Wild and Wonderful Tanzania
And then a hippopotamus\'s chortle wafts across the water and we remember that this is wild Africa, there are no fences and the animals are not necessarily well fed. Hippos are not to be toyed with; they kill more people in Africa than any other animal. The way sound carries over water on a still evening these ones could be kilometres away. Or they could be just behind those reeds, ready to amble ashore for the night\'s grazing. The shoreline is rutted with evidence of their passing, pugged and ploughed with the weight of their inflated looking bodies, heavier than a Landrover. Our guide is Debbie Lewis, a quiet spoken American who, with British partner, Glyn, has lived and worked in Tanzania for nearly 20 years. Together they own three tented camps in some of the country\'s most fabulous bush areas, lakes Manyara and Natron, and on the border of Serengeti National Park. As well, with Tanzanian Jasper Malewo, they run Swala Safaris, a Landrover tour company. Together these businesses allow them to live their passion, wild Africa. While gently coaxing a safari ant to loose its jaws from her finger, Debbie explains that hippo wandering so close to their Lake Manyara camp, Migunga, is not necessarily a bad thing. Two years ago, when the edge of the lake was four kilometres away, local village men would party all night in the camp\'s bar. Since then a combination of El Nino weather patterns and a shallow lakebed had brought the lakeshore within a kilometre\'s walk of the camp and, with it, the hippo. Now the village men liked to get home before dark. After the colourful hurly burly of Tanzania\'s towns and cities, Migunga tented camp is a wonderfully tranquil place. Accommodation is in commodious canvas tents set upon wooden platforms, a rustic verandah in front and a canopy of woven banana palm above. The ambience is straight out of Out of Africa. That night, in the open-aired dining room we are treated to stunning aerial displays of tiny insect-eating bats, and the occasional plop of a gecko dropping from the coconut-palm roof onto the table. Lake Manyara National Park is just five minutes away. The soda lake lies along the base of the Rift Escarpment, part of the 8000 kilometre long fault in the Earth\'s crust known as the Rift Valley. While the park is only 330 square kilometres in area, of which two-thirds is the soda lake, it contains a huge variety of habitats which support a large number of species. Most famous of these are its tree-climbing lions. No one knows quite why they do it but theories are the big cats are looking to escape either the pesky stomoxys fly or attacks by the numerous elephant or buffalo. The Lewis\'s second camp is 120-km north at Lake Natron, near the Tanzanian - Kenyan border. The journey there is through vast golden grasslands and an ancient volcanic landscape. At first the land seems empty; then out of nowhere a troop of wildebeest thunder through, all hooves and horns and nervous energy. Further on zebra graze alongside a solo giraffe, and herds of Grant\'s and Thomson\'s gazelle move past, tails flicking like windscreen wipers on speed. Two long-legged secretary birds, so named because their crests look like the writing quills of old, stalk lizards, insects and snakes in the long grass. One catches a small snake and slurps it down whole like a length of spaghetti. Lake Natron, 56-km long and narrow, lies north-south along the Rift Valley, well off the well-beaten Arusha-Serengeti-Nairobi tourist route. Two things hit us about Natron. First is the heat. It\'s palpable. Second, is the immensity and strangeness of the landscape. It seems the remotest place on Earth. Towering on the near horizon is the Maasai\'s sacred volcano, Oldoinyo Lengai, the Mountain of God. At night nearby villagers see the glow of molten rocks tossed above the solitary mountain\'s crater. The lunar landscape of the lake shimmers in the heat, its shores a deceptively solid crust of caked and cracked minerals, baked hard by the relentless sun. Natron, like Manyara, is a soda lake, or magadi, its waters an undrinkable soup of native sodium carbonate in solution. Near the distant water\'s edge a pink haze slowly distinguishes itself as countless thousands of flamingos. The honking slow moving mass wades through the shallows, filtering the rich waters for diatoms and algae. Few trees grow here and local Maasai walk far to water their cattle. One of the few oases of shade is the tented camp run by Debbie and Glyn. It lies close to a Maasai boma and village women come calling to sell their distinctive bead jewellery. Maasai women have a hard life by my standards; each suffers a clitorectomy, is married at 13 or younger and performs all tasks bar cattle herding. Men take any number of wives and father many children, considered a source of wealth. One of our guides, Lemura, is proud to tell us he is one of 36 children sired through five wives. Selling jewellery to the occasional passer-by is the one way Maasai women can make income of their own, which helps explain why they are so persistently insistent. Even if I spoke their tongue I don\'t think they will take \'no\' for an answer. Our last stop is at Debbie and Glyn\'s third and newest tented camp, Ikoma, on the boundary of Serengeti National Park. At night, from our mosquito netted bed we can hear the lions roar their successful kill, and the hyenas\' shrill gibber. Nothing is fenced, only a canvas tent wall stands between us and the predator-filled night, and it\'s wonderful. Serengeti National Park is named for the Maasai word, Siringet, meaning endless plain. Its grassy expanses blackened with the thundering migrating mass of one million wildebeest and 200,000 zebra is the stuff of wildlife documentaries. We are therefore surprised to find that in fact nearly two-thirds of the world\'s most famous park is bush or woodland. During September, the time of our visit, many animals congregate in the northern treed end of the park where the grass is greener. And so did we. It seems bizarre to stand in an open topped Landrover, five metres from a fiercely wild lion in its prime, and feel safe. But we did, and we were. It is also intriguing to note how human sympathies lie. Rather than side with the prey, often a tiny Thomson\'s gazelle, it is the anorexic-looking cheetah, face bloodied from chewing out the stomach of its victim, which stirs the sympathy. The plains are full of gazelle, while cheetah numbers are dwindling. It\'s hard not to be a safari \'ticker,\' mentally marking off the species spotted, concentrating on those not yet seen and photographed. Wherever we go it feels like the animals toy with us. Huge maned golden lions and a spotted leopard are there one second, completely vanished into the yellow grass the next. Waiting quietly, no matter for how long, doesn\'t help. Human patience is no patch on the languidness of a big cat. But not seeing everything first time round is fine. It provides a great excuse for returning. Travel Facts We flew to Tanzania on South African Airways (SAA), via South Africa. Five SAA flights a week connect Sydney and Perth to Johannesburg, one of the airline\'s 16 international destinations on the African continent. Two flights a week connect Johannesburg with Dar es Salaam. Everything you will ever need to know about SAA can be found on its website - www.saairways.com.au. For more information about Swala Safaris and the Lewis\'s tented camps, visit their website, www.safaris-tz.com. © Marieke Hilhorst/ORIGIN NATURAL HISTORY MEDIA |