Gym's Ramblings: November 2023 - IN To Africa: Serengeti Plains

After two wonderful nights in the Ngorongoro Oldeani Lodge, Gym checked out on the morning of November 21, 2023. Subsequently, they all boarded the Land Cruiser and it climbed up to the rim of the crater for the second morning in a row. However, instead of turning right at the top and descending into the crater, Emmanuel turned left and drove down past a Maasai village towards the Serengeti Plains. It would be an unbelievable journey to the next safari camp.

Emmanuel and Kintai provided colour commentary as the Land Cruiser drove down Tanzania No. 17. Just because this is a numbered highway don’t think for a moment that it is paved. It reminded the author of descending from Kananaskis Country to Longview on Alberta 541 but the Tanzania No. 17 has no pavement and there are no giraffes in Longview. As they descended to the plains they paralleled the East African Rift (EAR), The EAR is a fault where the Victoria plate and the Somali plate are trying to move away from each other. Just before noon, they arrived at the Olduvai Gorge.

The Olduvai Gorge has become famous mainly due to the work of the Palaeontologist and Archeologist team of Mary and Louis Leakey. They excavated all of the most important sites of the gorge which provide much of the story of the evolution of humankind. There is an excellent museum on the site and you can look across the gorge to the Leakey camp which is now also a museum. Gym etal enjoyed a boxed picnic lunch overlooking strata’s I through V of the gorge, dating back 2 million years.

As the Land Cruiser drove away from the museum and turned onto T17, a 50-member herd of giraffes was lined up in single file on the western horizon. After snapping photos of that sight, the Land Cruiser continued down into the Serengeti grasslands. They were soon passing massive herds of zebra and wildebeest, literally thousands of each species following the regeneration of the grasslands that came with the recent rains. And as these cloven-footed animals moved on their annual migration, the predators moved with them. The Land Cruiser soon crossed a dry river bed on a concrete bridge, where a few other vehicles were parked for some reason. It turned out that a pride of lions was taking a nap underneath the bridge which was in the process of being repaired. The lionesses and cubs were lying underneath the bridge and the proud pride leader was processing a big meal of wildebeest sashimi from the previous night, in a large diameter concrete pipe.

After travelling a few more miles down the road, Emmanuel turned off the T17 and the safari group spent a couple of hours on a game drive through the bush, leading to the Lodge at Turner Springs. They would spend the next two nights here glamping in tents built on solid foundations with enclosed toilets on one end and showers on the other. The furnishings were stylishly upmarket and included another extremely comfortable bed.

Sundowners that night were consumed on the Serengeti grassland right in the middle of the camp which is not fenced. Dinner was served in the dining room tent on linen-draped tables with fine cutlery and classy dinnerware. That evening Kintai entertained the safari-goers with tales from his youth. He was brought up in a Traditional Maasai village where his father is still chief. He is the the first son of the second wife of his father, who was rich enough to have 19 children and four wives. From a very early age the boys learned to tend the goats, sheep and cattle of the village, protecting the herds with spears and machetes. More on this later.

Gym and his beloved sidekick spent a restful night in Turner Camp Lodge and awoke in the morning for a wonderful breakfast in the dining room tent. Gym was wowed by a scrumptious plate of Eggs Benedict, setting him up for a full day of game drives in the Serengeti. As the group climbed into the land cruiser a huge male elephant entered the camp and started grazing where sundowners had been the previous night. The game drives from Turner Springs were as unique and wonderful as those that the safari had experienced in Tarangire and Ngorongoro.

Stay tuned!

The Land Cruiser from the author’s viewpoint

Photo op

The Olduvai Gorge has five distinct stratigraphic levels dating back two million years. In two key layers of volcanic ash the fossilized remains of early man were very well preserved.