7/4 Marius' Boma and Waterfall Hike

7/4 Marius' Boma and Waterfall Hike

We wake very early today and leave before breakfast, as we are in for an experience very few people ever witness.  After a short 10 minute drive we arrive at Marius' Boma, the Maasai word for home.  A large circular (50yds diameter) fence- basically a 5ft tall pile of prickly acacia branches- enclose several mud huts, and two more smaller acacia branch circles.  Ol Doinyo Lengai, Mountain of God, dominates the horizon.

The two-room huts provide nighttime shelter for the family; in the innermost room, the wife sleeps with the children while the husband sleeps in the outer room with the fire and maybe some baby goats.  The huts are very small and dark.  The smaller acacia branch circles provide holding pens for the cattle or goats. and we arrive early to see the livestock being taken out to graze for the day.  
The youngest boys (age 5-12) are charged with grazing the animals all day, while girls fetch water, clean, and maintain the boma.  However, things are changing in Africa, so many boys and girls go to school now.  

We meet Marius' wife, and his children, and they take us for a tour of their hut, which is so dark we can barely see, except when our flashes go off during picture taking.  Also, Elizabeth gets to milk a cow, which isn't her favorite activity of the safari!  
 
  Finally, the women trap us in a circle of jewelry, as they try to get us to buy their homemade Massai bead work.  Let me just say that if these women worked retail in Boston, you would never walk out of a store without spending more than you should have!   After they clean out our wallets, we say goodbye.  


Later Marius and Samwel take us on a hike up a river to a secret swimming hole and waterfalls.  The canyon was so narrow we have to cross the river (or hike in the river) several times.  We pass a beautiful waterfall that sprinkles 
down the side of one of the canyon walls.  After about an hour, we reach our destination, an awesome swimming hole where the river cuts through a tunnel of rock.  The cool fresh water feels so good after days of heat and dust.  

Later that day we make a trip into the village and in the evening are treated to a maasai ritual dance; they even ask me to dance with them!

7/3 Into the Great Rift Valley and Lake Natron…

7/3 Into the Great Rift Valley and Lake Natron…

The Land Rover left Eneshiva and made the four hour trek (on a crazy dirt road) to Lake  Natron, the heart and soul of Massai culture, and about as remote a place that exists on our planet.  First we descended the 2,000ft escarpment, a wall of rock the marks the eastern edge of the African tectonic plate as it diverges away from the Indian plate, creating the Great Rift Valley below.  At the bottom lay Lake Natron, a Magadi lake, which means it’s salty and very alkaline… not a place to go swimming.

Soon we begin seeing the Massai people, dressed in their colorful robes and wearing sandals made out of old truck tires.  We pass through their village and see their bomas (homes), which consist of a few circular huts made from sticks and cow dung surround by circular fences made of acacia brambles.  Also in their bomas they keep their goats and cows.   

We arrive in our camp and are greeted by Ken’s two Massai friends, Marius and Samwel!  They give us affectionate hugs and welcome us, as we sit in camp and hear their stories a couple hours. 

Later they accompany us the lake, but on our way we stop to see a crucial archaeological dig 

featured in Nat Geo four issues ago- 100,000 year old human footprints!  They are preserved in hard volcanic rock, so we didn’t endanger them by putting our feet right in the places humans walked 100,000 years ago.   

At the lake we see the one animal that thrives in the alkaline environment- flamingos!  They feed on the algae that thrive in the water, and the pink pigment from these algae turn the birds pink!  Part of the lake had dried up, so we walked out on salt, crusted ground, 

full of minerals from nearby Ol Doingyo Lengai, which means Mountain of God in Massai, and is a 16,000 foot active volcano that dominates the landscape.  Another awesome day…

7/2 Day hike and night drive in Enesheva…

7/2  Day hike and night drive in Enesheva…

Woke up early and set out before breakfast… on a walking safari!  Yes, that’s right.  A Massai warrior was our guide and protector.  We walked amongst wildebeest, zebra, giraffe, Grant’s gazelles, tommies, dik-diks etc.  It was absolutely surreal.  Ken gave us a lesson on the whistling acacia, which has golf-ball-sized hollow spheres all around it’s branches.  Each ball has a hole, and ants make a home inside.  The tree also makes     

nectar to feed the ants, who reciprocate this goodwill by defending the tree against any animal that attempts to eat its leaves- classic symbiosis!  As we rounded a corner in the acacia forest, all feeling hungry, Ken’s surprise was revealed… the crew had set up breakfast in the forest!  Eggs, sausage, toast, crepes, fruit, porridge, 

juice coffee, amazing.   

   

That night, as soon as dinner ended, we climbed in Sampson’s Land Rover for a night drive, which was a one-of-a-kind experience, as it’s illegal in parks.  Easily the highlight was watching a nocturnal 

aardvark hunting through termite mounds looking for his late-night snack.  We startled him, and he took off running- aarvarks look very funny running- and finally he slipped into one of the many “hide holes” he dug for himself around his territory…. We also chased a hyena and woke up 6 ostrich, who were annoyed that they had to stand up and run away.  

7/1 To Enashiva…Big Male Lion Tragedy

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7/1 To Enashiva…

We pack up the Land Rover early for a big drive that takes us out of the lower tall grass plain and into the hilly country of the Northern Serengeti.   

About 1.5 hours into the drive we come upon a scene that will unfortunately be seared into our memories.  A very large male lion sits under

 a tree with a sleeping female while another male (likely brother to the first male) sits under a smaller tree 20 yards away.  We watched for 10 minutes.  The bigger male stared at us intently and seemed pretty angry.  He even roared at us, which rarely happens since the animals are so used to trucks.  We soon found out why.

He hears something a stands up, and we see large gashes just in front of his hind legs going up over the top of the back, and a thick wire squeezing his lower abdomen.  Just as we are put into shock, his brother stands up and hobbles to the next tree… 

on three legs.  His right rear foot is gone.  Ironically, both brothers have been snared in poacher traps, and neither will last much more than a week in the wild.  As much as the national parks try to keep poachers out, they find ways, and two big healthy male lions are the unfortunate victims on this day. 

Soon we reached Klein’s gate and leave the Serengeti, travelling east and very closely paralleling the Tanzania/Kenya border.  Loliondo is a “game reserve”, not a national park, so we won’t be restricted by as many rules. We reach our camp there, and get our first extended relaxation time since Gibbs          Farm.        Then we go out of a game drive, which is cool because we don’t need to stay on roads.  This drive is highlighted by Sampson chasing a family of 20 

striped mongoose!  As they race across the plain, Sampson closes in.  Imagine 20 mongoose trying to enter their hole at the same time.  They get stuck!  Rodents flying everywhere!  And one gets shut out and scrambles to the next hole.  Great laugh!

6/30 Serengeti Balloon ride and the afternoon of Simba

6/30 Serengeti Balloon ride and the afternoon of Simba

3:45am wakeup!!  We are picked up by a park driver and taken to the central plain, where we take a one hour balloon ride over the plains while the sun rises over Ngorongoro.  On or flight we see hundreds of Thomson Gazelles race across the plain and fly directly over three hippo pools- their stink finding its way all the way up to us- talk about nature’s port-o-poddy!! 

We land in a field and are treated to champagne in classic French ballooning style, after which we are taken in Land Rovers to a table set up in the middle of the Serengeti plain for an English-style breakfast.  Amazing!  The only living things that attacked us during breakfast were some harmless bees.  

Sampson, our driver, picked us up and we were off for what was an INSANELY awesome day!  Not two minutes passed before we saw a huge male lion with two females basking under a tree.  They soon rose and walked right past our truck!!  And we watched the big male leap across a creek with his powerful hind legs, which angered a nearby hippo.

Sampson then drove us to a section of the plains where a creek winds through, providing enough water for some tree-growth.  “Chui place”, he said, the perfect environment to find leopards.  As we scanned trees for sleeping cats, we noticed a group of trucks stopped 200 yards away.  When we arrived we began scanning a huge tree with our binoculars.  Ken saw a dead Tommie (Thomson Gazelle) laid in the crux of a large branch as it left the main trunk, ensuring that there must be a leopard in the vicinity that had made the kill and “treed” it for later.   As everyone else scanned the tree, I fixed my gaze on the shrubs surrounding the tree and saw it!  Of course, this bummed everyone out because I had promised a Safari Lager to the first person to spot a leopard.  Sorry gang.   

The highlight of the day came at the Simba Kopjes- the large rock formations that rise out of the plain.  We came upon the pride’s alpha female.  She sat and roared for about 20 minutes as she called her pride.  We kept waiting and waiting… finally, right down the center of the dirt road came her sister and CUB!  This cub was only a few months old, and was pretty cute.  He even got skiddish around the truck and took a circuitous route around us as he made for the alpha female.  All three disappeared into tall grass where we’re sure they ate a kill.  What a day!

6/29 To the Serengeti…

6/29 To the Serengeti…

In the morning we say goodbye to Gibbs Farm and embark on the long bumpy road into the Serengeti.  First we climb the southern flank of Ngorongoro, then head west around the crater rim.  At the “Windy Gap” we pause for our last amazing views of the crater floor, and then it’s off to Oldupai Gorge.

Oldupai Gorge is a lynchpin for the study of human evolution, as many hominids (pre-human) and early human fossils were buried in the gorge.  Most text books spell it “Olduvai”, which is the white man’s version, but the Massai named the place after the Oldupai plant that grows in the area.  The excavation was begun by Louis and Mary Leakey in 1931.  Ken shows us the “Castle”, a plateau-like rock rising out of the gorge, pictures of which are found in every geology book.  The Castle shows the sedimentary rocks layers going back several million years and are divided into 5 strata.  Digging continues in the gorge today. 

We load up and head to Naabi Hill, the gateway to the Serengeti in the southeast corner of the park.  Naabi Hill rises like a sentinel out of the grasslands that stretch beyond the horizon.   Very few animals are seen here during the summer, but when the November rains return, the plains will be transformed green, and over 1 million wildebeest will migrate south and undertake mass birth of their young. 

 

Now in the park we head north; with such a long drive we have very little time to view game, but we do come across about 7 young male lions sleeping the heat of the day away under some acacia.  It is extremely rare to see this many males together, and we hypothesize that they must make a formidable hunting team.  Ken thinks soon they’ll be a force to be reckoned with as they go for pride dominance. 

Finally we make it into Robanda Camp after almost 9 hours of driving, and we’re in for a treat.   Thomson has erected an amazing permanent main tent built on a massive stone tile base for eating and lounging.  Of course, for us that means sitting out with cold Safari lagers to watch the sun set over the Serengeti grasslands.  Dinner was highlighted by the camp crew rocking “Jambo”, the celebratory song in Tanzania, to honor Zac’s birthday.  Too bad the cake said “Barthday”!  You could do worse!