Our first morning in Tanzania we finally made the chef at Katambuga House happy by eating a hearty breakfast.
Then young Edward, our driver from the night before, picked us up for the short drive to Arusha Airport. The cow path looked much safer in daylight. In fact it looked more like a poorly graded country lane with some very nice houses behind razor wired fencing. Occasionally we came along some very dusty coffee plants. Edward told us the government was selling large parcels of what had been a coffee plantation for private development. It was a much quicker trip than our last ride with Edward. We were at the airport in 15 minutes.
Bonnie was loving this sticker at Arusha Airport
Coastal Airways was our bush flight provider 5 years ago and we were booked with them for four different flights this trip. Normally we flew on 12 passenger Cessna single engine planes, but at check in this day we were informed that we were going on the “big” plane. Indeed Coastal had a double engine prop that would hold about twenty five passengers, and had a flight attendant and a door between the pilots and passengers.
The “big” plane
Too bad that there were only 4 passengers for the forty minute flight to the busiest airport in the Serengeti, Seronera.
The first person we met while waiting for to board the plane was a young woman headed back to Asilia’s Namiri Camp. She was about 5 feet tall, slender and about 25 years old. She was a guide trainee. One of the reasons we chose Asilia for this trip is that their corporation is committed to changing the culture in Tanzania to enhance gender equality. Historically guiding has been a job filled by men, it was quite exciting to run into a concrete example of Asilia fulfilling their corporate commitment. Her name was Nama and by the end of the flight we were fast friends and Bonnie had some of her story. She had started at Asilia as a waitress, studied guiding and applied for a trainee spot. She and 499 other applicants went through multiple levels of interviews and the field was winnowed to 12. She got a spot and spent three months being trained and tested and has now been assigned to an experienced guide for a year of training. All this before she can take out customers on her own. From what we would later learn from our other guides (all men) this is the exact program they had gone through plus ongoing annual training once they graduate from being a guide trainee.
When we landed at Seronera, we met another women who had graduated to guide from trainee from a different Asilia camp. Neither of the women would be our guide for our stay at Nimiri, although we would see Nama frequently, our guide was Lenganasa Tomboi, shortened to Lenga.
Lenga made us a cup of coffee, and loaded us up for the game drive to camp. He proved that he was a guide well suited for us on the first drive. Friendly, smart and passed up the spots where multiple cars gathered to peer at a cheetah so far away that it was just a dark spot on a termite mound to bring us to within 10 feet of a small pride of just fed lions napping in the afternoon sun.
He was full of knowledge on nature large and small and a fledgling photographer. He asked Bonnie if he could help with taking photos and Bonnie turned over the DSLR to him for most of the stay. He was a great photographer! And was always positioning us in the best possible light for photos and would always try to get as close as possible. Every evening with Lenga I would say ” I don’t know how you are going to top today’s drive” and every day he did.
On day two of our stay, this caused a little concern. We had come upon a group of 8 lions who had stolen a kill from 5 cheetahs. Everybody was still within 100 meters of each other. The lions were fairly satiated with the gazelle meat, but the cheetahs were pissed that they didn’t get to finish their breakfast and were giving the lions the stink eye from a distance. We rolled up to within a few feet of the lions, close enough to make Bonnie nervous. Got some great shots and then we notice that the cheetahs were getting bolder and all of a sudden a couple of lions started off chasing the cheetahs. We were off. First just keeping up with the lions and once they gave up catching up to the cheetahs we moved closer to the Cheetahs. Again we rolled right up next to the cats for some amazing photos. And that was the first hour of our 12 hour game drive.
Right after the “West Side Story” battle between the Cheetahs & Lions, we got a call from Nama’s car that they had spotted a pretty rare site on their way to pick up some guests. It was a Melanistic Serval Cat. The smallest wildcat which is normally tan with black spots but when Melanistic it appears all black. It looks almost like a large house cat. Not seen very often, some guides had never seen it. Looks like this….
Our third day we almost had a cheetah jump into our car. Cheetahs like high perches to reconnoiter the flat plains. We would see them using termite mounds to gain a little elevation. We had been sitting next to a cheetah for awhile that morning, taking photos moving when he moved. He moved slowly towards the back of our car and suddenly Lenga started up our car and moved us forward about 50 meters in a hurry. He had read the cheetah and knew he was about to make our car into his own high termite mound. How did Lenga know, well he showed us pictures of the last time a cheetah visited him in his car. Also Lenga is a Masai, before going to school to become a guide, he spent some of his youth herding cattle out in the midst of lions, cheetahs and leopards. So he knows.
This day also turned out to be snakes on the plains day. Right after moving away from our jumper, Lenga, while driving at a decent clip, spots a Black Spitting Cobra sticking his head out of a hole in a termite mound, talk about great vision! Here’s Lenga going to great lengths to get a photo of the snake. We had told him that if we found any snakes we intended to get photos to send to Eric. We found another snake in the road digging a hole later in the day (video was forwarded to Eric)
A few minutes after the cobra and not that far away we were led by Tony, Nama’s Trainer, to an area we had to keep secret from the couple riding in the car Lenga used as his Cobra photo platform, carrying Ulli & Eva. They had contracted with Asilia to have one guide from Arusha drive them on their entire Safari, so Jackson, their guide was not a local Namiri guide and the locals were pushing park rules to show us the secret. So mum was the word about SEVEN BABY CHEETAHS less than a week old deposited by mom under a bush by the river.
In addition to our game drives each evening there were bonfires where the camp came together to discuss the days events and drink “sundowners”, mostly gin & tonics. Each and every camp called this “bush TV”. After downing a cocktail or so, everyone moved to the dining tent for dinner. It just so happened that we were the only customers in camp our first night so we got a chance to get to know one of our Managers, Bryan and Lenga. The next two nights we had two other couples join the group. One from Australia, Graham & Kim and one from Austria, Ulli & Eva. Ulli & Eva will become recurring characters in our saga and even though we could not share the secret about the Cheetah cubs, we became friends with them.
The Australians were interesting. Graham was 75, had been to Africa many times, including climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro when he was 60. He and a group of similar aged mates decided that they were getting old fat and out of shape. So they signed up for training by former SAS (British Special Forces that some say are tougher than US Navy Seals) and at the end they all made the trek up Killy as they called it. He was also the equivalent of an avid US Fox News viewer. Our last night at dinner together he started off on a rant about how carbon has no impact on climate and that everyone, especially Australians, should be using good old clean coal from Australia to generate electricity and that’s when the discussion got fun. There were 8 people around the table and for about half an hour, except for a few sentences from Ulli, two people spoke. Graham and Joel. I’ll let Bonnie describe the scene.
“The table got very quiet and Joel took command of the conversation with perfect examples of carbon impact on climate and Graham did not have a leg to stand on although he continued to babble incessantly. The discussion was passionate but civilized as Joel made the point that he respected Graham’s right to his opinion, but he was wrong. At the end of the meal, they shook hands and the table exhaled. Our Manager Bryan ended the evening by stating he had had a most interesting night.”
That morning the camp had surprised us with a Bush breakfast that included the Aussies and the a “pre Sundowner” just outside camp before we joined the others. A bottle of bubbly and camp staff helped us celebrate before the big debate.
Bush breakfast with the Aussies and Nama
The next morning Lenga took us to the airstrip for our flight north.
