INTRODUCTION TO SAFARI

Hi, guys! I’ve never had a blog before. But this trip was the culmination of 10 years of saying, “Someday I’m going to go to Africa and hike Mt. Kilimanjaro.” I never actually thought that “someday” would come. But since it did, and since there’s no way to explain any of it without sharing the images, here we go. I’ll tell about the trip in segments over the next little while.

SAFARI. What does it really mean to go on safari? My very vague idea before our own safari was based largely off of The Wild Thornberries (a cartoon a few years ago about a red-haired girl who traveled around Africa with her naturalist parents, had adventures, and could talk to her pet monkey). Well, I found out . . .

Going on safari means riding around in a Landcruiser with a Tanzanian guide who says, “That’s a cheetah way over there” when all you can see is the same old grassy plain – and who then drives you up to within feet of that cheetah.

And it means getting tired of being in the Landcruiser, climbing on top, and bumping along for miles with the wind in your hair and a head completely empty of thought and filled only with pure living of the moment.

It means spending your nights eating 5-course meals made in Dutch ovens and bathing, going to the bathroom, and sleeping in luxury accommodations that are still a part of nature.

It means having a Maasai with a spear walk you to and from your tent every night. And it means having a park ranger with an AK-47 guarding your camp.

It means passing Maasai villages, giving out water bottle after water bottle to thirsty Maasai boys out herding the family’s cattle, and loving the beauty of tribal clothing against the deadness of the winter grass. For us, it even meant being a bit of a freak show in a village in quiet corner of Tanzania just outside the Serengeti where we were the very first westerners to visit. (Unfortunately, no pictures of us as every last person in the town stared at us—with the focus entirely on us, I felt too conspicuous to take photos.)

But mostly it means animals. Miles and miles of bumpy road and the thrill of the hunt. The catch-an-exotic-animal-doing-something-that-is-very-strange-to-see-or-that-humanizes-the-animal hunt. And the capture-it-by-camera hunt.

We saw everything: giraffe, zebra, lion, wildebeest, elephant, hippopotamus, lion, crocodile, several species of gazelle, vulture, lion, stork, jackal, hyena, leopard, cheetah, lion, lion, and even rhino. Yes, lots and lots of lion. I took about 4,000 pictures. So thank me for being selective in what I put up. I'll be posting animal pictures and stories very soon--in the meantime, here's a comical teaser: