Athens 1

After a brief flight over the Mediterranean, we arrived at the Athens airport early on March 11. We waited there until we were joined by Sarah and Nikos, Barb's daughter and son, who flew in from Israel and Toronto respectively to join us for a visit to Greece.
Athens is a beautiful place if a little down-at-the-heels. A concerned citizen who we met on the bus from the airport (and who had spent some time in Philadelphia, so spoke English with an American Greek accent), took great care to warn us about Greek drivers and that crossing the street is a dangerous and possibly life-threatening activity in Athens. Our experience is that Greek drivers are very like Egyptians when it comes to respecting the rules of the road.
We checked into our hotel in Plaka, a trendy district in downtown Athens, and were gratified to find that we could see the Acropolis from our hotel room window. That night we celebrated Nikos' birthday by having our first of many fine taverna meals. The roast lamb was excellent, cooked in clay pots.
The next day we went up to the Acropolis, despite intermittent rain. We were fortunate that the staff had returned to work, as they had been on strike for weeks. Apparently they have not been paid in months, a reflection of the perilous financial state of the Greek government, that is chronically short of funds, another reflection of the world economic crisis.
We did get to see the Temple of Athena Nike, the Parthenon, and the Erechtheion, with its most famous southern portico supported by the much-photographed statues of six maidens, the Caryatids (see photo). Nikos and I took a walk in the rain in the afternoon, and saw Hadrian's Gate, named for the Roman emperor, and the Olympic Stadium, built in 1896 entirely of marble, to house the first modern olympic games.
The next day was sunnier, and we saw the National Archeological museum, full of ancient statuary and fabulous gold and bronze artifacts and jewelry from the centuries that Greece was the cultural and intellectual leader of the ancient world.
We went to the Athens open air meat and fish market. There was every kind of fish imaginable including tuna, shark, as well as marlin, plus prawns, crab, squid and octopus, all displayed on crushed ice. There were also sides of beef, pork and lamb, hanging without benefit of refrigeration, and also all of the organ meats in large tubs. Rabbits were hung skinned, but their hind feet and tails were still attached, probably for good luck, but of course luck had run out for the rabbits. The butchers all smoked, and laughed and joked with each other and with their customers as they cut the meats, a perpetual cigarette butt dangling from the corners of their mouths. It was a sight that would reduce a Canadian health inspector to a quivering, stuttering mass of indignation.
After leaving the market we went across the street fot a late lunch. We ate delicious gyros from a busy stall, savouring the slightly smoky taste. We then walked back to the hotel via Monasteraki square. Later that evening we met Thanassis Samaras (formerly of Injured Workers Consultants in Toronto) and his partner Mina, who took us to a lovely local taverna for a late evening snack and some wine.
The next day we bummed around Athens and prepared to depart for Syros, an island in the Aegean.

Cruising up the Nile

We boarded our cruise boat around noon on Saturday March 7, to cruise upriver from Luxor to Aswan. This cruise had several planned stops along the way to see some of the many fascinating archaeological sites.

After settling in to our small but comfortable cabin (complete with television), we went for lunch and met our table-mates. These were a Canadian couple, Trish and Joe, from Edmonton but currently working in Doha, Qatar on the Persian Gulf, and Erica and Peter, from Sydney, Australia. They proved to be amiable companions.

We had a farewell tea on board with our friends the Pickerings and thanked them for their wonderful hospitality.

The next morning we were taken on a tour of the Valley of the Kings. This most famous site is the destination of seemingly every tourist in Egypt. Most of them seemed to arrive right after we did. The spectacular tombs were all very crowded, with line-ups at almost every one. Throughout the day, busses continually arrived and disgorged yet more people, who travelled from tomb to tomb in large groups, each led by a guide. The guides carried various coloured umbrellas, flags, and the like so that their groups could follow them through the crowds. The guides would herd their groups together at various points of interest, and deliver lectures in English, French, Italian, German or Japanese, as required.

Our guide spoke authoritatively on most historical subjects and explained a number of the carvings and freizes we saw, but some of his claims (like the ancient Egyptians inventing electric lighting) were perhaps a bit fanciful.

All of this was distracting, but nothing could take away from the grandeur, and the spectacular artistic and architectural wonders that were all around. It is impossible to do justice to the tombs and temples we saw without writing at great length about them, which I don’t have the expertise to carry off. They were however, magnificently constructed and decorated, with a precision and intricacy that immediately erased any notions about this being a society that was backward in every respect to our own.

A notable stop on our tour that morning was the Temple of Hatshetsut, perhaps the most famous female pharoh. This huge temple (picture) was partially cut from the limestone cliffs that tower above it, and then built outwards from the cliff face. The temple is decorated with wonderful and delicate reliefs, (second picture) but these have been vandalised many times over the centuries, first by her stepson, Tutmosis III, who removed her name wherever he could, and subsequently by later pharohs, the Romans, and also by early Christians, who decried the depiction of "pagan" gods, but were not deterred from using the temple as a monastery after defacing the carvings.

We saw vandalism at many of these ancient structures over the next few days. The carvings were sometimes vandalised by successor pharohs, and later by the Romans. Grave robbers stole from many of the sites. Some of them were used by local people as houses, or even stables. Adventurers from France and Britain carved their names into walls and pillars, stole statues, and chiselled off carvings as souvenirs. Their graffiti has become part of the history of these buildings. Other treasures were carted off to England, France, Germany and other countries (including Canada) in the name of science.

As we cruised up the Nile, we went ashore to see a number of wonderful sites, some of which can only be reached by boat and so are more or less intact. An inevitable part of every site was the crowd of souvenir hawkers and tourist stalls outside the gates. (Please come in, free to look, I give you good price). When our tour boat was waiting to go through some locks on the Nile, some of them even rowed out in small boats to try to sell necklaces and scarves. Of course, to the average Egyptian any tourist is fabulously rich, and and small amounts that they can persuade us to part with mean so little to us and so much to them.

The last temple we saw was the temple of Philae at Aswan. This temple was built quite late (started in 370 B.C.), and was used by both Egyptians and Romans to worship Isis, even after the Roman Empire converted to Christianity. The entire temple complex was moved from its original site, which was flooded by the High Aswan Dam. This huge undertaking took eight years to acccomplish, a task undertaken by UNESCO and the Egyptian Government.

We left the boat in Aswan, and flew to Cairo for a brief stop on our way the Athens. (Please note that this is being posted on March 30. We have been so busy doing things in Greece, I haven't had time to write about them. We are having a great time here, as you will see when I get caught up.)

Luxuriating in Luxor

After a poor night's sleep on the train, we arrived in Luxor very early in the morning and went straight to our hotel. It is on the west bank of the Nile, across the river from downtown, but on the same side as the Valley of the Kings, the Valley of the Nobles, and several other notable sites.

The hotel, El Fayrouz, is a charming place, with a restaurant in the enclosed back garden, under the banana trees, with tiled walkways and tables set among flowering shrubs. After settling in and having naps, we met up with our friends, David and Carolyn Pickering, and they took us across the Nile in a small boat (water-taxi) to wander around Luxor. We then went back to their place, a lovely apartment with a roof terrace that overlooks the Nile, for a drink while we watched the sun set. We all went for dinner at Abdul's camp, where we ate wonderful Bedouin-style meats, vegetables and rice that had been slow-cooked together in foil and were delicious.

The next day they took us to the Valley of the Nobles, to see several lesser-known tombs of nobles that were quite stunning, and not at all crowded with tourists. The tomb of Sennofer, overseer of the Garden of Amon, quite deep below the ground and only reachable by a steep and narrow tunnel staircase, had fabulous paintings of grapes and vines on the ceiling. The tomb of Rekhmire, governor under two pharohs, was quite dark inside, but the temple attendant/guard held a mirror to direct sunlight from the entrance to illuminate the carvings. The carvings and paintings showed the making of the tomb, smelting of gold ornaments, and carpenters making the sarcophagus. We also saw the ruins of the village of the workers, where the artisans, masons, and artists who built and decorated all of the tombs lived. The archeologists are still digging, and new discoveries are still being made at all of these sites.

There was an entire village that has existed in this area for a couple of centuries, that is now being torn down. The villagers supported themselves, at least in part, by trafficking in artifacts and gold that they dug up in their "basements". The government has been trying to relocate them since the 1930's. In 2007, houses were bulldozed one by one, as a part of the plan to make Luxor the biggest open-air museum in the world.

After a great lunch of chicken tagine in a local restaurant, we went to the Temple of Medinat Habu, built by Ramses III. All of the decorations, fabulously carved in monumental size, are meant to glorify Ramses III, and show what a powerful warrior he was. There are several carvings showing a giant Ramses smiting a number of his enemies, who are depicted as being much smaller than he, and kneeling, with their hands bound and and the ropes all leading to Ramses' other hand. There is also a grisly carving of a pile of the severed hands of his slain enemies, and also their severed genitals. This is meant to illustrate the complete vanquishing of these enemies, but also shows his utter brutality.

To get an idea of the scale of this temple, see the picture above of Barb and Carolyn sitting at the base of one of the columns.

Dinner that night was a treat. A friend of the Pickerings, a young Frenchman named Michel, owns a restaurant called The Three Jackals. There we ate succulent roast lamb stuffed with garlic, roasted potatoes, and zucchini baked in a fabulous Bechamel sauce.

Cairo

Cairo is wonderful, but has many of the problems you would expect in a city of 20 million people. The traffic is horrendous, and completely chaotic. There are 4 million cars in the city, and it seems that 3.5 million of them are on the road at any one time, all looking for a place to park. There is no parking anywhere, so people stop everywhere. Double parking is endemic, and triple parking is not uncommon. There is no rush hour per se, the traffic stays bad from 7 am to well after dark. Traffic jams can develop at random, (see triple parking, above) and may last for hours. Stop signs are treated with a mixture of disdain and contempt. Lane markings are considered as mere suggestions for the uninitiated. In a traffic jam I was stuck in for 30 minutes, there were five streams of traffic on a three lane road. Cars were inching forward with mere centimeters between them, horns blaring.

Pedestrians can expect no quarter, and seek none. Nonetheless, jaywalking is very common, with pedestrians having as little respect for the rules of the road as the drivers. Our guidebook advised that we find some Cairo natives, preferably with children, who are going in our direction and cross with them. This proved to be sound advice. The other way of crossing the street is to find a traffic jam and cross while the traffic is not moving.

We stayed in a hotel on an island in the Nile, in the somewhat upscale district known as Zamalek, where we could walk and explore without fear of getting lost. We also went to the famous National Museum, with its unparalleled collection of artifacts, statues, sarcophagi, and tomb ornaments from pharonic times. Right next door to our hotel was the Euro Deli, a cafe that had free internet and sold mango juice from fresh pureed mangoes (thicker than a milkshake) in large beer mugs, amd had free wireless.

Everbody smokes here. We went to a restaurant and had very good Egyptian shawarma (quite different from the Lebanese kind we get in Toronto), but it was so smoky we didn't go back. One further problem is that smoking shisha (flavoured tobacco in a hookah) after dinner is fashionable in restaurants and cafes. It is very common to see people drinking tea and smoking shisha at sidewalk cafes.

We also visited the mosque of Muhammed Ali (no, not the boxer, the guy the boxer named himself after, when he became a Moslem), very beautiful, and the fortress built by Saledin in the 12th century to protect Cairo from the crusaders. The crusaders, fortunately, never got this far.

The pyramids of Gizeh, guarded by the sphinx, are awe-inspiring. The sphinx has the head of a man and the body of a lion so it will have intelligence as well as strength and courage to guard the tombs. Gizeh was once in the middle of the desert but is now a suburb, the Scarborough of Cairo. There is a Pizza Hut and a KFC right across the street from the entrance to the pyramids, and a Hard Rock Cafe just down the block. There are also lots of guys trying with great persistence to sell postcards, camel rides, plastic pyramids and assorted other tacky dust-catchers "very cheap price for you, my friend".

We finished off the day with a stroll through the souk (open-air street market) of Khan al-Khalili, which for the first couple of blocks is all tourist souvenirs, and then becomes a market where Egyptians shop for clothing and household goods, all sold in small stalls.

That evening, we boarded the overnight train for Luxor, to visit our friends and see the Valley of the Kings.

Nairobi

We said an affectionate goodbye to most of our travelling companions who were leaving the tour to go directly to Zanzibar by bus. We stayed with the tour bus to go to Nairobi, accompanied by Sharon, Barb's cousin, and Barbara and Carole, the two Swiss women.

The trip was brutal. Most of the highway was under construction, with bone-shaking endless detours. We arrived exhausted. Fortunately, our hotel was comfortable, if a bit of an anachronism. The dining room decor was straight out of the sixties, quite well preserved. Moreover, they had decent food. Most of the two days we were there we spent relaxing, but we did go out for dinner at a fabulous restaurant. called Carnivore.

Their forte, needless to say, is barbecued meats. They do advertise that they have game meats (farmed, not hunted) but the onlty exotic meats we were offered were ostrich and crocodile.

Still, it's a great concept, and well exec uted. A waiter comes to the table with a rack of searing hot cast iron plates, and sets one in front of each diner.

Other waiters, wearing Zebra-striped aprons, are circulating around the dining room carrying flame-broiled meats on spits. They offer the meats at each table, and slice it by placing the end of the spit in the middle of the plate in front of you and carve until you tell them to stop. Many waiters come by during the course of the meal, one with a whole turkey on his spit, one with a leg of lamb, one with a whole roast of beef (rare and tender!), one with pork spare ribs, one with crocodile chunks, and one with ostrich, the liver and meatballs.

They place a carousel in the middle of the table with various sauces and fresh vegetables. There is a paper flag in the middle of the carousel. When no-one at the table could eat another bite, the diners lower the flag (in surrender). Then the meat waiters stop coming and the table is cleared. Then there is a decent selection of desserts with South African port.

We went back to the hotel to nap for a few hours because we had to get up in the middle of the night to get to the airport. Our flight to Cairo was to leave at 5:00 am. Apparently there are no night-time noise abatement bylaws to worry about in Kenya.

The cab ride to the airport was a memorable and spine-tingling race through the darkened streets of Nairobi.. Even though there was no reason to hurry, and the cab needed a new suspension and probably a brake job, our cab driver seemed determined to set a new land speed record. Fortunately, the traffic was sparse, but many of the vehiocles that were on the road were weaving erratically. The cab driver explained that the other drivers were likely drunk as he flashed by them. Mercifully, the lights on the instrument panel were burned out, so I couldn't see how fast we were going.

Our flight left ten minutes early. The aging EgyptAir A320 lumbered and shuddered as it wheezed its way skyward. This plane was so old it still had working ashtrays.

They did serve food, though the menu evoked gales of laughter from the cheap seats (ours). Maybe we were just giddy from fatigue. We were served a poached egg, a leaden pastry filled with dry cottage cheese and fenugreek, a hot dog, a potato puff, and two rolls with butter and fig jam. There was tapioca pudding for dessert.

We slept away the balance of our five-hour flight.

Lake Manyara and Back to Arusha

After a refreshing night's sleep in an actual bed, and a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs, we drove to Lake Manyara Park for our last real opportunity to see wild game. We were becoming a bit blase by now (oh, not another giraffe ... and get those impalas out of there, they're spoiling the view). We gave our guide instructions (don't stop unless you see a lion sleepng in a tree, or actually eating something)

owever the day still had the potential to thrill. This was most evident when we made a rest stop at the park gates. We were all encouraged to use the facilities as there wouldn't be another opportunity for some time. I walked down the path toward the toilets only to hear delighted exclamations and excited conversations from the womens'. It sounded like a cocktail party after the second round of drinks. The reason for all the excitement, I learned later, was that they were shiny, new, clean and nicely tiled, (the washrooms, not the women) with flush toilets, toilet paper, spotless sinks, soap, and hot water. The relief among the women campers was palpable.

We took a group photo (above) then drove to Lake Manyara, stopping to see a family of black colobus monkeys with several cute and tiny babies. They were in a tree right beside the road, at the height of the bus windows, fascinating us with their antics.

We drove on to a hippo pool, where several hippos were actually moving about and getting out of the water, which they rarely do during the day. White flamingoes were feeding near them.

We got back on the bus and carried on toward Arusha, stopping at a small town to buy food for lunch at an open air market. We were immediatedly accosted by trinket sellers as soon as we got off the bus. They seemed to come from nowhere, as they couldn't have anticipated our arrival.

In the market there were many kangas (printed lengths of cloth worn as skirts, shawls, or head coverings) bearing the face of Barrack Obama. Many minibusses and trucks we passed had Obama bumper stickers or a picture of him in the front window. If he ran anywhere in East Africa, he would win in a landslide.

We arrived in Arusha, at a campground attached to a nice lodge, and pitched our tents for the last time. Wilson arranged for us to go to a good hotel restaurant for a buffet dinner. The prople on the bus had developed a real cameraderie, and the bonhomie carried on back at the campsite, where a number of us sat up drinking Kilimanjaros and Tuskers, good local beers, until quite late.

Serengeti Day Three

The day broke clear, although there had been violent thunderstorms overnight. I slept soundly, awakened only once by the thunder. In the next tent, however, Eveline and Liz were awakened by growling and animal sounds outside during the night. There were lion tracks in the wet sand beside their tent and throughout the campsite. Perhaps the lions we had seen early yesterday morning had paid us a nocturnal visit. As we were able to account for everyone, we had breakfast and started to break camp.

Our garbage can was nowhere to be found. Some of the garbage was found by Wilson, our guide, a few dozen meters from the campsite, but the rest of it, and the can itself did not turn up after further searching. He figured it had been taken by hyenas, who wanted the refuse from our fish dinner.

We drove back the way we came, as we were scheduled to tour the Ngorongoro crater in the afternoon. About a half-hour into our drive we saw a lioness and three cubs beside the road. We stopped and they walked along the road in front of us briefly, then turned off and disappeared into the long grass. A little later we stopped to watch 10 zebras drinking from the ditch beside the road, including a baby a few weeks of age. They were nervous and didn’t linger over their water. A little bit further along we saw a solitary male lion, lying in the grass less than ten meters from the road. He had scars on his face, at least one of which looked fresh. He looked at us with a somewhat mournful and weary expression, as if he had just lost a fight.(photo above)
We detoured off the road several kilometers for a look at the Olduvai Gorge, where the Leakey family made their groundbreaking archeological finds. We saw a casting of the famous bipedal walking tracks of an adult and child australopithecine dating back some 3.6 million years. It is the oldest evidence ever found of our ancestors.

We reached the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater after noon and had lunch. We transferred to 4x4 Land Rovers, as the bus would not be able to negotiate the steep and narrow road going down the inside of the crater wall. The roofs of these vehicles had removable sections, so we could stand up and get a clear view of the animals.

The crater was formed by collapsed volcano, and is many kilometers across. The floor of the crater is a flat plain with a shallow lake and is the home of much wildlife. We had to stop our car because a herd of more than 200 wildebeest and zebras was crossing the road. Almost every female wildebeest was accompanied by a calf which appeared to be a few weeks old.(photo above) The calves stayed very close to their mothers. Several hundred meters further along we saw several lions lying in the long grass, probably with designs on the wildebeest, or their calves. We were told that four thousand wildebeest are born each day during the month of February. 40% of them die before they reach 4 months of age.

Later we passed a small pool with about 8 hippos in it. Perched in the reeds around the pool, and also on the ground around it were over 100 white egrets and ibises.
A little further along a large stork stood near the road. It appeared to be about a meter and a half tall. It had a pink neck, black wings and a white body.
The lake had numerous hippos in it as well as a flock of hundreds of pink flamingoes, but they were too far away to see clearly.

The driver of our 4x4 had very keen eyesight and was practiced in spotting game. He pointed out two rhinos lying in the grass, quite far away. They were in the middle of a scattered herd of wildebeest, and we would never have noticed them ourselves. We waited there for some time, hoping they would get up, but they were not interested in moving. We drove further hoping to find more rhinos or maybe a cheetah, but we had no luck.

It had become quite late in the afternoon, so we headed off to meet the bus and have dinner at a new campsite. This was at a privately run campground in a small town, and it had showers and also the possibility to upgrade to a room instead of sleeping in a tent. We took a room, as Barb had not slept well in the tent, and was very tired.

Dinner that night was soup and barbecued steaks, somewhat tough but good nonetheless.

The wildlife in the room was somewhat exciting too. Large cicadas (like crickets) lived in the shower. A major spider, almost the size of a Toyota Echo, lived behind the toilet tank. It kept us up quite late, shaving its legs in the bathroom.

Serengeti Day Two

We awoke before dawn on day two. It had rained overnight, and was still drizzling. Our guide had insisted there was no time for breakfast or showers. We had to get going quickly because the animals are most active in the early morning. After some hurried tea and biscuits, we sleepily climbed onto the bus as dawn was beginning to break.
Our haste was immediately rewarded. Less than two kilometers from our campsite, a female lion came walking along the road towards us, with her two cubs. We stopped, and they walked right by the bus, apparently unconcerned with our presence. About a minute later, the male lion walked by about three meters from the road, a bit ghostly in the grey morning light.
As the first rays of sunlight began to colour the landscape, we drove by several Cape buffaloes lying in the tall grass with their legs tucked under them. A little later we saw a herd of about forty female impalas, guarded by a single male. Several guinea fowls with blue iridescent heads walked through the long grass. The morning wore on and we stopped several times to see a topi (antelope), a waterbuck (another antelope), some distant hyenas, and a troop of baboons on the road. We saw a family of vervet monkeys (small, cute, with black faces) in a thorn tree right beside the road. We saw two female giraffes less than twenty meters away, calmly browsing on an acacia tree. A group of bachelor impalas looked warily as we passed. As we returned to the campsite for lunch, we disturbed a family of warthogs who took to their heels as we approached. They dashed away, adults and young, with their tails held straight up like antennas.
After lunch we headed off again. Our destination was a large hippo pool. After some time, we saw a herd of 20 elephants about 30 meters off the road. There were 2 very small babies among them. The mothers were nervous of us, and herded their babies further away from the road, then the whole herd moved off. About five kilometers further along, a solitary bull elephant stood looking directly at us about ten meters away. It seemed to be trying to figure out what, if anything, to do about us. It stood contemplating us for several minutes, slowly fanning itself with its ears, before it turned and wandered slowly away.
A little further along three jackals were walking through the grass, doing nothing in particular, it seemed.
We arrived at the hippo pool after some more time on the road. It was an amazing sight as 75-80 hippos bathed and submerged in a large, stinking pool which was in a dry river bed. They ranged in size from smaller animals about the size of a large chest freezer to monsters the size of a minivan. Hippos can weigh up to two tonnes.
Some of them stood placidly still in the water, lifting their heads occasionally to breathe, some submerged entirely, and broke the surface with their heads to breathe, and some were a bit more active, lifting their heads above the water, opening their mouths wide, then disappearing below the surface of the fetid water with their mouths still wide open. The pool was stagnant, and the hippos did not get out to defecate, so they were effectively swimming in a pool of their own dung. The place smelled accordingly. Hippos feed on land at night, sometimes causing seemingly wanton destruction to crops and other vegetation. They are quite aggressive and very dangerous to humans when encountered on land. Two large crocodiles, who shared the pool with the hippos, wisely spent their time sunning themselves on the adjacent mud flats, rather than swimming in the water.
The hippo poll was the high point of the afternoon, but we also saw more elephants, and a group of about seven giraffes quite close to the road. These large animals move with a stately elegance, quite graceful despite their large size and seemingly ungainly shape. Their loping run looks like it is in slow motion, but they can cover a lot of ground quickly if threatened. They appear quite calm, moving through the acacia and thorn trees to browse. Their enormous soft eyes and long eyelashes make them look intelligent and somewhat vulnerable, although our guide says one kick from their powerful legs can break a lion’s jaw. (The lion would then starve to death).
We also saw many more impalas and, near the end of the day we spotted a leopard in a tree, at some distance but clearly visible through binoculars. Late in the day we stopped at a luxurious lodge, a high end place for people who can afford to fly in to see the animals. It was quite elegant, built around a huge granite boulder. We had a drink in the bar before heading back to the campsite for a wonderful dinner of batter fried fish (locally caught Tilapia) and a glass or two of good South African sauvignon blanc before turning in.

Safari to the Serengeti

Safari is Swahili for a trip or journey. Our trip to the Serengeti was a journey into another world, a world that, I fear, may not last much longer. In one sense the wild animals we saw are a cliché that obscures other, harsher realities of Africa. On the other hand, it was undeniably fascinating and deeply thrilling to see lions, giraffes, and all the other animals in their natural habitat.
We arrived in Arusha, in northern Tanzania, on February 22 to meet our safari group. This was a camping trip, albeit somewhat genteel camping. We slept in tents, and the 15 people on our tour were expected to assist our two driver/guides with cooking meals, washing-up and other chores. There were a Norwegian couple, two Swiss, a Scot, 4 English women, an Italian woman and a Polish guy living in England, and four Canadians. We all got along very well, and everyone pitched in when needed.
Barb had a few misgivings about the camping part, but was a good sport about it, although I doubt that we’ll be camping much when we get back to Canada.
The tour bus was built on a truck chassis, with a truck suspension, so the ride was pretty rough. The roads are all very basic and unpaved in the Serengeti, hence the need for a robust vehicle. It made for some bone-rattling rides, and also some scary moments labouring up the steep and narrow road from the Rift Valley in the rain, sliding in the mud as we negotiated the switchback turns.

Safari - Day 1
We packed up our tents and left the campground in Arusha in high spirits. We arrived at the gates of Ngorongoro Conservation Area, the entrance to the parks, a couple of hours later. While we were stopped there, waiting while our guide paid our entrance fees, a troop of baboons walked through the parking lot. One of them climbed on top of our bus, to the amusement of all of us. It was a good omen for the sights to come. The road then went into the highlands and followed the crest of the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater (elevation 2200 meters), providing a breathtaking view of the plains below on one side, and the floor of the crater on the other. We continued out of the highlands toward the Serengeti plains.
We passed many herds of cattle tended by Maasai people. They are the only people allowed to live in the national park, as it is part of their traditional homeland. Their small extended family compounds, consisting of a grouping of round thatched huts surrounded by a fence, are seen occasionally dotting the rolling grassy landscape. When we passed one of these villages, about 100 meters from the road, we saw a spirited game of soccer being played by about 16 men and boys in their traditional robes.
Many Maasai have been forced to give up their traditional way of life because land outside the national parks has been bought or taken for farming, and is not available for grazing. The Maasai traditionally had no concept of the private ownership of land, and now the land base that supported their way of life is being converted to other uses. Some have adapted to city ways, like our cab driver Sylvester, who speaks great English though he never went to high school, and works partly as a cab driver and also as a guide taking climbers up Mount Kilimanjaro, which he has climbed hundreds of times. Other Maasai live pretty marginal lives in the city, selling tourist trinkets on the street to try to get by.
The Maasai are a pastoral people, keeping herds of cattle primarily, but also goats and some donkeys. These herds graze on the rolling grasslands side by side with herds of wild game, wildebeest and zebras, and also various antelopes, but the cattle never mixes with the game herds, always keeping to their own kind.
As we drove through the grassy lands towards the Serengeti plains, we began to see wild game. The first animals we saw were six Cape buffaloes, massive and tremendously strong looking animals. They look like water buffalo from the far east. Then we saw several giraffes in the distance, browsing on the tops of thorn trees. We were immediately elated by this sight, but it was only the beginning.
The land became flatter as we entered the Serengeti plans proper. Serengeti comes from the Maasai word “siringet” meaning land of endless space. It certainly felt like the plains went on forever. They look like southern Saskatchewan, completely flat and featureless. Barb and Sharon felt right at home.
We began passing herds of wildebeest and zebras. They tend to be found together because they are naturally mutually supportive. Zebras have keen eyesight but a very poor sense of smell. Wildebeest have a great sense of smell but poor eyesight. Together they are much better able to detect predators. Zebras prefer to eat tall coarse grasses, and wildebeest eat the shorter grass underneath. Wildebeest look like scrawny buffaloes with full beards.
The animals were far between at first but became more and more numerous the further we went. We saw a herd of Thompson’s gazelles, which, we later found out are quite commonplace, as are impalas. Next we saw two ostriches roaming the plain. A herd of about 40 wildebeest crossed the road, escorted by several zebras. This forced us to stop the bus, and take plenty of pictures.
We crossed a river bed that was mostly dry, with a pool of water near the road. In the pool were half a dozen hippos, trying to keep their tough but sun-sensitive skins wet and out of the sun. A few kilometers late we saw a single fully grown male warthog in the ditch right beside the road, placidly grazing. His fearsome tusks were stained green from the grass he was eating. He took little notice of us when we stopped to take his picture.
We made a pit stop at a lodge before heading to our campsite for the night. While we pitched our tents Wilson, one of our guides, made us a fine meal of pumpkin soup and beef stew with rice, all cooked up on two gas burners. He was a cook in a five star hotel before becoming a tour guide.
The camp site facilities were quite primitive, with stand-up toilets which Wilson called “long-drops”. These were comprised of two footpads with a hole in the floor between them. We were warned not to leave our tents at night, as the campground is unfenced and animals can and do roam freely. This turned out to be very good advice, as we were to learn later.