I survived another night in the wild and felt remarkably relaxed - despite knowing that the low grumbling sound I could hear very very close by, was a lion or 7.
We’d had very early starts every day so far, so I’d suggested to Deo that we leave a little later so that I could throughly enjoy my breakfast ( I’ve never been a fan of eating at 6.00 am). Some scrambled egg on toast, pancakes with honey, fresh juice and 2 mugs of tea later, I managed to haul my stuffed full of food body to the Landcruiser. I was going to have to do some serious leaping about in the back to work off that enormous breakfast.
“I know where I’m taking you this morning”, Deo said mysteriously.
“Oooooo, where, where?” I demanded.
Long pause.
“ To see the hippos”.
I started clapping and hopping around like a 6 year old.
I’d seen a small group actually in the water in Lake Manyara and a couple on land here in the Serengeti. On both occasions they had been a long way off, stretching the capacity of my telephoto lens to it’s limits.
Earlier in the trip, Deo had promised me that we would be able to get much closer to some and I hoped this was it.
The “hippo pool” ( marked with a helpful signpost) was in a different direction to those previously travelled.
I gathered we were heading north as we were starting to see much larger groups of zebra and wildebeest. Deo explained these were the frontrunners of the great migration, although the millions strong herds, wouldn’t arrive in force until December.
When I booked this trip, I knew I would miss this astonishing event, but the dates I had chosen were entirely geared around swimming with Whale sharks on Mafia Island. I really didn’t think I would mind, until Deo and the boys in the camp had described what it’s like.
Buy all accounts, the vast plain in front of our camp will be a heaving mass of Black and the noise is unbelievable - so that’s gotta be something to add to the bucket list and I’ll just have to come back!!
So lets get back to the hippos.
We arrived at what looked like a car park, confirmed by the witty little sign and Deo said “you can get out, they are over there”.
I jumped out and although I couldn’t see them yet, I could hear them and most definitely smell them. Boy do these creatures stink.
We made our way to the little viewing area and before me was one of the most astonishing things I’ve ever seen.
The pool was crammed full of hippos, big ones, small ones and some absolutely enormous ones. There were also a couple of crocodiles nearby, but the hippos were the stars of the show.
And what a show it was.
The pool isn’t very deep, so as the adults couldn’t totally submerge, they were
constantly swishing muddy water over their backs with their tails to keep cool. I also read that they swish their poo everywhere to mark their territory, but as they were so tightly packed in, I can’t see how that was going to work.
Watching them interact was absolutely fascinating. Some were getting along fine and rested their heads on each other’s backs, mums were keeping a close eye on their babies, but fights were breaking out all over the place - presumably bulls fighting for dominance.
Even some of the youngsters were having punch ups although it was hard to tell if they were serious or just playing.
If things started to get out of hand, a massive bull would stand up and roar, and all those in the vicinity would scatter. Clearly they knew who was boss.
One hippo had found a particularly muddy patch in the middle of the pool and was having a fine old time, digging in with his nose and covering himself with mud. Unfortunately a much bigger specimen, decided he wanted exclusive rights to the mud patch and another fight broke out. The smaller hippo lost and slunk off to another part of the pool.
The range of sounds they make is surprising and I did my best to record them. Unfortunately, although there were only a handful of other people ( once again Deo had triumphed by getting us there before everyone else) they were chatting very loudly and a lot, but I’ve managed to extract a small section with no talking - enjoy.
We were there for well over an hour. I took pictures from every angle and did an ok job of capturing the fights. Deo made us some coffee, I had a fag and then went back to the viewing area to watch the hippos some more.
As we were leaving I said “I love them”, (although so far, I had said this after every single animal sighting). But I really did - who would have thought such smelly, loud aggressive animals could be so enchanting.
Deo knew. “ I thought you would love them - that’s why I took you there” he replied with a little smile.
Time certainly flies when you are having so much fun and I hadn’t realised it was getting on for lunchtime.
Today we were going to have ours at the Serengeti visitors centre, but that was still a bit of a drive and of course, there was plenty to see along the way.
We saw:-
A pair of tiny Dik Diks, who mate for life unlike other other antelope.
A group of the tiny, very speedy dwarf mongooses running from bush to bush.
A small herd of Topi looking out for predators.
A Lilac breasted roller, just chilling on a bush - so pretty.
3 giraffes eating and posing for pictures.
and another hyena.
We also saw another herd of elephants very close to road and perilously close to the vehicles that had pulled up to watch.
Deo kept his distance. Close enough for great photos but far enough away if they all decided to charge.
We arrived at the visitors centre ( it’s more of an exhibition and educational experience than a souvenir opportunity) Deo explained a little about it.
There is a nice short walk through the centre which you can do by yourself, but it’s best done with a guide ( not Deo on this occasion). Apparently, all the young men and women sitting or standing outside are interns of sorts.
They are in the process of completing college courses dealing with conservation and are training to become safari guides, so will take you round the exhibits and give you a much richer experience. They don’t charge, but a good tip will help fund their further education.
Deo told me to pick one. How? They all looked very keen. So I chose the young man (whose name was Ramadan), that had stopped by the car to talk to Deo.
After a warm welcome and introductions we went into the centre. Most of it is outside but the tour starts in a map room, where another keen young man talks you through the great migration route. He then showed me a fold out map and accompanying booklet which lists all the animals and birds found in the region, with a handy space to tick off the ones you had seen. They had a set of these for the Serengeti and another set for Ngorongoro and they looked like a nice keepsake, but in the end I didn’t buy them.
This was because
1. I had already bought a much nicer map
2. I didn’t have a pen to mark the booklet with what I had seen.
3. I wasn’t there to tick boxes, I wanted to spend time observing natural behaviour - however long it took.
4.They were very expensive. $50 for 2 maps and 2 booklets was a lot to pay for a couple of keepsakes.
I couldn’t see any of the other visitors carrying these maps or marking the little books, so I think the managers of the centre are missing a trick. They would sell far more if they lowered the price a bit.
Having escaped with my $50 still in my purse, I met Ramadan outside and we headed to the first exhibit - a series of bones and skulls. “Now we are going to play a little game” he announced. “ You have to guess the animal”.
I just knew I was going to be crap at this and I wasn’t wrong.
I managed to guess the elephant from it’s skull, but lets face it, you’d have to be pretty stupid to get that one wrong. I made what I thought was a reasonable guess for every other skull or bone he showed me. Wrong, wrong and wrong again.
In the end I was quite proud that I could identify impala horns ( my “know your antelope”, series had finally paid off) and a cap buffalo skull, but again, what else could it be.
After failing so miserably this early in our little tour, I just hoped that Ramadan didn’t think he’d landed himself a complete idiot. But if he did, it didn’t show - he was professionalism personified.
We walked round the exhibits and my young guide pointed out trees, the rather wonderful metal sculptures of the wildlife and gave much more detail than was on the information boards.
There were 2 highlights for me.
The first was the dung beetle exhibit. A great friend of mine had joked that I was to bring her back a picture of a dung beetle and despite giving Deo this very important brief right at the beginning ( and reminding him daily) we had drawn a blank. Of course, not being able to get out of the car to search through the endless dung filled
plains hadn’t helped. But here it was - just
what I was looking for - two rather beautiful sculptures of the beetles, complete with huge ball of dung.
As I took the required photos I learned that it’s the males who roll the dung and the bigger the balls the more attractive they are to the girls. (No surprised there).
Secondly I loved the huge mural that depicted, in cartoon form, all the issues the Serengeti faces.
Some were fairly obvious, others not so much - including the challenge of being offered obscene amounts of money by big businesses to build luxury hotels, holiday complexes and the like.
Conservation on this scale is an expensive business and a huge injection of cash would go a long way towards that effort. But ( and it’s a big but) that’s the start of a slippery slope. So many places in the world that have attracted visitors because of their wild, unspoiled environment, have shot themselves in the foot, by overdevelopment. They build like crazy to cater for all their visitors and then wonder why people stop coming.
Anyway, that very interesting mural concluded our tour.
I thanked Ramadan profusely, gave him a nice tip and wished him well with his studies. From what I’ve seen, he’s going to make a wonderful guide.
I rejoined Deo, showed him my dung beetle pictures ( was that relief I saw on his face?) and we dived into our hamper.
Once again the Kananga boys had excelled themselves. There was so much delicious food, we could have fed everyone there. Despite stuffing our faces silly, there was loads left over, so Deo asked if I minded sharing it between some of the interns. I hate to see lovely food go to waste, so of course I agreed. One of the young girls came over, carried off all our leftovers and returned with all the containers washed and dried as a way of saying thank you.
There was a very small souvenir shop so I had a quick look around, but being conscious of having - a) no space in my luggage and b) a strict weight limit on my flights to Mafia, I actually managed to resist buying anything ( very unusual for me).
All this had taken quite a bit of time and the afternoon was slipping away, so we headed out for our second game drive of the day.
Driving through some open plains with very short grass, I was quite surprised to see a cheetah who looked like she was getting ready for a hunt. ( I actually spotted her all by myself - yay - go me).
We stopped and I stood up with camera and binoculars at the ready.
She was very alert and was staring intently at a group of 3 gazelles, one of which was slowly and steady making it’s way towards her.
The cheetah’s problem was that she was very exposed and I reasoned that if I could see her without bins or camera, so could the gazelles.
The front runner would start walking forward and I’d grab the camera, check it was on sports mode and the burst feature was on, ready to capture the action.
I know the cheetah is the fastest animal on earth and would dearly loved to have seen her run, but just as the gazelle looked like she may get within striking distance. It would stop, stare ahead and go back the way it had just come.
It continued to play this game for nearly an hour and the cheetah just waited patiently. So did we, but it was not to be. She clearly knew her range and for how long she could maintain speed, so as the gazelle continued to taunt her, without any sign of getting closer, Deo suggested we move on.
I later found out that there are only about 500 cheetahs in the Serengeti, so when we spotted 2 more about an hour later, I felt truly privileged.
They were working as a team, trying to find a late lunch ( or early dinner) and in the long grass had much better cover. But as Deo couldn’t see any potential prey, (with his bionic eyes), as far as I’m concerned, there wasn’t any.
The long grass was great for the cheetahs, but not so good for amateur photographers and very soon they completely disappeared. Still it was nice to know they were out there somewhere.
Driving back to camp, the sky was putting on a fantastic display of colours as the sun was starting to set. I managed to get a few shots, but the very bumpy roads make photography on the move a bit of a challenge.
The Kananga team warmly welcomed us back. I’m convinced the fact that we were both still in one piece, explains why they are so pleased to see us every evening.
All that hassle calling in the flying doctors or even worse having to head out to pick up the bits must be a right royal pain in the arse.
Anyway they rewarded us with another gorgeous dinner and after trawling though the hundreds of photos, I retired to my little canvas home a little earlier.
We were leaving in the morning, which meant I had to gather everything that was spread all round the tent and try to fit it back into my luggage.
I was determined to try to record the night sounds for posterity, but fell asleep immediately with my iPhone still in my hand.