Capetown

I flew from Nairobi to Capetown today to begin my next adventure:  a ten day bike ride through the Western Cape area of South Africa.  It was raining when my guide picked me up at the airport so we almost had to cancel our first ride.  It turns out that Capetown is in the middle of a terrible drought and they were thrilled to have even a little rain.  Sound familiar, Californians?  But the rain quickly stopped so we went for a short ride to try out the bikes.  We rode up Table Mountain, the flat mountain that dominates the view in Capetown.  Well, not all the way up; just from the parking lot at the bottom to the cable car station.  It was no more than two miles, but did I mention that it was up?  I was willing to bag it, but with my new attitude towards hills, I went into granny gear (the lowest gear on a bike) and pedaled slowly.  I was the last one, but I made it.  We turned around because the wind was too strong further up the mountain.  It turns out that this was a test.  Even though this is a bike tour, a lot of people don't make it up the short climb, and then the guide knows what to plan for the rest of the week.

My group is very small:  a couple from Australia, a man from England, and me.  In a first for me, both the guide, Maria, and driver, Bianca, are female.  So the five of them talk with those funny accents and are used to riding on the left.  I am at a severe disadvantage.  We went to dinner together at a Portuguese restaurant to discuss the plans for the week.  Apparently there is a large Portuguese community here.  I tried the espetada which was described as a skewer of grilled chicken, so I expected a skewer on my plate.  Wrong.

Today we drove in our van down to the Cape of Good Hope, which is over forty miles from Capetown, stopping on the way for a quick boat ride to see seals.  (I am seeing every animal in Africa.) The Cape is still on the western side of South Africa and the coast continues to the southeast, but for some reason that I could not understand, this is considered the southern tip of Africa and the place with the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet.  If so, I think this is another first for me as I don't think I have ever seen the Indian Ocean before.

After lunch, we finally got on the bikes and rode from the lighthouse on the point to the cape which is further north.  Go figure.

It was not all that cold but it is WINDY here.  It turns out that Capetown is really the Windy City.  It was also hilly.  I always say that I am a Sacramento fair weather rider and don't ride in the cold, wind, or rain.  Well, at least there was no rain today.  And did I mention that they ride on the left side of the road here?  I had all my excuses ready - haven't ridden in a month, not used to the bike, long uphills, cold, windy, trying to remember to stay on the left and not get killed.  I am definitely the slowest one in our small group, but I rode it all and enjoyed it.

We rode through some lovely beach towns, ending in Simon's Town where there is a penguin center.  I didn't have my camera with me on the bike, so I was unable to take a picture of the sign that said:  Caution.  Penguins on the road in 50 meters.  The cape penguin, the only penguin in Africa, lives here.

 I am seeing every animal in Africa.

Masai Mara

International borders have made a flying safari a little more than a quick hop between two places even though the distances are short.  Today we flew from the Serengeti in Tanzania to the Masai Mara in Kenya.  The great migration is between these two parks, which are really part of the same animal system, but animals do not need passports.  If they did, the great migration would take years, not months.

We flew from an airstrip in the Serengeti to Musoma, Tanzania, so we could have our passports stamped with our exit from Tanzania.  From Musoma we flew to Kisumu, Kenya, so we could have our passports stamped with our entry to Kenya.  At each two-room airport, we went through security upon arrival, went through passport control, and then went through security again before departure.

Boarding our charter plane

Finally our third short hop was to the Ngerende airport in the Masai Mara.  As you can see, all of the airstrips are dirt, but the landings are surprisingly smooth.  Agriculture is the major industry in Kenya.  As I was in Ethiopia, I am surprised at how green and perfectly laid out is the view from my window.  We also fly over surprisingly large villages and cities.  Kisumu, where we landed second, has a skyline.

 We had time for an afternoon game drive and a visit to a rhino sanctuary to see the white rhino up close and personal.  We were no more than twenty feet away from this one.

Could the Masai Mara be even more endless than the Serengeti?  Unlike the Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti, the Masai Mara has lots of water and is green.  Again, it is ringed with small hills far in the distance and you can see forever.  Again, the overriding feeling is peacefulness.  Different types of animals graze side by side.  Picture the largest lawn that you can imagine manicured perfectly each day by thousands of grazing animals.  That is the Masai Mara.

A kopi antelope standing guard

Acacia trees dot the landscape and are flat on the top - naturally.  But the desert date trees are flat on the bottom of their foliage for the giraffes eat as far as they can reach.  Elephants, on the other hand, do not eat trees; they demolish them.  They are quite destructive to the landscape and you can see the broken trees they leave behind.

Elephants attacking a poor tree.  The two large elephants on the left are nursing their babies.

We never tired of seeing the zebras, giraffes, and antelopes that predominate the landscape, but the lions are always special.  One afternoon, we saw a male lion by himself and went to look at him.  Then we saw a lioness approaching him.  They played together for a few minutes, and then she walked off.  He followed discreetly about fifty yards behind her, and we stalked them both.  In the Masai Mara, unlike the last two parks, our vehicles can go off the roads, so we approach very close to get a good look at the animals.  We followed the lioness for over a mile, hoping she would lead us to her den, and maybe she did, but when she turned off into the brush, we lost her.

A pride of lions

 Later we saw these two male lions.  As we were observing them, we noticed a lioness in the thicket behind them.  We drove around for a closer look and found a den with a lioness and her three cubs who were no more than a month old.  She licked each one for five minutes and we saw them standing on their wobbly legs.  No pictures, unfortunately since they were in a dense thicket, but we were able to watch them with our binoculars for half an hour.

Our hotel has a electrified fence around it to protect us from the animals.  We each have a private" tent"; it does have canvas sides, but inside is a floor, real furniture, and a full bath with a shower.  And of course a porch on the outside with a table and chairs.  The tents have zip up doors that you must velcro at the bottom or the monkeys will get in.  My neighbors apparently left a gap and were surprised in the middle of the night by visitors.  And each tent looks over the river with a view of the hippos.  Hippos sleep in the river all day.  At night they walk a few miles to the grasslands to graze, returning early in the mornings.  They make a lot of loud grunting noises.

My tent

My view of the hippos in the river

In the morning we had a triple treat:  a balloon ride over the Masai Mara with an early morning game drive on the way and an al fresco champagne breakfast afterwards to celebrate.  We left the hotel at 5am so it was still dark out.  On the way, we saw a leopard crouched and ready to spring on an unsuspecting antelope, but when the leopard was caught in our headlights, he slowly rose and walked away in the other direction.  We saved the life of an antelope, at least for another day.  Later we saw a pack of hyenas devouring their night's kill.  It looked like a wildebeest.  The hyenas didn't even move when we saw them in the headlights; they just kept on eating.

We thought the balloon would be standing there ready for us to just step inside.  It turns out that you sit on your back in one of the four compartments until they inflate the balloon with cold air and then heat the air.  Slowly the balloon takes off, tilting you upright.  The balloon gave us an even more incredible view of the Masai Mara.  We went faster than I would have imagined, and not very high, so it felt like we were just floating over the animals.

Of course, our breakfast was an incredible spread with fruit, fresh bread, bacon, sausage, and made to order eggs.

Another game drive afterward.  More zebras, giraffes, elephants, gazelles, wildebeests, cape buffalo, and the occasional, totally incongruous, ostrich.  For all my friends who asked me how many days you can look at animals ... it is shocking how this never gets old.  It is so beautiful and peaceful.  Sometimes you get sucked into thinking about your "list."  OK, I've seen enough zebras and giraffes; I'm only looking for cheetahs and leopards.  But I live in Sacramento.  Every one of these animals is exotic and incredible.  How could you possible go for a drive and think, ho-hum, it's just another zebra.  Just another zebra?  Like that is a normal thing?  I don't know why but zebras remind me of unicorns.  No, they don't have a horn, but they seem magical to me.

You can't see it, but a zebra has a thick black line on its belly from its rump to its neck as if a surgeon sutured the stripes together there.  Another quick animal fact:  Antelopes have horns, not antlers.  Deer shed their antlers every year and grow new ones, but if you cut off an antelope horn, it does not grow back.

We went for one last game drive together on our last evening.  We thought we were looking for cheetahs and leopards at dusk when they start coming out, but our guides had a surprise for us.  They had prepared a bonfire for us complete with a bar, appetizers, and of course, our private bathroom.  This is an incredible way to travel.

On our last morning in the Masai Mara, the rest of the group had an early flight, but I had time for one more game drive, so off I went at 6:30 am to watch animals graze.  One might say that is as exciting as watching grass grow, but I think not.  I saw a few lions.  Then I saw something really special.  There were two lions and a lioness in the middle of a field with the other animals grazing in the distance.  Apparently the two lions fought before I got there, but I'm not sure if it was an actual fight or they flipped a coin.  One won and went off with the lioness across the field where he mounted her every fifteen minutes for six seconds.  Lion sex is really fast.  The other lion stayed behind and breakfasted on a freshly killed wildebeest.

The vultures and pied crows watched the lion eat and fed on the leftovers.  So I ask:  which lion won the fight?  The one who had six second sex or the one who feasted?

And then it was back to the Ngerende Airport.  Here is the passenger lounge, with the bathroom behind it, and the runway.

This time, however, we did not take a charter flight.  It was a regularly scheduled Air Kenya flight on a plane with four engines, three more than the charters.  We stopped at two other tiny airstrips before arriving back in Nairobi.  We were supposed to visit a charitable foundation this afternoon, but apparently there are demonstrations going on because the Supreme Court just annulled the recent presidential election outcome.  So I have a quiet day in the hotel before flying to Capetown, South Africa tomorrow morning.

The Serengeti

Yesterday we drove around the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater and on to the Serengeti with a stop at Olduvai Gorge where the Leakeys spent their entire careers discovering the skeletons of several early hominids as well as animals and other archeological treasures.  A docent gave us an excellent lecture, but first told us that the correct name is Oldupai, no Olduvai.  He asked us to correct this long time misspelling by telling everyone we knew that Oldupai is correct, so I am doing so.

We arrived at the Serengeti shortly after lunchtime but still had a several hour drive to our hotel.  It turns out that the Serengeti is the size of Connecticut and contains many different landscapes and terrains.  I had pictured going to a water source and seeing lots of animals but I had pictured wrong.  There were often giraffes, elephants, and zebras grazing nearby, but sometimes we drove for several minutes without seeing any animals.  When we did, however, it was spectacular.  The highlight of the day was watching a lioness nursing her three cubs.  Eventually, they all walked away, played with each other for a few minutes, and then lay down to go to sleep.

The second highlight was a large group of hippos.  Half were in the water doing … not much.  The other half were walking around on the bank ten feet or so above the water.  Eventually, the second half all walked over to a path and walked or slid down into the water.

The landscape in the Serengeti includes upthrust rock formations called kopjes (pronounced kopi).



 These are not single rocks, but piles of rocks, often with a larger one on top of a smaller one, and are very impressive.  Our driver, Bernard, likes to ask us questions that at first we thought were serious but we have learned are the kinds of riddles that my three year old grandson, Bobby, tells.  What do you call a lion sitting on a kopje?  A kopje cat.

Today we set out on a looong drive in the Serengeti.  We were scheduled to do a morning game drive and a late afternoon game drive, but the forecast was for rain in the late afternoon, so my group chose to just go out all day.  Imagine wandering around the state of Connecticut on dirt tracks; they are not even roads half the time.  We saw a lot of giraffes early in the drive, including two giraffes that had climbed up on a kopje.  The giraffes graze very close to the road, oblivious to us.

Early on, we saw another leopard in a tree.  And of course there were lots of elephants and zebra.  I never knew that there were ostriches in Africa.  I’m not sure where I thought ostriches are from, but they seem so incongruous here.  The male has a large black body with a pink neck and legs, while the female is gray.  A couple stays in the same area, but not too close together usually, even as far as half a mile apart.

It is hard to describe the scenery in the Serengeti.  Like the Ngorongoro Crater, if feels serene and peaceful here.  The kopjes are striking while the land is flat and goes on forever.  With our binoculars, we can literally see for miles.  Often when we are looking at an animal through binoculars, we see others “nearby,” and then look up to see that they are not close at all.

The only disappointment in the morning was that we did not see any rhinos.  They were not hanging out at the place where the guide thought they would be.  So we stopped for a delightful picnic lunch packed by the chef, and hopefully set out for the afternoon drive.  Within minutes, we came upon two cheetahs sitting under a tree.  They are beautiful.

It has rained a lot here so there are large areas of mud.  We saw warthogs and hyenas taking mud baths at the local spa.

A hyena lying under a tree 

A hyena mud bath

We did not see any wildebeests today, but we did see the great migration of zebras.  For as far as you could see zebras were marching in single file. And look how far you can see.

We were starting to get disappointed in the afternoon drive when we saw a lioness slowly walking in our direction.  Five gazelles who were in front of her all turned to watch her warily.  But a lioness cannot catch a gazelle and she did not even try.  She took off running parallel to the road, and we followed her in the jeep as she ran half a mile or more.  She slowed down and looked around again.  A warthog obliviously strolled in front of her.  Suddenly, the lioness took off after the warthog who ran away.  It turns out that even a warthog is too fast for a lioness, as long as he remembers to keep running.  The lioness gave up and went to rest under a tree.

It was getting late and we started heading back to the hotel, tired and sorry that we had not seen a rhino.  Then we saw a lot of jeeps pulled over with everyone looking in one direction.  Our guide said that that black spot far away was a rhino, but none of us were sure that we saw it, so we couldn’t count that.  We went on just a little further and there we saw it:  a black rhino.  It was at least a half mile away, so it appeared small even with our binoculars, but it was definitely a rhino.  So our group hit for the cycle today, seeing all of the Big Five in one day:  lion, cape buffalo, leopard, elephant, and rhino.

Near the rhino we saw something even more spectacular:  three lions in a tree.  A lion certainly looks majestic and he may be the king of the jungle, but lions are not the most feared animal here.  That is the huge and ugly cape buffalo.  With a herd of buffalo grazing nearby, the lions had taken refuge in the tree.  Lionesses frequently climb trees, but lions are too big to and rarely do.  But in this case, a lion and two lionesses were all sitting or standing on the lower limbs of the tree.

So we had crisscrossed an area the state of Connecticut for hours, and got to see absolutely incredible things.  A leopard in a tree, cheetahs under a tree, giraffes climbing rocks and standing right next to us, gazelles gracefully running, hyenas taking mud baths, a lioness stalking prey.  And that does not even count the gorgeous colorful birds that we saw all day.  My favorites were the superb starling and Fisher’s lovebirds.







We got used to our driver/guide's Bobby-level jokes. Why are a giraffe's head and body so far apart? Because it has a long neck. Cheryl in our group wracked her brain all day long to come up with a question for Bernard and finally came up with a winner. Why did the warthog cross the road? He forgot.

I won't forget today for a long time.

Ngorongoro Crater

Now this was a truly spectacular day in every way.  We went out for an early morning game drive and saw more animals than I could imagine.  Very early in the drive, we saw a dozen vehicles all parked in one spot, so we knew there was something interesting there.  But before we got there, we spotted a male lion off in the grass.  We stopped for a while viewing him through the binoculars and thinking, ha, those other people are all looking at something else while we are seeing a lion.  Then we drove to the group where there were three male lions right next to the road.  They walked around and one even sat in the shade of one of the vehicles right next to the tire.  Amazing!  Over the course of the day, we saw so many lions and lionesses.

The variety of animals and birds in the crater was astonishing, but what struck me the most was how peaceful it was.  I guess I expected a constant tension between predator and prey, so I was surprised by how much the animals mingled.  There would be a zebra standing next to a gazelle, with warthogs grazing nearby, and hyenas and jackals just hanging about.  Even when a lioness was strolling nearby, everyone kept grazing.  I don’t think I would be exaggerating to say that I saw thousands of wildebeest, antelope, and zebras.  It just went on forever, and for me, it never got old.

Besides being peaceful, it is beautiful. In the morning, the clouds sat on the rim of the crater, looking like a frozen waterfall in the winter that stops part way down.

When we drove down to this lake, I glanced quickly and I saw a few ducks, so I looked away, thinking all the dark spots I saw were ducks.  But when I looked closely, I was looking at the snouts of hippos sticking out of the water.  Later we went to a shallower lake where the hippos were only half submerged and I saw something that I never expected to see in my life:  hippos mating.  That poor female under two tons of male, but it only lasted a few minutes.  Earlier we had seen lions mating which only took a few seconds.  I felt sorry for that female, too.

I pointed out to the others in my vehicle how peaceful it was, that I had expected more conflict, and we all agreed that the animals were way more interested in sex than violence.  Once, when a lioness was strolling nearby, a dazzle (herd) of zebras took off running.  But mostly the animals grazed and walked slowly.

I saw tracks across the ground which surprised me since the vehicles are only allowed on the unpaved roads.  It turns out that the animals make their own tracks, usually walking single file and using the same paths over and over.  Today we also saw baboons including some tiny babies.

Single file wildebeest migration

We were told that we were having a picnic lunch in the crater and we all pictured box lunches.  At lunchtime, we drove to the “rest area” and saw a few dozen vehicles parked.  But we kept going another half mile or so to our private, catered picnic complete with a tent over a tablecloth covered table, chairs, our own private bathroom complete with running water and a mirror. And zebras watching us quietly.  This is the way to travel.

The dining room

The bar (notice the zebras in the background)

The serving buffet

Guides' table with zebras grazing behind

Dessert table

Dining in style

Private bathroom

Sink and mirror

After lunch we visited a Masai village, where the villagers sang to us, showed us their house, and then sold us overpriced bead jewelry.

Apparently the Masai really do live today in their traditional manner.  The village is made of three concentric circles:  a circular fence of shrubbery on the outside, a circle of circular houses (bomas), and an inner circle for the animals.  The chief of this village, who is the chief over twenty five thousand Masai, has fourteen wives.  So the entire village is composed of his wife and children.  Marriages are arranged with members of another village, and the husband's father must pay the wife’s family in cows and goats.  Our guide, who was over forty years old, was the oldest son of the chief and will someday become the chief.  We asked him how he acquired cows and goats.  He said that at the age of five, each boy is given two heifers, a bull, and some goats.  It is then his responsibility to take care of them and grow a herd. We asked him how large his herd is now and he proudly told us that he has twenty three cows.  Later we talked to one of our waiters who was also Masai and lives in a local village.  He told us that he had paid eight cows for his wife but he did choose her himself.

We also visited the local kindergarten and I could not resist snapping a few pictures of the children. The Masai all shave their heads. You can tell the girls and women by the earrings.

My hotel is on the east side of the crater, so I have just finished watching the sun set behind the rim on the other side.  This is such a beautiful, peaceful place.