Beneath a star-dusted sky, we huddled on a log at the edge of the Uaso Nyiro River, not nearly ready to call it a night. On the far side of the river, a leopard stretched his spotted splendor across a thorn-tree bough, bathed in light from the lodge. From time to time, the leopard lifted its head and eyed the vegetation with sublime indifference, then returned to its dreams. Its twitching tail signaled it dreamed of Thomson`s gazelle, its favorite dinner item. It was a classic safari scene.
Reluctantly, we bid our safarimates lala salama-sleep well, in Swahili-and padded down a path to our thatched-roof cottage beside a moonlit river. We were in the Samburu Game Reserve in northern Kenya, on our third safari in two years, and had fallen unabashedly in love with East Africa.
Before our first safari, we were resigned to finding hordes of safari vans and only a scattering of animals. We know the statistics and they are disheartening. In the last 10 years, poachers have slashed Kenya`s elephant population from 65,000 to 17,000. The black rhino is on the brink of extinction. The African leopard is under siege. And poaching isn`t the only problem: Despite modest success from the Kenyan government`s Family Planning Program, farmers and nomadic Masai herdsmen gnaw relentlessly at the wildlife habitat.
What surprised us was the reality. The occasional van jam was more than offset by animals in awesome abundance and bewildering variety. Gone are the herds of 500 elephants travelers saw in the `60s. But when you are on a remote, rutted track in Tanzania`s Lake Manyara National Park and a herd of 50-plus elephants flows like a river around your van, churning up dust as they tread lightly as angels on a cloud, you know you are witnessing a spectacle.
East meets West
Our adventure began in Nairobi, a throbbing city where East meets West in a hurrying handshake of three cultures-African, Indian and European. The Nairobi Serena Hotel, with a pool, acres of gardens, two lovely dining rooms, a fountainside bar and spacious lounges, is within walking distance of downtown.
After a day of sightseeing and a night`s rest, we were off on the only daylong drive of the safari, into Tanzania. At the border town of Namanga, we switched from our Kenya vans and drivers to Tanzanian equivalents. And we were drawn into our first shopping spree, African-style. It can best be described as a feeding frenzy. Safari-ers were every bit as spirited as vendors as we were caught up in the fine art of haggling.
Lunch was in Arusha, a sort of rusted, African version of a Western town. Streets are often muddy-not to worry, the rain is mainly in Arusha and not on the plain. Corrugated roofs cover sidewalks that are lined with sewing-machinists and letter-writers. It`s a good place for spending your Tanzania shillings when you leave the country.
And then it began, this affair of the heart, quietly at dusk on the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater. A day in the 10-mile-wide crater, with its pearly light and sheltering tree-freckled walls, is like no other. From the rim, one would think no creature had discovered its gauzy depths, but in this ever-watered paradise of yellow-bark fever trees, every species found in East Africa takes refuge, except the giraffe. Its spindly legs can`t negotiate the steep crater walls. Even we had to forsake our comfortable safari vans and pile into Land Rovers.
The day was a dazzling cavalcade of wildlife-cheetah and prides of lion with macho cubs; hyena and jackal; wildebeest and zebra; hippos and a rhino mother with teenager; elephants and birds galore. Flamingos by the thousands transformed Lake Magadi into a pale pink veil.
Sharing lion tales
On our two evenings at the Ngorongoro Wildlife Lodge, a mountain aerie roosting on the crater rim, we gathered before a towering stone fireplace, sharing lion tales with our safarimates, 18 in all, six to a van, getting acquainted.
The next day, we were off to the Serengeti via the Olduvai Gorge, a sere, desolate place where Mary Leakey unearthed the skull of zinjanthropus, early relative of man.
The grandeur and solitude of the Serengeti are legendary, with its trackless oceans of acacia-dotted savanna rolling off to infinity, and kopjes- granite outcroppings-rising from the plain like surrealistic Mont-St.-Michels. Sometimes a lone, spear-bearing Masai, crimson toga flapping against his altogether, strode into the Great Beyond as though he had an appointment in Samarra.
The Serengeti Plain/Masai Mara, a continuum defined by the circuit of the annual wildebeest migration, is the most balanced ecosystem on Earth, yet scientists still don`t fully understand why. Prey and predator, each blade of grass and brilliant bird, all play their role. When the wildebeest pause during their migration, 1.5 million strong, laced with zebra by the tens of thousands, it sometimes looks as if you could trek across the golden plain on their dark backs.
A mass of scarlet
We came face-to-face with balance one morning at dawn, when a crumpled mass of scarlet loomed just down the track. A pride of lions had stripped the hide from a Cape buffalo and was noisily crunching on the bones. By our afternoon game run, hyenas, jackals and vultures had all had their turn and the carcass was picked white, as if bleached in the sun for centuries.
At the end of the day, a lyrical African landscape took shape. Under a slate-smudged sky, with a slash of light blazing across tawny grasses, a rainbow flung its rays across the Earth, perfect echo of an arching, lime-green thorn tree.
”Oh, Kea,” we said to our driver, ”we must have a giraffe for our rainbow, posing under a thorn tree.”
”You need a giraffe?” he answered. ”Hakuna matata.” No problem. Down the track we lurched, about a minute`s worth. There was our giraffe, poised by a thorn tree and wrapped in a rainbow, too idyllic for words.
Seronera Wildlife Lodge, our home in the Serengeti for two nights, is an architectural masterpiece of massive beams and monstrous boulders built atop a kopje, with a sweeping view of the Serengeti. Baboons think they own the place.
A routine emerges
By now we had settled into the rhythms of safari-dawn and dusk game runs, midday lazing by the pool, lively shopping on the jaunts between parks, browsing the lodges` gift shops and gathering at day`s end in spectacular settings.
A half-day`s drive through tiny villages and lush coffee farms brought us to Lake Manyara Hotel for a night, perched on the rim of the Great Rift Valley. In the shadowy mahogany forest, golden impala, bunched up for safety, eyed us nervously. A pair of diminutive dik-dik, smallest of all the antelope, froze like garden statues, and great white pelicans swooped over raucous hippos.
From Manyara, it was back to Kenya for two nights at the Amboseli Serena Lodge, just in time for lunch in the lee of snow-capped Mt. Kilimanjaro. Crowds of wildebeest and gazelle slaked their thirst at a watering hole just off the pool terrace, with hyena lurking on the sidelines. The Serena is a gardeny version of a Masai manyatta, or village, with the curving lines of pinkish bungalows hugging the red earth.
Amboseli has its share of the Big Five-leopard, lion, elephant, rhino and Cape buffalo-but it is special because of a marsh that is as high as an elephant`s eye. Tuskers wallow in for a mud-bath and emerge two-tone, as if they were wearing spats.
A treetop hotel
After a four-hour drive back to Nairobi for lunch, it was north to our treetop hotel, the woodsy Mountain Lodge high on the slopes of Mt. Kenya, just in time for tea. All the rooms have private balconies hanging over a floodlit watering hole where the elephants come so close you can hear them sigh and they yanked at the bushes right beneath our tea.
Deserty Samburu, three hours north, where we spent two heavenly nights, is a land of doum palms and tired volcanic cones where crocodiles bask on sunlit sandbars and giraffe go loping across a lavender landscape. Dining on the terrace at the Samburu Serena Lodge is a star-kissed affair, amid candlelight and pink tablecloths, but at breakfast black-faced vervet monkeys might snatch your rolls.
Ibrahim Abdallah, our driver/guide, is a tall Somali who is master at tracking game and can identify more than 1,000 varieties of birds. It was in Samburu that he found that rarest of cats, a mother leopard with suckling cub, sprawled across a granite slab. For a long time, the cub nursed while we reverently watched. At last sated with milk, the cub we dubbed Bigfoot rose up and cast us a saucy stare before diving into the brush. To this day, we worry about Bigfoot and his mother being poached and winding up a coat.
One day at dusk, Abdallah drove us to a secret place down by the river, an elephant crossing. It was playtime. Over and over, the great grays tumbled, hoisting their trunks to slosh gallons of muddy wet across their backs. Charcoal hides gleamed like satin. It was the Technicolor hour and all the world was awash in neon colors. Palm fronds turned luminescent green. Ivory tusks glowed as if they were plugged in, and the sun painted the sandbanks pink.
It was at Isiolo, on the Samburu road, that we found the highly prized necklaces of Somali amber, jumbled in with kiondos-woven sisal baskets-and animals and myriad irresistibles carved in ebony, malachite and soapstone. Even the most hardened non-shopper plunged into the fray of haggling. It`s the African way of life-and is always done with grace.
Lunch at the club
After so long in the bush, a lunch stop at the posh Mt. Kenya Safari Club seemed a strange contrast, but we managed nicely the bountiful buffet before wending our way to Nakuru for a turn around the lake and an overnight at Lion Hill Lodge overlooking the water. Like a Rousseau painting, giraffes nibbled at acacia tops, flamingos picked their way to and fro on placid waters and a shaggy-coated waterbuck grazed with his mate.
By noon the next day, we were in the Masai Mara. Nothing had prepared us for its bewildering abundance and variety of wildlife, including a resident herd of 10,000 wildebeest, made possible by the year-round waters of the Mara River. Even the wild dog, once nearly extinct, is making a comeback in the park. Long, straight hills encircle a rolling savanna, mottled with dark thorn trees.
It was here that we found our 40-minute cheetah, so named because that`s how long she performed for us-yawning and stretching, spread-eagled on her back, and taking three cat naps-all within 20 feet of our van.
Our two nights at the Mara Serena Lodge, on a bluff overlooking the game- speckled Mara, were magical, sitting around a fire-pit, listening to African musicians, holding fast to the night.
On our last morning, we slipped into a hot-air balloon for a flight over the savanna, crossing the river while it was still glassy from the night, skimming treetops and chasing our own shadow. A champagne breakfast in the bush was a fitting farewell to the most wondrous time of our lives.
Safari isn`t all giraffes wrapped in a rainbow or elephants sloshing in rivers. Often it`s long, dusty, bone-crunching roads. In Kenya, it can be sumptuous food and lodges exuding African ambiance. In Tanzania, where tourism is still just a trickle, the food may not be sensational, but you`ll have the Serengeti almost to yourself.
African safari is the lowing of wildebeest just keeping in touch and lion cubs ambushing their mothers` tails. It`s flaming dawns and moody sunsets and the cadence of birds as you sip a Tusker beer on the terrace. It`s drifting off to sleep to the grunts and chirps of the African night. It`s also Africans you meet along the way-dignified yet warm, ever ready with a smile and a
”Jambo!”-hello. But, in the end, it`s the animals that stir the soul, the richest congregation of wildlife remaining on the planet, roaming free in their own wild spaces. But don`t be seduced into thinking it won`t change. It will. Better go now. You will lala salama at night knowing your tourist dollars are doing as much as anything to save these magnificent creatures and the last vast place on Earth.
