The Endless Plains

Jambo again from the beautiful Serengeti, which, in Swahili, means the "endless plains."

Before I left home,  I would have guessed that the highlight of this trip would have been our visit to the crater of Ngorongoro, which was absolutely wonderful.

I was just not prepared to be as awed as I have been by both the beauty of the landscape and the abundance of the animal life of the Serengeti.

At any point as we travel along,  chewing the brown dust from the road and enduring the ongoing "African massage," I've found that if I just look out my back window of our Land Cruiser and watch the passing herds of antelope and take in the majesty of the distant volcanic peaks,  I can't help but embrace the contentment of Hakuna Matata, a Swahili philosophy of no worries.

Those who know me pretty well would say that I am not known as one to be very philosophical or to dwell on introspection,  but I have to admit that I had one of those days  Thursday. As we worked our way west through the herds of thousands and thousands of wildebeest and zebra,  I couldn't help but think, with some surprisingly emotional depth,  of the series of circumstances that combined to bring me to such an amazing place.

I thought of my late dad, Angelo, who used to love to watch any kind of nature program on his television, and how I learned to appreciate the beauty of the out of doors through him, and to respect the creatures that live in places like the beautiful country of Tanzania. He never got an opportunity to visit the wilds that he loved from afar, so my reflections took me to a place that made me feel as if I was his representative here. I feel very blessed and honored.

So what, you ask, took me to such an emotional place?

Saw Lion Pride on the Hunt

The Serengeti is a place that is truly almost beyond description with mere words.  I can tell you that it is a place where the savanna grasslands continue limitless all the way to the horizon.  Or I can try to describe the noisy chaos of the migration,  with zebra braying and uncountable wildebeest gnuing at noise levels that fill the senses. Or I can attempt to put into words the thrill of watching a pride of a dozen lions put themselves into position to stalk an unsuspecting, but always wary, herd of zebra, only to have the plan sabotaged  by an overeager juvenile male who pulled the trigger just moments before the lead lioness could launch her well-planned attack. But nothing can replace the actuality of being here,  seeing it,  feeling it deep inside you. After a week here,  many of us are grasping our own insignificance in a world larger and more beautiful then one can ever realize without leaving the comfort and safety of their home environment.

(There has been an attempt to insert a short video below of wildebeests crossing in front of our vehicle,  but it doesn't work on my player.  Maybe it will on yours. )
 


As we have said and heard said so many times this week, even the multitudes of photographs that we have taken on our trek cannot begin to do justice, or give more than a mere token idea, to  what our eyes are actually seeing, to I what our brains are trying to grasp.  It is a wonderful experience, but as hard as I try, I cannot transmit to you the fullness, the depth,  of what we have gone through on this wonderful adventure, led by our intrepid guide and our eagle-eyed drivers.

Yesterday, as we transited from Serengeti Serena to our final refuge at Kira Wira in the western Serengeti, we experienced a myriad of sights and sounds. We continued  to witness the ongoing insistent forces of the migration, animals driven to greener pastures and fresh sources of water by ancient urges that even they can't begin to understand.

Elephants Enjoying the Mud

We have watched as families of elephants bathed and fed, and as groups of  giraffes consumed the leaves of tall trees, while young males from the same group sought dominance over one another by bashing head against neck so loudly that it could be heard from fifty yards away.

Today, as we relax by the pool at Kirawira,  overlooking these aforementioned endless plains, we have moved from the savanna grasslands to the savanna woodlands. The sunshine and blue sky, decorated by high thin clouds,  have warmed the air temperature enough to make one want to cool off in the  splashing water.

Our day, however, had started off in the brisk air of morning with a 5:15 wake-up call to our tents so that we would  be ready for our only early morning game drive, leaving the lodge at 6:00. We headed down the road in the pre-dawn stillness and watched the sun come up over the scrublands.

A Nile Crocodile Swallowing his Meal

At the spot where the road reaches the Grumeti River, the upside-down carcass of a crocodile bitten in half by a hippopotamus floated,  resting against the concrete dam created to provide a crossing for our vehicles. A still-living croc  was feeding on his former mate, biting and spinning to tear off the chunks of flesh while ten yards away, a pair of large hippos conjoined in the age-old tradition of creating more hippos. One could hardly ask for a more vivid representation of an African ecosystem to microcosm, life and death, all within a short space of both distance and time.

Hippos at the crossing

My final post from Tanzania should be published no later than Saturday evening, as we say goodbye to our new friends, both from home and from Tanzania. I wish more of our friends from home had decided to join us on the short extension into Kenya, and we will surely miss our drivers, Prosper, Davis, and Filbert, and our master guide Robert Marks Moshi. Robert has assured us, however, that he knows, Eddie, our guide in Kenya, well, and that we will be in good hands.



Thursday's Sunset from the Porch at Kirawira