The day after our adventures in Tarangire, we left our luxury campsite and headed towards the Serengeti, through the Ngorongoro Conservation Area via the south-west rim of the Ngorongoro Crater. We could see the flat crater floor stretching for 19km from edge to edge, with great swathes of white dust being swept up by the wind for hundreds of metres in the air. But disaster struck at lunchtime: Erica, one of my fellow safarees, did not feel hungry and by 2pm as we had descended onto the plains her face had turned a peculiar shade of greeny-grey. Her boyfriend Eduardo was next to succumb to nausea, and we quickly stopped the car and let them both out to empty their stomachs underneath a shady acacia tree, while their friends, Xavier and Arturo, looked on with survivor’s guilt, and I stayed far enough away so as not to intrude.
Erica and Eduardo were in a bad way but they gamely climbed back into the Landcruiser and we were soon hurtling along a pot-holed dirt track at 60kph towards the Serengeti plains while Erica vomited heartily into a bag and Eduardo, repressing his own nausea, supplied water and empathy. There was white dust as far as the eye could see, punctuated by sparse low vegetation, gazelles, and kopjes: great granite boulders, exposed by a million years of erosion, rising mysteriously from the flat land like the Dartmoor Tors. It was nearly sunset and the air was clear and pink. Samwel, our driver and guide, seemed to know exactly where to go in the vast landscape because as we rolled up to some kopjes, on top were two cheetahs reclining in the receding sunshine. They didn’t move much but were simply enjoying the view, and one of the cheetahs rolled over onto its back, exposing its white furry belly to grace the sunset. The moment was so special that none of us spoke for a while, and we watched for a long time.
As we drove away, Erica gave a great sob from the front seat. She was so unwell and still vomiting that she had been too weakened to stand up and see the two cheetahs. We arrived at the campsite in silence and as I got out of the car I said uselessly, “Poor Erica.” No one replied. There was nothing else to say.
Dinner was a gloomy affair, with the brothers Xavi and Arturo having recently returned from bathroom visits in the same nauseated state as their friends. Erica had long gone to bed. She hadn’t been able to appreciate the cheetahs, hippos, hyenas, giraffes, or jackals that we had seen that evening, and must have felt truly miserable. Samwel thought that the four of them were suffering from "mountain fever" after returning from Kilimanjaro, but I rather thought that the suspicious breakfast sausages that everyone but me had eaten had more to do with it, not helped by a weakened immune system from their exertions on Kili. We had a sunrise game drive planned for the following morning but it remained to be seen whether my friends would be well enough in time.
______
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
Erica and Eduardo were in a bad way but they gamely climbed back into the Landcruiser and we were soon hurtling along a pot-holed dirt track at 60kph towards the Serengeti plains while Erica vomited heartily into a bag and Eduardo, repressing his own nausea, supplied water and empathy. There was white dust as far as the eye could see, punctuated by sparse low vegetation, gazelles, and kopjes: great granite boulders, exposed by a million years of erosion, rising mysteriously from the flat land like the Dartmoor Tors. It was nearly sunset and the air was clear and pink. Samwel, our driver and guide, seemed to know exactly where to go in the vast landscape because as we rolled up to some kopjes, on top were two cheetahs reclining in the receding sunshine. They didn’t move much but were simply enjoying the view, and one of the cheetahs rolled over onto its back, exposing its white furry belly to grace the sunset. The moment was so special that none of us spoke for a while, and we watched for a long time.
As we drove away, Erica gave a great sob from the front seat. She was so unwell and still vomiting that she had been too weakened to stand up and see the two cheetahs. We arrived at the campsite in silence and as I got out of the car I said uselessly, “Poor Erica.” No one replied. There was nothing else to say.
Dinner was a gloomy affair, with the brothers Xavi and Arturo having recently returned from bathroom visits in the same nauseated state as their friends. Erica had long gone to bed. She hadn’t been able to appreciate the cheetahs, hippos, hyenas, giraffes, or jackals that we had seen that evening, and must have felt truly miserable. Samwel thought that the four of them were suffering from "mountain fever" after returning from Kilimanjaro, but I rather thought that the suspicious breakfast sausages that everyone but me had eaten had more to do with it, not helped by a weakened immune system from their exertions on Kili. We had a sunrise game drive planned for the following morning but it remained to be seen whether my friends would be well enough in time.
______
If you enjoyed this post, you can follow me to receive new posts by email. Thank you for reading!
Or see more posts here: Get in the tuktuk, no time to explain
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
Comments
Post a Comment