Safari, in a word: Unbelievable.
Safari, in a lot of words:
My main goal for safari was to end my previous reputation as human wildlife repellent, which I achieved during a trip in Maine a few years ago. In the Maine wilderness, all I wanted to see was one moose. "Oh, we've never NOT seen a moose," Kersten and her dad said. "You'll probably see a ton." After spending hours and hours driving around searching for the elusive moose, we quit and returned to Boston. I was disappointed, but I figured the moose population was somehow massively dwindling or something. Unfortunately for me, every time they've gone since, they seem to see thousands, if not millions, of moose. So I was nervous that on safari, I would have a similar impact on the animals.
We arrived back in Dar from Mtwara on Friday, September 8th. Luckily, we arranged to borrow the car that Meg owned when she lived in Dar from its current owner, and early Saturday morning we set off towards Mikumi National Park, about 4 hours west of Dar. We got to our camp and headed out immediately for a game drive. It's amazing to me how quickly we went from amazement to boredom - whereas at first we were going nuts for every single animal we saw, after about an hour we found ourselves saying "Another zebra??" or "Oh, it's just a group of 30 impala again." That first day, we saw many, many animals including (in order of coolness) impala, zebra, giraffes, and elephants.
It seems like a lot of people really want to see lions when they go on safari. I really wanted to see elephants, and I saw a ton of them. There is really no creature more amazing looking than an elephant...they look so prehistoric and out of place, and I couldn't get enough of them. On the morning of our second day, we were driving around for a few hours, not seeing much, when we decided to pull over to a dam to look for animals. Being the start of the dry season, the best place to spot animals was at watering holes. As we pulled in, it looked like there was nothing there. When we got closer, we noticed some movement, which turned out to be a lion! How lucky we were to see one lion, when the camp manager told us that no one had seen one for a few days. Slowly, we noticed that there were more lions. And more. Each lion stood up from the grass and walked up onto a dirt mound, and by the end we were looking at a pride of 10. A few minutes later, a group of about 15 elephants came to the same watering hole, with a few baby elephants in tow. This was like hitting the jackpot; we were so lucky that I expected a flock of pegasus or unicorns to show up next.
The rest of the weekend continued to be amazing, with more incredible animals and beautiful scenery. The African savannah is a spot that everyone should get to at some point, if possible, because it is beautiful beyond words.
I just discovered that I'm having trouble adding photos to this post. This post will be much more interesting with photos, so I'll work on a solution. Stay tuned!
2 comments:
I think I actually GUARANTEED that you would see a moose that weekend, Kate. To this day that is still the only trip in my (almost) 27 years that I have not seen a single moose. I'm glad to hear you had better luck on your African safari! Perhaps you only repel animals native to North America?
Unicorns huh? Well, I don't think you'll be seeing those in Africa. And here is why: THEY DON'T EXIST! So many people think they do. Those people are really confused. You can try to find one, but you probably wont. (If you do, take a picture, it could be worth BUCKS!)
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