LAKE MANYARA, NGORONGORO, PIYAYA AND NDUTU – MARCH 2012

March saw my first ever Set Departure safari – and I’m glad to say it was a resounding success.

We all met up for a night at Rivertrees in Usa River – and a very diverse bunch we were!  We had a couple from Australia, a

Scots lady and two Filipinas, as well as myself – a Kenyo-Tz-Brit??

Our itinerary took us  to Lake Manyara in the Great Rift Valley, where Iain Douglas-Hamilton did his ground-breaking research into elephant in the ‘60s, before heading up to Ngorongoro Crater.  After the Crater, we spent a couple of days in Piyaya, the wonderful Maasai community area on the edge of Serengeti; and finally to Ndutu where we were hoping for the Great Migration, as well as good cat viewing.

Trip highlights included watching a lioness stalk a warthog, making excellent use of a concealed ditch as she inched her way closer.  Eventually, the pig sensed her presence and her final charge was in vain… but it was wonderful to watch a predator in action, all focus and stealth – quite unlike the usual lion sighting, with all four paws in the air, accompanied by loud snoring!

One of our number was a keen birder and he was fascinated by the colony of weavers that had taken up residence by the camp kitchen: all these gorgeous yellow birds, in a frenzy of courtship activity, oblivious to the goings-on below as the busy crew got on with the business of pampering us.

One morning, we decided to split up, with 3 of us opting to go for a morning game walk, while one of our number decided to go on a birding drive with Philip.  The walkers had hardly gone 200m when a radio call came through – the ‘birders’ had found a cheetah on a kill!  So we abandoned our walk and climbed into the car for a lovely hour watching this beautiful cat feeding on her fresh kill of a Grant’s Gazelle.  (Funnily enough, we walkers had spotted the kerfuffle of the chase, with gazelle and impala running in all directions; but had concluded that they had been disturbed by us).  It was great to be able to spend a wonderful morning with this cat within a couple of hundred metres of camp – and not another vehicle to be seen! We weren’t even inside a National Park, which makes moments like these all the more special.

We got to spend a fascinating afternoon with members of the nearby Maasai community when we were in Piyaya.  It is always an eye-opener for outsiders to experience first hand a way of life that goes back centuries.  Our host had a herd of several hundred cattle, so in monetary terms he was pretty wealthy.  To our ‘modern’ way of thinking, living in a cramped & smoky hut made of cow dung & with almost no personal possessions seems utterly inexplicable, when simply selling off his herd would enable him to upgrade to a different way of life… but that fails to grasp the self-evident fact that these folk are perfectly happy with what they have, and that living without their beloved cattle would itself be an intolerable existence.  In a world rushing ever faster towards bland homogeneity, that is something to be celebrated.  Vive la difference!

As is so often the case, one of the most memorable moments of all was at the micro end of the safari spectrum: in this case, a dung beetle earnestly pushing its precious ball of dung across the plain.  To the human eye, this is the epitome of pointless endeavour – where on earth can he be going?  The plain stretches for 40 kilometres in all directions, and it all looks exactly the same, so why not just… bury the stupid thing and be done with it? But beetles clearly know best, and so they trundle across the plain looking for THE perfect place to bury their ball of dung…

At the end, we all went our separate ways.  Which, in this case, meant the UK, Australia, Usa River, Hong Kong and Zanzibar.  All in all, it was a great week with plenty of variety on offer – and a fun group of people to travel with into the bargain!