We were to meet for breakfast at 6.00am to leave for the Serengeti sunrise game drive at 6.30am. When my alarm went off I recalled the Spanish Sausage Plague of the previous day and wondered with trepidation whether my fellow travellers had recovered from their illnesses. Before I’d even left the bed I heard Erica’s voice chirping enthusiastically to Eduardo, and the two brothers sleepily chatting in their tent. All was well.
We were on the road as the sun was a few fingers up in the sky. We spotted a warthog, and gleeful cries of “Pumba!” came from all seats of the car. Erica was still singing Hakuna Matata in Spanish as we drove past the hippo pool which she had missed last night, and the same hippo was in the same position. Samwel, our guide, told us later that hippos like to wallow from sunrise to sunset and leave the water during the night to feed on grass, always keeping close to their pools. This one had obviously discovered the optimal mudsuck location and favoured it each morning. It seemed that our animals of the previous evening were all still there in reverse order: after the hippos came the giraffes, hyenas, and antelope. Erica had been right when she'd said ours was a lucky car.
Not thirty minutes into our drive, Samwel stopped in front of an African Sausage Tree. He turned to us with great excitement and said that there was a leopard in the tree. I could hardly believe our luck, so soon into our Serengeti visit, and this was one animal I had been longing to see, for its rarity and for its beauty. And there it was, stretched out along a limb, half in sun and half in shadow, with its face turned away sleepily. It lay completely still and seemed not to mind the convoy of jeeps lined along the road. After a while it turned and we saw its face, and then it languorously stood up and gracefully loped down the trunk and into the yellow grasses in search of breakfast.
Next were two lionesses not fifty metres from the roadside, and a sleepy lion beyond them in the shade of a large tree. The lionesses had chosen a remarkably small sapling to shelter under, given the size of their bodies, and the two of them were squashed up together so closely that it couldn’t have helped with their heat management. We later saw two more lionesses ready for breakfast by some water. One was crouched in the tall grasses looking for impala, and the other was hiding behind a tree. We waited for a while in the hope of seeing a kill but the impala were too canny.
After Erica’s sunset sadness of yesterday, we were delighted to spot three cheetahs dozing in the shade. After a long stay, we came to a mud pool which was surrounded by twenty hippos. Some were pink on the undersides but most of them were muddy black, and they took turns to take a new mud bath to keep themselves cool and sticky.
I reflected that this safari was the stuff of my childhood dreams: animals with long bendy noses and ears shaped like the African continent; creatures with foolishly long necks and tufty little horns; and cats with big yellow sun-beards all the way round their heads. Roly-poly pink and black animals, muddy all over; things like horses, but better, with black and white stripes and twitching ears; piggy, snouty creatures with upturned tusks; and great water-cows with ornate black horns like a fine handlebar moustache. My dreams had come to life before my eyes.
More on Tanzania (chronological order):
Arusha, Tanzania - my first visit to sub-Saharan Africa
Tarangire National Park - meeting the elephants
The Spanish Sausage Plague - disaster strikes the Spaniards
Sunrise in the Serengeti - the plague lifts
Ngorongoro Crater and the elusive rhino - we look for rhinos and stare hard at a rock
Lake Manyara and the Last Supper - a little Swahili goes a long way
A goddamn flight on a goddamn plane - karma strikes a rude man as I head to Istanbul
We were on the road as the sun was a few fingers up in the sky. We spotted a warthog, and gleeful cries of “Pumba!” came from all seats of the car. Erica was still singing Hakuna Matata in Spanish as we drove past the hippo pool which she had missed last night, and the same hippo was in the same position. Samwel, our guide, told us later that hippos like to wallow from sunrise to sunset and leave the water during the night to feed on grass, always keeping close to their pools. This one had obviously discovered the optimal mudsuck location and favoured it each morning. It seemed that our animals of the previous evening were all still there in reverse order: after the hippos came the giraffes, hyenas, and antelope. Erica had been right when she'd said ours was a lucky car.
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| Kigelia: the African Sausage Tree |
Next were two lionesses not fifty metres from the roadside, and a sleepy lion beyond them in the shade of a large tree. The lionesses had chosen a remarkably small sapling to shelter under, given the size of their bodies, and the two of them were squashed up together so closely that it couldn’t have helped with their heat management. We later saw two more lionesses ready for breakfast by some water. One was crouched in the tall grasses looking for impala, and the other was hiding behind a tree. We waited for a while in the hope of seeing a kill but the impala were too canny.
After Erica’s sunset sadness of yesterday, we were delighted to spot three cheetahs dozing in the shade. After a long stay, we came to a mud pool which was surrounded by twenty hippos. Some were pink on the undersides but most of them were muddy black, and they took turns to take a new mud bath to keep themselves cool and sticky.
I reflected that this safari was the stuff of my childhood dreams: animals with long bendy noses and ears shaped like the African continent; creatures with foolishly long necks and tufty little horns; and cats with big yellow sun-beards all the way round their heads. Roly-poly pink and black animals, muddy all over; things like horses, but better, with black and white stripes and twitching ears; piggy, snouty creatures with upturned tusks; and great water-cows with ornate black horns like a fine handlebar moustache. My dreams had come to life before my eyes.
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More on Tanzania (chronological order):
Arusha, Tanzania - my first visit to sub-Saharan Africa
Tarangire National Park - meeting the elephants
The Spanish Sausage Plague - disaster strikes the Spaniards
Sunrise in the Serengeti - the plague lifts
Ngorongoro Crater and the elusive rhino - we look for rhinos and stare hard at a rock
Lake Manyara and the Last Supper - a little Swahili goes a long way
A goddamn flight on a goddamn plane - karma strikes a rude man as I head to Istanbul
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