Zebratastic

06/06/10

Today is the last day of the Africa in Focus tour. Today is the day we say goodbye to all the people we've been living in each others pockets with for 6 weeks. Some people we'll most likely never get the chance to meet up with again, but hopefully we'll see some again. Today is the day our real adventure begins, this is Africa, and we no longer have the hand holding of our crew. Now we have to organise for ourselves.

Fittingly it's been a dramatic finale to the trip. As it has been observed by all involved, this has been a trip of two halves. The first part smooth, organised and with a huge amount of activity, an adventure we'd all planned for. The second an endurance mission of a whole other kind, all be it a more 'African' one.

The view across to the rim of Ngorogoro Crater

It was originally planned for us to go to the Ngorogoro Crater for the last day and a half of the trip. As a gesture of goodwill from the company owner, to say thank you for our patience with all the problems (or perhaps to stop a hoard of complaints), he arranged for us to have an overnight stay in the Serengeti as well. Ngorogoro Crater is a huge dormant volcano that caved in thousands of years ago. It used to be the height of Kilimanjaro but is now just a rim that is 26km wide that drops 600 metres steeply to a 12 km wide crater floor. You make your way down into the crater in safari jeeps along a steep and winding dirt road. One road in, one road out. For our descent we had to go through the clouds, visibility dropped to about 5 metres at times. This was a little terrifying as Masai tribesmen would stand on the road, and donkeys and hyenas wander in the path of vehicles. Our driver was reckless and the knowledge that you are never far from an invisible plunging edge made it a pretty hair-raising ride.
We dropped through the clouds and down into the crater. Even with the poor visibility seeing the inside of the crater around you is incredible. To see it on a clear day must be amazing, but then again, like all things that rise dramatically into the sky, it's no doubt nearly always ringed with clouds. As you wind your way down the sides of the crater you can just make out herds of wildebeest and zebra. Having been on a few safaris the crater didn't really have anything new to show us, apart from our first male lion. He didn't really count though as he was sleeping far from the track and was difficult to make out. The crater was impressive for its uniqueness, a lake glinting in the sun, animals grazing all around, all isolated from the outside world by the towering walled rim. Nature at it's most dramatic.

From the crater we continued north for 2 hours into the Serengeti. It took me the first hour of the drive to recover from our ascent out of the crater. Our driver tried to kill us twice in the first 10 mins. He grounded the car on a hairpin bend, let it roll back to the edge until a number of us were screaming for mercy, then nearly tipped the car over when getting stuck in the dirt on the bend for a second time. He then drove the rest of the way with his wheels as close to the edge as possible, leaving all the space on the non precipitous side. Then he spent so much time chatting to his passenger that he once nearly drove us off the edge.
The Serengeti is everything you'd ever imagine in an African safari. In Swahili Serengeti means 'endless land'. Now is migration time and wildebeest and zebra are joining into huge herds before they follow the rains north. It was all the stuff we've seen before, but in greater numbers. At one point we drove through hundreds, if not thousands of zebras. They were scaring themselves silly and making a hell of a racket.

It's a miracle we saw anything at all as we drove across the plains, our driver continuing with his questionable driving sense by going 95 km an hour along a dirt road. No idea how we managed to see the more common animals, let alone some lions and a leopard. For the lions we broke the game reserve rules and drove off the road to see our first pride resting on a raised grassy knoll. When we saw the leopard we'd given up all hope of seeing one on the trip and were on our way back to camp after our last game drive. We saw about 15 safari jeeps parked all over the place. In one of the trees close to the road a leopard was sleeping off the night;s exertion with his kill hanging a few branches below where he'd dragged it.

The Serengeti bush camp was one of the most memorable places on our African tour so far. There were no barriers or fences. We were just in the middle of the open plains. In the evening a giraffe wandered over to eat a bush about 10 metres from our tent. It's only when you stand under a giraffe that you realize exactly how tall they are. At night we went to sleep to the sound of a few hundred wildebeest grunting and grazing just beyond the toilet.