Celebrating in Serengeti!

After a short delay on our flight from Stone Town to Arusha, due to the arrival of President Bush in Dar Es Salaam, we arrived just in time Saturday evening to pick up our Land Rover from Fortis Safaris. The truck was equipped with a pop-up tent on the roof, as well as a cooler, gas cooker, utensils, table and chairs. The shops were already closed for the evening, so we camped our first night in the truck at a nearby backpackers just outside of town…little did we know it was the local party spot on a Saturday night! After a restless night of sleep, we woke up early the next morning excited for our self-safari adventure and set off to the supermarket to stock up on food and water for the next 4 days.

By early Sunday afternoon, we were in the Ngorongoro Crater which was once the highest peak in Africa (yes, higher than Kilimanjaro), until it collapsed and formed a mini-ecosystem of swamps, forest, and grasslands 600m below which over 25,000 animals call home. We drove through Ngorongoro that first day, where the highest concentration of wildebeests and zebras are due to the on-going migration, and also saw many Maasai. When Tanzania gained its independence in 1961, the Maasai were living in the Serengeti. In fact, “siringit” is the name the Maasai used for the great plains as it means “land of endless space”. Due to the development of Serengeti into a national park, the Maasai were no longer allowed to live and herd their cattle in the park. The Ngorongoro Crater Conservancy was developed to allow peaceful co-existence of the Maasai and their cattle with the wildlife. The Maasai also do not hunt the wildlife because they believe that if they do, then all of their cattle (which is their symbol of wealth) would die. Hence, all co-exist and use the land in harmony to create balance between nature and mankind. Monday was Scott’s birthday so we had a proper celebration while on our safari. We had a nice breakfast watching the sunrise and celebrated turning 29 with a banana bread “cake” with candles and singing of course! We spent the day venturing through the back roads of the Serengeti and saw many giraffes, hippos, lions, elephants, and monkeys! On our last day we picked up a local Maasai guide to descend down into the Ngorongoro Crater and learn more about the amazing ecosystem that exists and we also saw our first cheetah! Our guide, Jacob, also shared some interesting wildlife facts with us, such as: 1. lions sleep up to 20 hours a day…which explains why we never saw them very active, 2. wildebeests and zebras migrate together because the wildebeests can sense rain up to 50 km away and therefore lead the migration, while the zebras have a heightened sense of their surroundings and detect the predators so they keep the group safe from harm, 3. zebras stand side by side in opposite directions to watch for predators (and we just thought they were cuddling!). The list goes on, but we’ll let the pictures of this part of our trip speak for themselves…see more photos. In the end, though we were one of the few people we saw self-driving the park, we both agreed that we loved the flexibility and freedom to roam as we pleased and certainly enjoyed camping with elephants and zebras joining us for dinner!