Serengeti: Masai for "Endless Plains"

The aptly named Serengeti could also be considered Africa's Big Sky Country, with horizon to horizon wide open spaces in the southern approach to the park entrance.  

The Serengeti is claimed to be the world's best known game reserve and with the many national parks and conservation areas adjoining Serengeti, it is also the best preserved and intact ecosystem on the planet.  The dirt road above is emblematic of keeping the Serengeti wild.  Other than the occasional safari camp or lodge there was minimal human impact on the land.  Probably explains the uproar caused by Tanzania's President proposing to build a major highway through the park.

Human occupation/interaction with the Serengeti is a relatively recent event.  The Masai migrated into the area about 200 years ago.  White explorers didn't visit until the early 20th century.  "Big game" hunters killed so many lions that by the 1920s the British established a small game preserve.  Masai encroachment and wide scale hunting led the British to establish the current Park in 1950.  Establishing the park included removing the Masai from within the National Park boundaries -- an action that remains controversial to this day.

What could be more African than these Umbrella acacia trees?  

The Park comprises 5,700 square miles of plains, hilly savannah and woodlands; home to the largest collection of plains animals in Africa.  Two million wildebeest, a half million Thompson's gazelles and a quarter million zebras call Serengeti home.

From the stop at Oldupai Gorge, we had a leisurely four hour drive to our hotel, the Serena Serengeti Lodge.  It was a great day to work on our birding list and take in the scenery.

The plains are punctuated by granitic outcroppings called kopjes.  Frequented by predators they provide a great vantage point to survey the surroundings -- think Lion King.

Also notice how blue the sky appears.  We enjoyed some of the purest, unpolluted air we have seen in years.  None of the persistent haze that seems to plague so many locations...could have something to do with the fact the nearest power plant was hundreds of miles away.

  

The view from this kopje is something right out of PBS' Nature series.  (Double click or right click on this image and select "open in new tab" to open it to its full size.)

Serengeti is famous for its Lions, more than 3,000 are reported to inhabit the Park.  We hadn't driven very far when we encountered these two young males, which our Guide Steven said he thought were two year old brothers.

What remained of the mud in this water hole must have offered some relief from the afternoon heat.  What is wrong with this picture is that the rainy season is supposed to run March through May and this year the rains stopped in early April.  (This picture was taken May 11, 2014.)  Many water sources were shrinking or entirely dry as we traveled around the Park.  Through most of our trip we enjoyed excellent weather and no crowds as many travelers avoid Africa in the rainy season.  Peak travel to Northern Tanzania is July into September. 

Whether these guys are sleeping off a meal or resting for the night's hunt, sharp blocks of mud don't make very good pillows.

Sooo sleepy...

Lions attract a crowd.  The water hole is beside the main road to Seronera, Park Headquarters.  Toyotas with open roof hatches offer the best combination of view and safety.  Even though you are assured by your Guide that lions are not interested in anything inside these trucks, it still raises your heart rate to see one walking towards you.
  

This elephant family created a bit of a traffic jam...


...the adult elephants usually put themselves between the juveniles and any approaching vehicle, behavior typical of almost every animal species we observed.

 ...eventually they found an off-ramp and gave us a chance to pass.

Junior gets a harrassing nudge from his cousin.










Serengeti is home to over 500 species of birds , including this brilliantly colored Superb Starling.

The White Bellied Bustard normally inhabits tall grasslands where it disappears into the vegetation, like below.   

This flock of Chestnut Sand Grouse take their chances drinking from the polluted hippo pool.

The Seronera River is shrinking as the rains have faltered this year, forcing the hippos into tighter quarters.  They don't seem to mind the lack of sanitation.

Many species of antelope live in the Serengeti, like this Hartebeest.  Named by Boer settlers, the name derives from the Dutch word for deer, "hert."

 Our last sighting of the day, a very, very sated pride of lions...

 ...females eat after the males and cubs eat last.  There is no sense of sharing between the adults and cubs, the cubs get only what the adults leave behind.  Many cubs are known to starve to death, according to our Guide, Steven.

 I can't believe I ate the whole thing...

Steve and Susan agree, it was a great day from start to finish...from Ngorongoro to Oldupai to Serengeti.

Olduvai Gorge: Into the Past

After our stunning day driving the Ngorongoro Crater, we readied ourselves for the last leg of our Tanzanian safari, game drives in the Serengeti.  One last look at the Crater from our patio before heading for the Toyota...

Our departure coincided with a group of Masai herdsmen moving their cattle down into the crater...

...they made a lively scene, the many belled cows tinkling as they walked down the rough path.

We descended the northern slopes of the crater leaving the cool mountain environment for the heat of the plains.  These grasslands were shared with wild game and Masai cattle.  We spotted herds of wildebeest, zebra and the occasional giraffe.    

We passed more Masai herders and a number of traditional Masai compounds; they keep cattle on the better grass of the upper crater slopes, goats on the coarser dry flats.

This young Masai boy raced to the roadside to gesture to us to throw him something to eat.  With no food to offer, Susan remembered that she had brought some small items to give to children.  We tossed him a small rubber ball.  Later, we wondered if he would recognize it as a plaything, or grasp our concept of play.  We hoped he didn't try to eat it, or curse us for giving him something of little use.

We turned off the main road to Serengeti National Park to detour to Olduvai Gorge, encountering this jackal scurrying across the rather barren, dry plain.  He didn't bother to sniff the remains of what was likely once a wildebeest.

When I was researching the Tanzania portion of our trip, I learned that a visit to Olduvai Gorge was an optional stop on the way to the Serengeti.  Opinions varied to the value of visiting Olduvai (its true name is Oldupai, the Masai name for a sisal plant that is plentiful in the area).  One tour operator said there was nothing but a sad little museum there with not much to see.  That was the opinion of someone who was probably not a fan of Indiana Jones, or never in their life dreamed one day of being a paleoanthropologist.   

My first career fantasy, role played as an eleven year-old, was to be a paleontologist (only I didn't know that was what a fossil hunter was called).  I asked for a rock hammer for my birthday present...and spent many a happy Saturday hiking the sandstone gullies near home, looking for specimens. 

So it turns out the museum is a little funky, the exhibits low tech and fading from the day they were produced 40 or more years ago.  But there was some really interesting stuff like fossils of animals who frequented the area around Oldupai 1 to 1.5 million years ago.  To get a sense of the size of the antelope, its horns have a span of five feet.  Below and to the left of the antelope, is the pre-cursor to the giraffe, which is about 50% larger than a modern giraffe.

And never mind about the condition or simplicity of the museum.  Oldupai Gorge is sacred ground to anyone with an interest in the discovery of scientific evidence revealing the history of human origins.  This is the site where Mary Leakey discovered the skull (the mockup in the lower left) of  Zinjanthropus boisei in 1959 -- the first hominid remains that would be accurately dated at 1.8 million years old.  It was a profound discovery, providing evidence that human precursors were around more than 3 times earlier than any previous fossils indicated.  It was big news back in the 1960s and made a big impression on a certain 11 year old.

Thanks to the discovery of Zinjanthropus boisei, Mary and Louis Leakey put paleoanthropology and Oldupai Gorge on the map.  With their notoriety came sufficient funding to fully excavate many sites within the Gorge as well as other sites within Tanzania and Kenya.  

Another of Mary Leakey's major finds is portrayed above.  The exhibit shows the cast of footprints from three hominids made in fresh volcanic ash 3.7 million years ago .  Discovered at a nearby site, Laetoli, the tracks were preserved when they hardened like concrete subsequently covered with more ash.  When discovered in the late 1970s, the Laetoli tracks were the oldest evidence of hominid bipedalism and make a joke out of the so-called tracks of humans walking with dinosaurs at a certain amusement park.  

The Leakeys' many discoveries, faithfully reported by their sponsors at the National Geographic Society, sparked interest among paleontologists around the world and caught the attention of many college students unsure of what to major in; spawning even more discoveries of hominid remains throughout Southern and Eastern Africa.  

It was a real thrill to stand and gaze into the Gorge to see where the Leakey's spent much of their working years rigorously excavating and cataloging the most minute details of each dig.

Double click the panoramic picture above (or any picture in my Blog posts) to see an enlarged version of the image.    

Oldupai was originally the site of a large lake, where hominid groups lived along its banks.  The climate changed, the lake dried up, the area was uplifted and fractured by a series of faults and cut by seasonal streams creating the terrain you see today.  Right down there is where Mary Leakey made her first major discovery.

The gray strata at the bottom of the gorge is an accumulation of volcanic ash laid down between 1.9 and 1.5 million years ago.  This layer produced most of the Leakey's major finds and continues to be worked at various locations throughout the Gorge.  I was told that most excavation sites are located by simply walking the gorge looking at areas recently eroded by summer rains. Today, 35 sites within Oldupai are actively being excavated by teams from Universities around the Globe.

As we left the edge of the gorge to resume our drive, I couldn't help thinking about early man, climbing down out of the trees...to one day climb into the safety of their Toyotas.    

Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania: May Be Best Game Preserve in Africa

We flew all night from Cape Town to Nairobi and eventually to the jumping-off point for all Northern Tanzanian safaris, Kilimanjaro International Airport, outside Arusha.    We journeyed through the heavily populated valley at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, passed mile after mile of lush maize fields, bogged down in the chaotic traffic of Arusha and rolled on through the Masai grazing lands of the Rift Valley to finally climb the slopes of the crater.

The panoramic view of the crater from our room at the Ngorongoro Serena Lodge reveals mystic qualities, swathed in mist in the half light of dusk.  

Morning reveals the nearly perfect game preserve of the Ngorongoro Crater, which in geologic terms is really a collapsed volcanic crater, or caldera.  Three million years ago, a super volcano the size of Mount Kilimanjaro emptied its magma chamber and collapsed into itself forming the crater, 600 meters (1900) feet deep.  It evolved into the perfect home for Africa's diverse animal population, harboring all major habitat types, permanent sources of fresh water and easily secured entry and exit points.  Today nearly all of Africa's game animals are found within the Ngorongoro ecosystem.

Our guide, Steven Mziray and the perfect Toyota safari vehicle led us into the crater and a day of unparalleled game viewing.  Toyota has clearly put Land Rover out of the off-road vehicle business in Africa.

Steven explained the reasons NC has been so successful at maintaining its wildlife herds.  There are but two, extremely steep roads in/out of the crater.  Ranger stations are positioned strategically around the rim to watch for poachers 

There is no conflict with local farmers/herdsmen killing animals that wander out of the preserve, which is a problem in many National Parks.  Early on the government was able to negotiate an agreement with local Masai herdsmen to share the crater.  The Masai are allocated an area for grazing.  In return, they move the cattle in and out each day, returning their cattle to the relative safety of their corrals or bomi, each day at sunset.

The habitat ranges from dry scrub and grasslands favoring certain plains loving antelopes and birds...

A Mouse bird...

...a very old Cape Buffalo, one no long following the herd.  Steven says this old bull will soon end up lion food.

 There are hundreds of zebras...

...troops of baboons...

 many varieties of weaver birds, such as these Blagefeght Weavers

Africa's largest flying bird, a Kori Bustard, which can weight up to 40 pounds.

The crater also features some heavily wooded areas, with their accompanying animals that need the cover the woods provide.

...like this Long Crested Eagle

...or this big tusker.

Permanent water holes attracts everything, from the hippos and their look out, the Yellow-billed Stork, shore birds like the sacred ibis; to the herds of Cape Buffalo, wildebeest and zebra in the background.

You can find just about everything Africa has to offer in a single day's game drive in Ngorongoro without nearly the suspense or work finding game as we experienced in other game parks/preserves.  We couldn't decide if it was due to the sheer numbers of animals, the open terrain or both, but it just seemed like there is something to look at no matter what direction you turn...

Whether you want to watch the antics of herd animals...

...or the solitary rhino.  

And because of the difficulty poachers have, this is one place you have very good odds of seeing a rhino, like this fine specimen black rhino.

 If you are a birder, you'll appreciate the variety of bird life, such as these Sacred Ibis...

or this wobble of Ostriches...

Gray Crested Cranes...

or this flamboyance of Flamingos wading in the alkaline lake at the center of the crater,

...and like all the animals, you'll want to be on the look out for lions from any of the three resident prides...

 who'll either be digesting their latest meal or looking for their next one.

When you do see lions, this is commonly what you see...lions sleeping or being lazy, though we're told the correct interpretation of this behavior is "lions conserving energy."

I don't remember seeing so many raptors or carrion birds as we saw in one day, here a Steppe Eagle carries away a scrap from an earlier lion kill, 

...and this Augur Buzzard looks for his next meal.

Warthogs enjoy a good roll in the mud.

 Like I said, something to see everywhere you look like these Zebras appearing to walk on water. 

If you ever plan a trip to Africa, try to include a day in the Ngorongoro Crater.

Tell them, Rod and Susan Raub sent you!