Into the wild!

Chaos in Arusha and no Kili!

We have been travelling for about 2 weeks now and every day has been hot and sunny, except for today, the day that we would have been able to see Kilimanjaro! There has been a lot of excitement over the past couple of days in anticipation of seeing Africa’s highest point. It was not to be and we could not even see the foothills of the mammoth mountain. The disappointment was soon replaced by saucer sized eyes when we entered the chaos of Arusha – the tourism capital of Tanzania. Busses, trucks, donkey carts and safari vehicles were all jostling for the main position on the road. As if this was not bad enough, the officials had installed a series of rumble strips and speed humps. They also thought that matters may have been improved by confiscating all the stop and yield signs and chucking in about 1 million people on each block, all instructed to try to sell you something that you don’t want or need, or asking you to give them your cap or even your watch!

K2K catches the end of the Great Migration

Our mission on our full day in the Serengeti was to catch up with the famous Wildebeest and Zebra migration. These animals travel up from the Serengeti in the South to the Masai Mara in Kenya in the North, which always has an abundance of water. It took us about half a day to get up to the North of the park and we came across about 10 to 20 thousand Wildebeest and about the same number of Zebra right on the Kenyan border. The photos do not do the scene any justice and we did our best to capture the moment on film too, but I doubt that even that will give you the full picture. They were not in the height of the migration and were therefore not moving very quickly and were well spread out over the hills. It was a sight that was well worth the hours on the bad roads!

Lions raid camp and Graham left for dead!

Our scrumptious dinner (consisting of chicken, rice and sweet corn – far tastier than it sounds, I promise you!) was interrupted by hooting Land Rovers charging through the bush for no apparent reason. We thought that this was the first time that we could put or spot light to good use and turned our 1 million “candles-in-a-box” on all at once. And there they were, 2 female lions on the prowl in our camp! Oh dear! Panic erupted all around us! The Italians were leaping into the long drops to try and hide, the Swiss had still not emerged from their car after the stories of the night before and the New Zealanders were surprisingly still eating their diner and were seemingly not at all afraid of the lions. It later came out that recent events had convinced them that The Lions were of little or no threat to them! They were soon to change their mind and disappeared into the safety of their vehicles, apparently suffering from a bout of food poisoning! The hooting 4x4’s had succeeded in chasing the lions away and the camp returned to normal. Shayne and I continued to scan the bushes with the spotlight, unconvinced that the lions would have gone far. There they were! They had not retreated at all and had only disappeared to fetch the reinforcements – there were now 3 lionesses less than 20 meters from the camp! Shayne had learnt from the locals and sounded the alarm by sitting on the hooter! Italians – long drop, Swiss – car (still) and New Zealanders – nowhere to be found! 2 of the major rules in the Serengeti are: 1) Stick to the roads and 2) No driving after sunset. A perfect opportunity to break both! Shayne fired up the big V8 ‘Mlevi’ Land Rover and charged off into the bush. I happened to be holding the spotlight and managed to dive into the back seat of the car as it sped past. With kayaks still on the roof (sorry Margaret – kayak sponsor http://www.paddlers.co.za/) and slowing us down only slightly, Shayne sped off after the luckless lions which were now running away with their tails between their legs! Once they were a fair distance from the camp, we decided that we should return but only after a short, illegal, game drive. The camp residents hailed us as heroes! Okay, not quite but the local guides were impressed by our spotlight and came over for the demonstration by Ranger Shayne. The demonstration had been going on for about 10 minutes and it had been about 45 minutes since we had last seen the lions. As Shayne wrapped the demo up, 2 shapes appeared in the distance. Aaron said that it was the lions but Ranger Shayne said that it was just hyenas. The arguing continued for a couple of seconds until it became clear that the authentic Aussie was actually correct! 2 Big male lions this time, heading straight into the camp, 30 meters away! Italians – long drop, Swiss – car (still) and New Zealanders – nowhere to be found! Ranger Shayne leapt behind the wheel again firing up the engine, Aaron was the front passenger and Richard “John Varti” was filming from the back. Off the vehicle spend towards the lions! Excited, Shayne turned around to see that we were all safely in the car. Richard was filming as usual, Aaron was controlling the spotlight and I was…replaced by Shadrack! Oh dear! One of the guides had beaten me to it and had jumped into the car in my place. As I ran to the other side of the vehicle to see if there was place for me, the car did a wheel spin and left me in the dust! Not a problem. The Swiss car was nearby so I thought that I would be safe there. As I approached the Land Cruiser game viewing vehicle, the Swiss decided that they too wanted to be part of the action and instructed their driver to follow Mlevi! And there I was, all alone in the campsite with only our Hi-Lift jack to defend myself and a camera to capture my last few minutes! Shayne thought that he was doing a good job of herding the lions away and so did I. The Italians had emerged from the long drop and were watching the action from their car. They suddenly erupted into excited squeals and were telling me to get into their car. I had thought that Shayne was doing a good job of chasing the lions away and kindly declined their invitation. As I took photos of my back stabbing mates in the bush, I noticed a large shape moving through the bush, 15 meters from me! The lion! It took me about 0.5 seconds to scale the side of the Italian viewing vehicle, invited or not! The lions proceeded to drink from the camp’s water supply and were not at all afraid of the humans. Once they were done they agreed to pretend to be afraid of the vehicles and got chased into the night! Aaron and Shayne said that they would sleep in the car “in case the lions came back and so that they could film them”, you make up your own mind about that explanation!

Road users land on roof!

As beautiful as the Serengeti is, its roads leave a lot to be desired! To get to our campsite in Seronera we had to travel 300 km’s from Arusha. 160 km’s was on good tar and the rest was on dirt. Of the 140 km’s on the dirt, there was about 1 km that was not totally corrugated. The corrugations were only the beginning of our trouble as the road was also home to hundreds of supply lorries and local safari vehicles, all of which had the mentality that they were the most important users of the road and that they had to drive as fast as possible to skim over the corrugations. This resulted in us having to swerve off the road on numerous occasions to avoid being flattened! Needless to say that we encountered a number of the same vehicles overturned further down the road!