Oludupai Gorge

Destination: Serengeti

Red dirt, red brick structures, red dust. The acacia trees look dead on the left side of the road, but healthy and green on the right. Why? The dust blows to the left and the “dead” trees are covered in it.

Red Dust Covered Trees

We rely on Stanley’s skill on the washboard roads. He has a technique of hunching over the steering wheel and turning it rapidly back and forth. The truck chassis is from Japan (Toyota). Once it arrives in Africa they immediately replace the tires with Firestone or Bridgestone. Top speed is 40 miles per hourish.

We pass a truck with a flat tire. A tall pile of red rocks is elevating the vehicle, taking the place of a jack.

Maasai Village

Dust Devil

Filling the Tank

The road heads uphill to an eventual elevation of 7000 feet. We stop at the entrance to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Our drivers deal with the paperwork while we check out the visitor’s center. A plaque proclaims the NCA to be: “8300 square kilometres of the most wonderful combination of landscapes, wildlife, people and Archeological sites in Africa”. In a conservation area domestic animals and people are allowed, but not hunting.

On this day, we’ll drive along the Ngorongoro crater rim. The caldera was formed 2.5 million years ago when a volcano (once higher than Kilimanjaro) collapsed upon itself. At a viewpoint we look out over the crater floor, 12 miles from side to side, an uninterrupted meadowland wrapped in a steep-sided bowl. We can see small black dots moving in clusters, herds of wildebeest, and cape buffalo. It looks peaceful and protected and we’ll see it all first-hand in a few days.

Ngorongoro Vista

Zoomed View

We pass by the North Crater Lodge located on the crater rim. The price is $1000 per person per night. Seems a bit pricey for a view of black dots, although I'm sure the amenities abound.

Jim signs for our group at the reception headquarters of Oludupai Gorge. The greeter asks how the safari is going and he gives a most positive review. He signs us all in using our home address…so now we’re on the mailing list!

Stanley is the treasurer for our group. The fees for our trusty band are:

$300 to enter Oludupai Gorge

$6000 for 4 nights in the Serengeti

$800 for transit through the Ngorongoro Crater

Once paid, the skinny pole barrier is raised, by hand, via a cantilevered rope.

Entrance to Oludupai Gorge

Oludupai Gorge, (Maasai meaning sisal plant), is sometimes called Olduvai. Olduvai is a misspelling of the Maasai word. We’ll stick with the Maasai on this one.

Water Anyone?

This is one of the most significant archeological sites on earth. Stone tools, animal fossils and fossil bones of early humans provide a record of how our early ancestors lived. The fossils discovered here show the evolution of homo sapiens over a 2 million year time span.

The Laetoli site on the opposite side of the valley, 25 kilometres to the south is where remnants of a different species of human were discovered. They existed 3.6 million years ago, a million and a half years before humans lived at Oludupai.

At Laetoli in 1976,  Mary Leakey, discovered fossilized human footprints preserved  in volcanic ash along with those of a three-toed horse. She worked here with her husband, Louis Leakey, and is credited not only with discovering the Laetoli footprints but also with finding the Zinjanthropus skull in 1959, at Oludupai.

“These imprints represent the earliest preserved direct traces of our ancestors upon the earth’s surface, some 3.6 million years ago. There is scarcely anything so evocative as the Laetoli trail, symbolizing humanity’s long and wondrous journey. The footprints bear witness to a defining moment in the evolution of humankind and speak to us directly and without ambiguity across thousands of millennia.”  (museum plaque)

This track has been reburied for its protection and is not open to the public. A cast of the footprints is on display at the museum here. Just looking at the cast gives one a bit of a chill and a tingle up the spine.

Who?

Mary Leakey owned a pet monkey named Simon and her 3 Dalmatians always accompanied her while she worked a site. She had to be a tough, inimitable girl to have survived and succeeded in this sweltering, harsh environment. (I think she also smoked cigars).

We sit on wooden benches on a viewing platform looking out over the gorge, eating box lunches al fresco while we listen to a museum official’s presentation. During the Q and A I ask if we are still evolving, and he replies “We are becoming more fragile.”

View Into the Gorge

We take a short cut out of the gorge, which is even bumpier than the usual. Stanley calls it doing the Hokey-Pokey. We reach for our seat belts. He says “don’t even worry about it. It’s a piece of cake”, and he’s right.  We’re soon back on the “freeway”.

We enter Serengeti (Siringet in Maasai) National Park. through the Naabi Hill Gate. While the guides complete more paperwork we are free to climb a path to the top of a lofty kopje for our first view of the legendary park. Kopjes are groups of outsized roundish rocks that jut out of the flat expanses. The rocks expand in the sun, and contract in the cool of the night creating cracks where plants and trees grow, creating an isolated almost oasis-like mass of rock and greenery. Red-headed (male) agama lizards dawdle in the sunshine.

Agama Lizard

Naabi Hill Gate

Serengeti means endless plain. Appropriately.

The 5700 square mile national park was established in 1951. Its short, brown, dry, unappetizing-looking grass is high in mineral content because of the volcanic soil. It sustains its countless inhabitants through the dry season.

The Serengeti is like the ocean. If animals are fish they move in herds not schools along the currents of waving grasses. Overlapping, marking out territory unknowingly interdependent in this protected environment.

Abundant herds of Thomson gazelle graze and wander. The black streak along their  side makes them easy to identify. The black color absorbs heat and their brown color deflects the sun. They can survive with no water source by eating wet grass in the morning. They also have a nasal cooling system that cools their blood. They can exist for  3-4 months without water.

Lions! We cruise by a heavily shaded kopje where a pride of lions rest in the rocky cover. They’ve found a perfect shadowy lookout for surveying the plains. A little guy looking soft as plush and just as cuddly observes us with chin on paws. Ho-hum.

It’s a thrill to see our first lions. We try to watch silently, but there’s a bit of a buzz in the truck that’s hard to control.

A female lion climbs down from her rocky perch and slinks, smooth, quiet, feline through the short grass. We track her for a bit and then come across papa lion who should be out defending his territory, (he ranges up to 25 to 30 kilometres), but he hasn’t gone far today. He’s zonked out near a water hole soaking up the sun. His mane is great and billowy in the breeze. Totally oblivious.

Zonked

We arrive at the Tembo tented camp smack dab in the middle of the bush. As we drive in zebras, giraffes, elephants and wart hogs are scattered throughout the neighborhood. There is a row of ten tents with a three sided “mess tent” in the middle. There are no fences around the camps in the park. The land belongs to the animals. We are visitors.

Tembo Camp

We’re welcomed with juice and cool washcloths.

Ombeni takes the tent at one end and assigns Jim (and thus me) to the tent at the other end. We’ll have nothing between us and the Serengeti but a canvas wall.

We’re told to turn in all of our snacks. They’ll be kept in a metal box. Any food in the tents will attract mice and ants.

Everything must be brought inside the tent at night. If you leave your shoes outside a hyena will be wearing them in the morning.

A bonfire blazes in the black night. We sit in a semi-circle around the fire appreciating warm popcorn and roasted nuts. Dinner is served by candlelight.

Cold Beers and Sodas in the Bush

We’re walked to our tents by lantern light. A lantern hung outside our tent glimmers all night. The moon is full and illuminates the open expanse surrounding our camp. My head pops off my pillow every time I hear an animal sound but I search the night to no avail. I’m sure I hear a lion and most certainly hyenas calling. It’s just too exhilarating. How can I sleep?

Scenes from the Serengeti:

Black Bellied Bustard

Tawny Eagle

Kori Bustard, the Heaviest Flying Bird in Africa

Topi

Yellow-Billed Ox Pickers