Leaving the Serengeti: Day 7

Our guide let us “sleep in” today and we only had to be up by 6:30 in order to dismantle our tents and pack our lunches for later that day.  After a hearty breakfast (our cook, a local who travels with us, is excellent), we washed up the dishes quickly, packed up all the equipment in the truck, and off we went on our last game drive in the Serengeti.

One of the first things we came across was a pile of lions.  Under the already hot Serengeti sun, they were lying under the shade of a tree, which just happened to be by the side of the road.  We pulled in and spent a good while just looking at the dozing creatures.  There were many cubs, and they would sometimes paw at each other briefly or start licking each other for grooming.  We were so lucky on this trip to see so many lions on each game drive.  Found out later that neither our driver nor our cook had ever seen lion cubs on their game drives, so it was a special treat for them, too.

We continued on.  Further down the plains, our guide again pressed the buzzer that we've all come to associate with immediately looking out the window to see what he's spotted.  All we could see this time was an acacia tree way, way in the distance.  Apparently, the elusive leopard is in this tree.  How our guide manages to spot creatures with such detail from so far away is a mystery to me, but he is excellent at it.

I alternate between zooming in with my lens, asking others to explain to me where the camouflaged leopard is, and looking at example photos that they have already shot where they try and point it out to me.  Finally, as I'm zooming in for a tenth time, I have it!  The leopard is right there, spotted tail hanging down nimbly from the tree branch it is resting on, while the rest of its body is almost invisibly laying on the large branch.  I admire it through the lens for a while, and then someone says “there's two!”

Can you spot the leopards?

Indeed there was.  An even more camouflaged leopard was on the tree branch on the other side of the tree.  I am fascinated by how completed their spotted patterns blend in with the tree and the plains behind them.  Incredible that we have gotten to see two of the most difficult to see animals in the Serengeti, the cheetah and the leopard.

The Serengeti from above

Game drives in the Serengeti are both exactly how you expect them to be, and nothing like you expect them to be.  You know you'll be in a truck and that you'll see amazing animals, and that you'll take tons of photos because you want to remember everything about the experience.  But you don't know and aren't prepared for the endlessness of the plains.  You aren't prepared for the wonder you get at sharing your campsite with a herd of zebras or jerking your truck to a stop for a zebra crossing.  You aren't prepared for lone elephants wandering the plains with their slow amble, one step in front of the other, calmly ignoring you because you are tiny and the plains are so big.  You aren't prepared for the surprise of seeing an ostrich for the first time and having it stare back at you in equal disbelief. These things can be written about and photographed until the end of time, but there is no substitute for being there.

After our game drive, we leave the Serengeti and head to the main gate on our way out.  We stop here for lunch, and there is also a short hike up to an incredible view of the plains from above.  We make the short hike up amidst various pastel-coloured lizards in iridescent purples and pinks.  We stare out at the endless plains, amazed by how flat and infinite it looks.

Africa is no longer a single entity in my mind.  It is a multi-coloured patchwork of places and people.  Maasai wearing their red robes and herding their cows, irrespective of whether they are on the Tanzanian or Kenyan side.  Small children waving and smiling.  Women carrying baskets on their head.  The wild plains of the Serengeti.  The small farms of different communities along the roads.  The bustling, overwhelming sights and sounds of Nairobi.  The boulders and mountains of Tanzania.  Africa is thousands of unique places.  I've barely even seen a few.  There is so much here.  So much land.  It stretches out as far as the eye can see, anywhere you go.  It has not only expanded Africa in my mind, but expanded my perception of how large the world actually is.  Seeing how different peoples from all the communities interact with us and live their lives has also expanded my idea of what it means to be human.  What is a “typical” human life?  There is no answer.  The western framework does not fit here.  There are so many unwritten subtle social complexities that are foreign and barely imperceptible to me, but they highlight just how varied we are as a human species.

Maasai with cows

Finally, we leave the Serengeti and re-enter Maasai lands as we drive to Ngorongoro crater.  Their red robes and cattle dot the hillsides.  Incredible how these people have still preserved their way of life.  Their traditional diet is only cow's milk, cow's blood, and cow's meat, so cows are their life.  They spend large parts of the day herding their cattle from pasture to pasture so they can have enough to eat.  In recent years some small communities have started to supplement with farming, but here it is still very much what it has always been.

This is our final night camping in the wild.  We arrive to zebras grazing on our campsite.  I'm growing quite fond of these funny striped creatures.  This area is even more dangerous to camp in than the Serengeti, so we have a guard armed with an AK 47 on site.  (They aren't allowed to shoot the animals, but they can use it to scare them off).  We go through the by now familiar routine of putting up our tents, helping prepare dinner, eating around the campfire, and washing up all the dishes.  The glowing green eyes of a herd of 14 zebras graze in the dark behind us, and soon its time for bed.