovers, stuck up to their asses in mud, 5km off the main road surrounded by the wildebeest migration. As soon as he spun the tires a couple times just to be sure, Eddie took off for the main road on foot. So we began the process of digging out the cars. Benson and the other driver were applying the principle of work hard, not smart. By this they were working with no care for the concepts of friction, traction, or mechanical advantage so there was some directive intervention taken by us and the Canadians. We succeeded in getting the other land cruiser almost out of the mud by jacking up the rear end and placing a spare tire under one of the rear wheels when Eddie showed up with help. Elapsed time 1 hour.

Justin and I had been shoveling and with the rest of the guys but took this as an opportunity to try out a bottle of South African wine, since help had arrived we figured we were out of trouble. No so fast....I don’t know how, but Tanzania's biggest Chuck Norris fan managed to bugger up the starter, drain the battery and strip the timing belt in the following 15 minutes. It is possible that there was some mechanical failure; however I maintain that Eddie's cumulative starting attempts and subsequent 15 attempts at compression starts with the car stuck in 4w gear while refusing to listen to possible knowledgeable advice probably did most of the above damage. What actually happened to the land cruiser we will never entirely know, a healthy debate on this issue persisted for the duration for the trip between myself and Eddie.

Needless to say I did not see that car start ever again. In the immediate aftermath of vehicle failure when a variety of Swahili speaking "experts" were banging away at the engine and attempting numerous compression starts, Justin and I had an "African intervention moment". Justin took the naturalist observer point of view and claimed it was better to let them "do their jobs" and just stand back. I on the other hand was suspicious that irreparable harm was being done that would delay and screw up this expensive safari. The bottle of wine helped sooth our ruffled feathers. We both agreed to intervene only in the name of safety.

Needless to say, about 2+ hours after the car got stuck in the mud we were getting towed in by cable 20km into the park to the ranger station, our dramatic arrival on the Serengeti was a little more subdued and the scheduled game drive was cancelled.

The stress of an impending safari disaster was taking it’s toll on our guide as he was trying to come up with a backup plan. After some frantic phone calls, some arguing, pleading with rangers and other tour guides we hitched a ride with Alan, another local operator, in his range rover with an understanding couple of honeymooners from NY. Now this guy Alan, he was a guide. He could drive, guide, and spot game. I spent an hour with him but I highly recommend him www.alantanzaniasafaris.com. I don’t think Eddie had spotted anything smaller than an elephant so far on the trip. Enroute to the campsite we saw two lions, and a leopard and it's cub feeding on an antelope in a tree which is really hard to spot.

We were starting to get the sneaking suspicion that we had been somewhat shortchanged as far as guide/driver went. Anyways we get to the campsite, Benson came with us and we help him set up camp and he gets going on dinner. It's about 7:30 now, the car broke down at 2pm. So we missed our afternoon game drive, Eddie shows up and states they are sending another car, we will have another car tonight. I am incredulous, but he is adamant. He is almost “slick car salesman confident” that we will be good to go in the morning. We run into another couple that we had previously met in Arusha and they graciously offer us a ride for the am game drive. Eddie dismisses this offer, we are not sure if it is because he would lose face and money by sending us with another company. We are paying about two grand for this five day trip and are starting to get nervous that our time in the Serengeti will be a bust if Eddie doesn’t get with the program.

So now begins the portion of the trip where Eddie loses faith and confidence of the clients. So the car got stuck, no problem, shit happens, we can roll with the punches. I have a sneaking suspicion that Eddie subsequently buggered the car due to ineptitude, we may never know. However, the car is broke and the company is sending another car that may or may not get here tonight. We are cautiously making plans with other safari-goers to ride along in the am, perchance the car does not get here. In fact I have encouraged/directed Eddie to ask around and have a backup plan for us in the am in his hip pocket in case the car doesn't show. Eddie denounces this possibility as "impossible" until I give him a hard look and he downgrades that to "improbable". He says he has his "homework" for tomorrow and will find us a backup ride. The other major issue that comes up is that apparently when the other driver comes, Eddie will no longer be the "guide/driver". I don't know if Nixon rightly relieved him of his duties after screwing up the first car, but Eddie is applying some pathetic pressure on us to request from Nixon that he stay on as "guide/driver" so we can "stay together". It's all about money, we deflect this request numerous times before bed. Oh yes, at about 10pm Eddie informs us the car will not be here tonight, but first thing tomorrow morning. Surprise, Surprise, Surprise.

A little on the camp, we are literally camping in a designated area in the middle of the Serengeti that has about a 40x40m grass area for you to set up your tents.

As we arrived there were grazing Cape buffalo (dangerous) 20-25m away. The campsite has toilets in two locations in two styles long drop (guess what that means), and standard toilet with running water. There is also a shower. There is an enclosed cooking area, where all the cooks run their own little version of iron chef African style and an enclosed eating area if you don't choose to eat at a table set up outside your tent.

Behind the camp is Koopje (granite boulders, favored by lions as a perch and habitat). The conditions are a little more primitive than what you would expect as a US park service public campground but since everyone has a cook and a driver that do the legwork it eases the pain. We did not get a safety briefing from Eddie on arrival, but we were very aware of the Cape buffalo. As I asked directions to the other toilet from Benson in the dark, he pointed me to the toilet that did not have "lions or buffalo". This made me a little more shall I say ‘cautious’ for the duration of the evening.

So I sleep poorly that evening, too hot, Justin is snoring or waking me up to hear the lions or there is some other ruckus. Next morning I'm groggy as I get out of the tent and I see Eddie and 5 other guides picking up trash that is strewn all over the place. We had a pack of frigging Hyenas descend on the camp after dark, they got into the trash and you know the rest. As I am coming back from the bathroom a troop of Baboons are popping out of the bushes and are trying to get into the reassembled trash. The cooks are cooking, and throwing rocks at them and yelling at them…take that iron chef.

 

Day 3

We sit down for coffee with Eddie. Shiver me timbers our new car and driver hasn't arrived yet, but he's at the front gate and will be here by 8am. Breakfast was supposed to be at 7, but is now at 8. 8am No car, Eddie says just a little while longer and thinks this is a good time to make his pitch for us to retain him as driver. It is not well received. 8:30 no land cruiser. Other groups are getting in their cars and heading out on safari waving goodbye to the two Americans without a vehicle. 9am no land cruiser. Parking lot is emptying out. Eddie was supposed to arrange another ride for us with the other guides but has been to busy trying to secure his tenure as driver for the next three days that he has failed to coordinate a backup plan or is keeping us stuck with him out of self interest. 9:30 no land cruiser. The last two land cruisers are leaving the lot, we are sitting quietly in front of our tent stewing. Eddie has retreated to a shady place like a petulant 4th grader. I think normally we would be a little more understanding if we were not paying $400-$500 a day to be in the Serengeti and didn’t think he was exercising some self interest to keep us with him and his company for the morning vs. coordinating an alternate plan to ensure we have a good trip. 10am land rover shows up. New driver is Hosea, Eddie is out, Hosea is in. Let's go.

Aside from a postponement of our 6am game drive to 10am, the rest of the day is a success. Delays included we have been shorted about 6-8 hrs of Serengeti game drive and are committed to making up that time. Aside from spending most of the day on his cell phone Hosea is a good guy and is cautious around mud. The phone transgressions are later forgiven, his wife is 7 mos pregnant. The Serengeti (Swahili for endless plain) is spectacular, it is the wet season so the ground is lush with short and medium grasses, table top and umbrella acacia spot the horizon. Our mission is to find cats. We find a male lion at the Masai kopjees and he walks down to about 5m from the car, we spot a bunch more female lions throughout the day, see another leopard, see hippos, crocs, and end the day watching a herd of impala in some playfully dance at dusk in the northern portion of the park.

At dinner it is apparent that there is caste system among the drivers, Hosea sits and eats with us, Eddie does not. There has been some loss of face, I think Eddie is senior to Hosea but Hosea has been chosen by the clients as the new driver. We had such a great day that we are largely forgiving previous buffoonery. Though we invite Eddie to join us, he has already eaten and only joins us only briefly. Given the Hyena threat from last night and discussion of alleged lions walking through camp, we are a little more cautious in our nocturnal activities. Going out to take a leak has been renamed "death in the tall grass". Needless to say, both of us were up early and holding our bladders in anticipation of daylight. Two nights in a tent have infected me with whatever sickness Justin has, so I am now stuffed up with a runny nose.

Day 4

6am game drive with Hosea starts on schedule we watched the sun come up with mist rising off the Serengeti Plain. I feel like I'm in land of the lost with lots of tissue paper a runny nose and a land cruiser. Back for breakfast at 8am, Benson continues to out-do himself. If you want to gain weight go on a safari, it's good eating and sedentary sitting or standing in a truck for 6-9 hours a day. I think I have put on 5lbs. Back on a game drive till noon, the last thing we see is a Momma Cheetah with 3 cubs.

Absolutely astounding spectacle of nature, but I felt like I was trying out for the paparazzi scene. We arrived at the Masai koopje's with 16 other land rovers surrounding this one little rock with Momma and the cubs, no wonder she ran off into the tall grass with the cubs after 15 min. Very rare according to Hosea. If one out of those three little cubs makes it, it will be lucky. Cheetah cubs have really tough odds of survival. As we are packing up the camp to leave I start snapping some photos and take a pic of some fresh lion prints right next to the kitchen and 5m from our tent.

Glad I held it in last night. At lunch one of the other drivers tells me about the recent “incidents” with lions in our camp. Hmm…

After lunch we pack up and head back to NgoroNgoro, that was the original plan. Unfortunately we have this broken down truck ala Eddie with us. The safari company does not want to pay for a tow truck so Eddie has reasoned that we can tow it back to NgoroNgoro. Brilliant idea, I'm sure we won't mess anything else up by towing it back several hundred kilometers over some very rough roads with a steel cable with no give and no towbars. So the broken truck was at the Serengeti gate, so we pack up and leave. Storm clouds are forming, all of a sudden the sky just opens up and it begins to piss down rain. We delay about an hour at the Serengeti gate dealing with general nonsense. Then Eddie hooks up the tow cable, this is the most comical thing I have ever seen. We have a 20ft length of 3/4" steel cable, with two eye's at each end and one bracket. Eddie hooks up the one end with the bracket to the left front leaf spring of the car being towed. And since he doesn't have a bracket try's to secure the other end to our bumper he uses a tire iron to hold it in place. It is a contraption to be sure. Justin and I look at this set up and realize it is bound for failure and try to make some suggestions. It's raining and Eddie gives us some disgruntled looks, it is clear he has no time for silly ideas from stupid Mzungo's who fired him as driver. Justin concedes in the car that the more time he spends with Eddie, the less he likes him. We try to set out with this contraption and as soon as we put the towing truck into drive, I hear the tire iron and cable clatter to the ground. The two of us and Benson and Hosea erupt in laughter, Eddie is bossing them around and it is clear he may be senior but is annoying them as well. Ok so now we do it our way, and the clients get to hook up the tow cable. All this is going on in the parking lot of the Serengeti game park while numerous other tour groups watch the two clients monkey around and crawl under the car and hook up the cable as the guides stand around watching. I think some photos were snapped. So we are on the road, 90km that took 2 hrs before takes 5 hrs this time. Eddie doesn't understand how to gently brake to keep tension on the tow cable when we slow down, so we are repeatedly being jarred as the cable goes into tension applying a sudden 3000lb load to the bumper. I am sure this is doing some damage to something. Rain is just poring down and we still have to go across a couple of rivers that had we been a couple hours later we probably would not be able to cross. Still transiting through Wildebeest migration, even with the rain and towing it is still spectacular.

As we get to NgoroNgoro, we decide to stop and check out the bumper. The bumper is attached to the back of the truck and is integrated with the two spare tire racks. This 2 inch diameter steel tube is badly misshapen and bent and is starting to crack. I am incredulous if we will make it to the campsite without catastrophic failure. For sure the rear tire rack and bumper assembly needs to be replaced and it will not be cheap, I suspect the leaf springs and front axle may be damaged on the rear car.

We arrive at the camp site it is dark, it is about 8pm. There are frigging zebras grazing among the tents.

A good sign, I guess that means there are no lions in close proximity. The campsite is named Simba B (that is Swahili for Lion) Eddie and Benson are fighting in Swahili in pouring down rain in front of the car with all of our gear on the grass. When we point out where we want the tent put up, Eddie admits that we will be sleeping in his two man tent because they forgot the tent poles to our tent in the Serengeti. We ask him where he will sleep, he announces "we will sleep with our friends who love us". The guides and cooks are all friends and share quite a bit of camaraderie; I assume there is extra room somewhere. I don't know where he slept but he looked like shit the next morning. We get Hosea to drive us to a store/bar to buy a bottle of wine before dinner, there are two Cape buffalo in the parking lot and we have to exit the vehicle very carefully. Before we leave, Eddie asks Justin if he can borrow his headlamp so he and Benson can set up the tents. What kind of safari guide does not bring a headlamp or flashlight on Safari? Justin delivers Eddie a beer upon our return from the bar, at this point the safari has descended into comedy and we are indifferent to the shortcoming of our guides as long as our safety is not endangered by their collective buffoonery. Eddie gives Justin a hug, Justin has to remind Eddie to get his headlamp back.

Dinner is outstanding; we converse with a Spanish trio to our left. They recognized us from the last camp. We relate stories of sounds in the night, I show them the photo of the lion prints at the last campsite, one of the Spanish women loses all the color in her face.

Justin had to take a leak at 3am, it was a very cautionary 15 min ordeal. He freely admits after living and camping in Alaska for the past 10 years on Kodiak Island in the middle of bear country, this was the first time he was scared to exit the tent and take a leak. "Death in the tall grass".....

Day 5

6am we are up, have coffee and get ready to head down into the NgoroNgoro game crater. The Spanish trio is next to us with their guide having coffee. They ask me to produce the photo of the lion print so their guide can verify it. Yup it’s a lion print, I recant the two lion incident stories and she loses all the color in her face again and yells at the guide for not telling her the stories. Everyone laughs except her. The NgoroNgoro crater is marketed as the 8th natural wonder of the earth. It is a spectacular 20km diameter caldera that is basically a captive natural game wonderland with a lake in the middle.

Every animal exists down here, we knocked Black Rhino off the list and even saw a Serval. So we nailed the Big 5 on safari, check. Saw lots of lone hyenas. Creepy animals, I would not want to run into a pack of those guys while taking a leak at 3am. Tons of pachyderms’ as well. The written word cannot describe seeing most of this wildlife. If you have the time and the money, I implore you to go while it is all still here. I can recommend a great car and driver. View was spectacular.

We are exhausted but exhilarated. We have spent about 8 hrs a day each of the past 5 days banging around on rough roads throughout these game parks. We are both overfed and under rested and both have colds and intestinal issues. It is time to head home.

Back to the campsite, Eddie is all smiles as he shows me a belt from the engine and asks what it is. I reply it's a timing belt, with a ton of the teeth stripped off. He struts about feeling vindicated with proof of actual mechanical failure. Not exactly a smoking gun, not replacing belts for scheduled maintenance still falls into the buffoonery category in my book. He told me he was going to the store to get a new belt, he told Justin he was going to the airstrip because parts were being airdropped in. Who knows the truth. I have sympathy for Nixon if Eddie is to be the mechanic. We pack up after an outstanding lunch. I am ready to take Benson with us for the rest of the trip in Africa. The guy is a class act and all smiles, his English is very rough but so is my Swahili. We load up the truck and bit adieu to Eddie and the broken truck at the Simba B campsite in NgoroNgoro. I hope he makes it, if it wasn't for him this trip wouldn't be a very good story. As we drive out of the park we stop at a vista to take some photos and the rangers tell us not to get out of the truck, there are Lions around. He doesn't say where, as we snap a couple of photos I look to my right and see two Lioness's and two cubs 2m to the right of the road just chilling out in the tall grass. Seeing clubs is very cool. Hosea assures us there are more around including the male, I wouldn't want to be the ranger standing there smoking a cigarette on the side of the road, they are very protective around the cubs. About half a km down the road from the lions there are a couple of local guys thrashing around in the bushes "looking for medicine" as Hosea puts it. I doubt they are aware of a pride of lions 500m down the road. Good luck.

Great end to our 5 day safari. We head back to Arusha, stinking after 4 days without showers and ready to spend the next day not banging around in a truck for 8 hours. Taking in the African scene on the way back, we stop at a Masai market where we watch a 7 year old get custom fitted for sandals made out of tires. Hosea warns us not to leave a car unattended in Masai country or you will return to find it sans tires. Market is amazing, you want shoes they are second hand ones from the west and they are in a pile and there is no such thing as a pair. Same goes for clothes all second hand stuff from the states.

We finally get back to the hotel and say out goodbyes and tip out Hosea and Benson. The shower is great. Justin meets with Nixon who is very apologetic for all the hassle, at this point we are home and had a great trip. If it wasn't for Eddie we would not have half the story. Nixon is angling for our business for a Kili trip. I can only imagine climbing Kili with my flashlightless, tent pole forgetting Chuck Norris fan as a guide. I'm sure it would make a good story but I think I'll pass.