The cradle of humankind

On our way out of this morning at 630am we do a quick game drive as we cut yesterday’s short to get a break .  Just after a beautiful sunrise, we happen upon a lioness by the side of the road and I get some amazing shots with the morning sun on her face.  We then head out to the main road and after an hour of particularly vigorous African massage due to the washboard and rutted surface, we exit the southern gate and the landscape becomes devoid of any trees in any direction and looks like a moonscape. Cosmo explains how the name Serengeti was arrived at.  


The Maasai people used to live in the South before it became part of the official park and they named it “Sirengeti” which means “endless plain” in their language.  The name was later changed to Serengeti.


We pass numerous broken down vehicles, flat tires, tourists bags strewn in the open desert, guides hunched down over open bonnets.  We feel lucky that we have yet to join that club as Cosmo expertly navigates the “main highway”.  An hour part the southern gate we turn off the main road and start to travel through the desert proper following a set of tire trucks.  This is when we really start to “dance” in our seats.  Cosmo confirms this is a shortcut, at points the road turns into pure sand and acacia bushes scrape past the windows noisily. 


Colourful Maasai herders appear seemingly out of nowhere and we are going so fast and it’s so bumpy that I can’t capture any good shots.  Cosmo stops in the middle of nowhere and we see a sign: unesco world heritage site.  Apparently there is a museum here. 


The site is called Okduvai gorge, one of the most important sites to humanity. Due to the significant volcanic activity in the area, the result of the ancient crater at Ngorongoro that we will also visit, the ash preserved the bones of many early hominids and their tools and the discoveries here, which are ongoing to this day provides a record of our earliest human ancestors to modern day Homo sapiens in using the famous skeleton of Lucy the missing link between Astrolewho was found about 45km from this place.  


The site also contains the earliest record of bipedal locomotion with footprints dating from approximately 3.6 million years ago. This is an amazing place and worth a visit to open up your perspective. 


Besides the rich pre-homo sapiens history the site also contains fossils of animals that roamed the area 1.5-2m years ago and I’m shocked to see that virtually all of the animals we have seen on this trip were around that long around, albeit in a slightly different form due to evolutionary changes.  


It The skull and horns of an ancient ancestor of the water buffaloes we have seen in abundance are over 7 feet wide but essentially elephants, lions, giraffes? Warthogs, leopards and most of the antelope species abounded in that era so our trip has actually been to see the equivalent of living dinosaurs. 


We exit the gift shop and begin the long drive to the top of the crater. The road is in better shape but still gravel and dust so less African massage and more African dust facial treatment. About half way up we can see the clouds that gather over the crater spilling over the rim.  Herds of cattle the their Massai keepers dressed in the traditional red Shuka’s walking far behind dot the outer slopes and a large village appears just before the crater rim. 


Ngorongoro is actually a caldera and not a crater and was created around 2m years ago. The name comes from the Maasai people who originally called Ingorongo, or “hole”.  The new name is from the sound made by the bells on the Maasai cattle . 300 square kms.


We slowly drive along beside the alkaline lake, taking in the expansive views of the lush green caldera rim. 


We spot flamingos, herds of zebra, hippos, wildebeest, 3 lions sleeping in the grass and the large male lifts his head just as a grab my camera for the “model shot”.  Ibis birds found in Egypt and too many other species to count inhabit the shoreline.  It’s like something out of a novel and then I spot what must be 60 Land Cruisers all headed to look at a pair of lions, we tell Cosmo no thanks and decide to head for lunch.  Lunch is beside a wetland with about 150 other groups.  A couple of enterprising people have brought in food trucks and are making a killing selling junk food and espresso.  I’m surprised I don’t see a helicopter landing pad for the glitterati to fly in and avoid the dusty drive.  


After lunch we take the long way around the lake to head back to the exit from the Caldera and we finally spot the last of our Big 5 - The Black Rhino.  A mother and her baby are in a grassy area and cause a traffic jam on the narrow path as vehicles jockey for position.  They are about a km away but I manage to use my full digital and get a passable shot with both of them and a Pumba who the baby was chasing. 


The Caldera was an amazing experience and now I understand why it’s on the must see list for anyone visiting Tanzania. 
































Comments

  1. Tom BuntingAugust 12, 2023 at 7:10 PM

    Another once in a lifetime experience. Wow! Bravo!
    Amazing shots, another world.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Homeward Bound

Image
After a relaxing few days at the Reef and Beach we have now all headed back home, Paul and Terri and family via Rome and Paris and Nancy and I via Cairo where we managed to squeak in a visit to the Museum of Civilization, a camel tour of the Pyramids and the Sphinx and a touristy sunset Nile river cruise that we would rather forget.   This last entry will wrap up the blog for this trip which has certainly lived up to its name which (full disclosure) was chosen for me by Chat GPT’s artificial intelligence chatbot.   Some things that surprised me or that I didn’t expect: - how close you can actually get to the mountain gorillas and other animals on a game drive, literally being able to touch them if you wanted to. - how on time all of the drivers were for pickups and how smoothly all of the entries into the National parks and border crossings were. In the vast majority of cases we were the cause of the delays or late starts. You often hear the phrase “African time” and that you ...
Read more

From Tutankhamun To Tzatziki

Image
Modern flight never ceases to amaze that you can close your eyes on one continent and wake up 8,000km away in another world, in this case with a 6 hour layover in between in Montreal. For anyone wanting to visit Montreal in the summer note that nothing opens until 11am, I suspect this has something to do with the City’s reputation as a party town as everyone has probably been up to the wee hours the night before.  We headed to Old Montreal in search of my nephew Jayson’s first “real poutine” and we found it in Pub St Pierre ( https://www.pubsaintpierre.ca/ ).  Excellent food and ambience, recommended to check it out if you are in old town Montreal.   At 11am we made our way into the montreal Museum of Archaeology which is worth a visit to understand the history of the island and also take in their rotating exhibits, in this case a very well done exhibition on the history of Egypt, a culture that put at its core the need for the individual to strive to do as many good deed...
Read more

Nurture and Nature

Image
Our first 2 days in Kenya are spent sightseeing in Nairobi and then driving to the Maasai Mara National Reserve, an extension of the Serengeti National park in Tanzania where we have our first game drive of the trip.     The Nairobi National park is actually surrounded by the developed city.    Our hotel overlooks the park and you can see game safaris driving and animals if you are lucky.    The hotel has a poster that offers prizes for spotting animals but we aren’t so lucky with my binoculars which we use every time we are eating in the 3rd floor restaurant.   Driving around the City we see baboon families beside the road and ostriches beside the highway.    Andrew says that they had to eventually fence the entirety of the park as the lions were walking into the main road and causing massive traffic jams!  I guess it’s no difference than coyotes and bears living in Stanley park and the north shore but it seems far more exotic....
Read more