Beginning the safari

One more sign from Nairobi that I forgot to include in the previous e-mail.  At the National Museum they had flyers for this tour:

I’m not sure how I feel about a slum being a place to tour, but the first question I asked the man at the desk sitting near the flyers was, what is the first slum in the world in size?  Does someone really measure the size of slums?  By area?  By number of people?  As a trivia player, I can never let a claim like second largest go by. But it is nice to know that the people there are the first in friendliness.

We had a long travel day yesterday with three flights in successively smaller planes.  Apparently you used to be able to fly from Nairobi directly to Tarangire in Tanzania, but now Tanzania requires you to go through an international airport and clear passport control.  How unreasonable of them.  So first we flew on a charter flight from Nairobi to Kilimanjaro Airport which, as near as I can tell, is in the middle of nowhere.  Another group from my tour company flew on the charter with us, but they were continuing to somewhere else after dropping us in Arusha.  So we all got on a twelve passenger plane.  As we flew over Arusha, the guide said, something is wrong.  He went and consulted with the pilots who somehow had missed the instruction to drop us in Arusha.  I thought we might have to parachute out.  The pilot continued and I could see a long round trip flight in front of us, but apparently they worked things out over the radio and after ten minutes, we did turn around and return to Arusha.

Great, I thought, we are finally there, wherever there is.  But they hustled my group of three across the apron to another twelve passenger plane where seven people were waiting not so patiently for us.  This is the group of ten that I will be with for the rest of the safari.  Our second small plane took us to Tarangire where we had another hour drive to the Tarangire National Park where we are staying tonight.

First of all, the riding in small planes was really interesting as we flew low enough to see the things on the ground.  Secondly, as soon as we started driving from the landing strip, which was unpaved, to the National Park, we started seeing animals.  The other seven had apparently had spectacular viewing for the last few days, so they were rather bored by groups of zebras, elephants, and giraffes, with herds of antelope and occasional warthogs as well.  But I wasn’t.  No, it was not spectacular viewing, but it is amazing to see groups of zebras and elephants on the sides of the road every mile or so.  This is what I came to see.

Trivia question of the day, what do you call a group of zebras?  A dazzle.  A group of giraffes is a tower or something else.  I’m going to learn all of these this week.

This morning we took a game drive in Tarangire National Park where we saw so many animals.  It is hard to imagine saying, oh, it is just more zebras so no point in stopping.  Mostly we saw zebras, elephants, giraffes, lots of different kinds of gazelles and antelope, warthogs, the occasional cape buffalo, and amazing birds.  We also saw a few lionesses and once we caught a rare sighting - a leopard sitting on a branch of a tree.  We are in a customized half-truck, half-jeep, with a top that is raised about a foot and a half.  Every time someone sees something interesting, we pull over and stand up to look through the roof.

Interesting facts about animals:  The warthogs brain is so small, that when it is running away from a lion, after five minutes it forgets why it was running, stops, and gets eaten. Warthogs also kneel on their front legs to eat because their necks are too short, and a group of warthogs is a sounder. Wildebeest are not much smarter than warthogs, and the herd keeps changing directions.  So a herd of wildebeest is called a confusion.  A group of giraffes is a journey and a group of elephants is a parade. Who knew?

A warthog on its front knees

After lunch we set off to drive to the Ngorongoro Crater.  I had pictured a fly-in safari meant that we did not have long drives on bad roads.  Turn out we still have some long drives, but at least on a decent road.  So while we are spending more time driving than I would like, the scenery continues to be interesting and the three best locations are yet to come:  the Ngorongoro Crater, the Serengeti, and the Masei Mara.

Late in the day we arrive at the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater and had a first view two thousand feet down into the crater.  It is a spectacular view.  The crater, which is really a caldera, is eleven miles across and thirteen miles long, rimmed by tall walls.  It reminds me a bit geographically of Salt Lake City, with the totally flat city rimmed by the Wasatch Mountains.  After our glimpse of the crater, we drove around the rim to our hotel where each room backs onto the crater.  You can just sit in your room, or at poolside, or outside the lobby and enjoy an incredible view.