This update encompasses pretty much the last of my easy-living time in Tanzania, the time without final exams and tests that ensued upon my return to Dar.
After our time spent in the Karatu area, we drove to safari in our last, and my favorite, national park - Ngorongoro. Upon arriving in Ngorongoro after driving along the crater rim, we made it to our campsite with a view overlooking the undeniably breathtaking Ngorongoro Crater.
Our ‘Simba Camp’ was the site where, two years previously, a woman had left her tent unzipped at night while she was munching on some goodies, and a hyena wandered in to join her in partaking of food. Unfortunately she panicked, the hyena bit her, and it wasn’t discovered until too late that she had full-blown rabies. The weather in and around the crater is wonderful - in the 60s and 70s - and incredibly refreshing after being in the heat of Tarangire. After we unloaded our things, we loaded into the land cruisers and went to Laetoli. For those of you not familiar with Laetoli, it is the site where three early hominin footprints were found preserved. It provides the first, and only piece of undebatable and conclusive evidence that roughly 3- 2.75 million years ago, H. sapien ancestors habitually walked bipedally. After discovery and excavation, the footprints have been covered and re-covered. They are covered up now, but they are set to be unveiled in January for the president of Tanzania and other dignitaries. Because Dr. Mabulla, our archaeology professor, worked with Louis and Mary Leakey (Mary discovered the Laetoli footprints and her and her husband were the primary archaeologists excavating at Oldupai and Laetoli), we were able to walk around near the footprint sight and were able to look at fossilized bone fragments and other fossils that were near the site.
After seeing Laetoli, Dr. Mabulla wanted to show us the museum that was at the site. He had contacted the curator and arranged for the museum to be open. However, he failed to take into account that it was market day and market day must be observed. Dr. Mabulla was seething mad and after many attempts to make contact with the curator, he decided that it was only right that we break into the museum like good students of archaeology. So he commandeered the shortest and most agile boy in our group and had him stand on our director’s shoulders and crawl through a window to get inside and open the museum doors for us. Breaking into a museum in Africa with your professor? Check.
From the museum, we went to the Maasai market in Endulen. Ngorongoro is one place where Maasai and other indigenous tribes are allowed to live inside the park’s boundaries. Maasai are not allowed inside the crater, but are allowed to live in the highland areas. Ngorongoro is unlike any other park that we’ve been to thus far in that it is lush and green, and cool, and wonderful. I think I was drawn to Ngorongoro the most because it resembled a verdant paradise shrouded in clouds and its climate resembled Fall in Wisconsin. All of the Maasai women wore white hats made out of beads. As it would have been extremely inappropriate to take pictures, I will post one that was taken by a photographer for National Geographic that is a perfect image of both the climate and people of Ngorongoro.
The Maasai market at Endulen was a very neat experience. As per usual, we were the only wazungu (white people) within twenty miles of the market. This was not some tourist market, this was a market borne out of the necessity of real Maasai people. There were no postcards or souvenirs, but instead there were cooking wares, Maasai fabric and blankets, beads, knives and lion spears, food, and livestock. It was an experience I will never forget.
From the market, we went to the Endulen health center to pick up those students were not feeling well and then headed back to our campsite for the evening. But the excitement didn’t end at the market. When we got back to simba camp, we discovered that there are a pair of bull elephants have discovered the water tank that is the lifeblood for the camp. We were able to get about 15 feet from these dangerous animals while they sucked up the water straight from the tank, since they had previously broken down the concrete barrier meant to protect the water tank. Funny story: a Spanish man thought that it would be fun to keep getting closer and closer to these bull elephants, knowing full well how dangerous they are. He finally got too close for comfort, so the bull elephant starting chasing him around the campsite, all while the wardens and other campers looked on in mirth. Snack time rolled around that night and I happened to glance out of the concrete/wire mess hall area to see a bull elephant staring back at me less than 5 feet away, only separated by a concrete wall. As I looked on, the elephant proceeded to get closer until only the half concrete wall and wire separated the elephant and I - about one foot. The bull elephant proceeded to sniff with its trunk put on the wire - legend has it that elephants never forget a scent. After that very tense moment, (I could have easily been killed if the elephant was perturbed in any way and decided to push down the cement wall) I moved back from the wall to a safer spot.
The next day we went to Oldupai Gorge. Side note: it is NOT ‘Olduvai’. The German scientist who wrote about Oldupai first had misspelled it and after it wasn’t corrected immediately, it became the accepted name. Oldupai is actually a plant that Maasai in the area use and after which they named the site. If you’re not familiar with Oldupai, many believe that it is one sites that illustrate that Africa is indeed the ‘cradle of life’. After going to the museum and listening to a lecture by a park official, we headed down to the FLK Zinj site (look this up if you’re not familiar with it!) and dug around in the dirt to find more fossilized bone fragments, including a tooth.
From Oldupai we went to one of the coolest places ever, the place of the ‘shifting sands’. It’s essentially a giant sand dune out in the middle of nowhere within the park boundaries. It’s volcanic sand and it is aptly suited for a bunch of college students who want to jump, dive, and otherwise engage in childish behavior in/around it.
After the shifting sands, we went on safari within Ngorongoro Crater. After an almost sighting of a cheetah, we drove around to see a black rhino - our final, and by far most exciting member of the ‘Big 5’. Take a look at the picture below. We also saw lots of lions, including a pride that walked two feet under our car window to lay in the middle of the road and take a nap. We also saw a hyena stalking a family of warthogs, flamingos, zebras, hippos, elephants, monkeys, waterbucks, and much more.
For our last night in the simba camp, Brittany, Caleb, and I thought that it would be a marvelous idea to take matters into our own hands to see the hyenas that were undoubtadly prowling us at night. So we went out with our headlamps and flashlights and roped Shahid, Brendan and others into coming with us. Just to be careful unless we actually stumbled upon something, we took both Caleb’s Maasai lion spear and the Maasai knife for protection. We walked around the duration of the camp and shone our lamps in the bushes. After coming up empty handed when spotting predators, we saw one very horny male zebra and two females and two male cape buffaloes. To further their mood, a group of us sang Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On”. When we told our cook, Innocent, that we saw two cape buffaloes in the bushes next to the camp, he replied “Yes, they are very dangerous. They cannot live with the herd because as they get older, they get more aggressive”. Unfortunately our brilliant career at shining wildlife in the bushes was cut short by our need for sleep.
