Africa Trip 2024 -- Some Highlights

[This is the first of what will be multiple posts about our 2024 trip to Africa.]

It has been a long time since my last post, but that is not due to lack of activity.

Eclipse 2024.  Paul and Gwen were here in early April to see the total eclipse on April 8.  That was extremely exciting, both to have them here and to witness a total eclipse from our own driveway.  I am still amazed at how suddenly it became totally dark and then, like flicking a switch, how suddenly there was light again.

The eclipse begins

Cataract Surgery.  In April and May I had cataract surgery on both eyes.  That has made an enormous improvement in my eyesight.  I can even drive at night again!

Physical Therapy.  The Frog spent many weeks in physical therapy to address problems in his ankle and his legs.  Some of these issues were new, but some went back years.

Prep for Safari to Tanzania in East Africa.   As major as these events were, they paled in comparison to the more than year of planning we did for a trip to Tanzania.  Admittedly we tend to over plan even simple activities, but this would be an adventure of epic proportion for us.

After investigating safari companies and then working with Africa Dream Safaris, our ultimate choice for a safari company, we developed an itinerary and put down the deposit in mid-September, 2023.  

Final Itinerary -- featuring the Hemingway option for camps and lodges

Then the real work began to follow up on all of the millions of details.  What airlines do we use?  What camera bags should we use that will get our equipment there and still meet the stringent size and weight requirements of the major carrier and the small plane to the Serengeti?  What camera equipment should we take?  What about support equipment to keep all of the electronics working possibly without reliable electricity or even electricity at night in the rooms?  What shots do we need?  What kind of anti-malaria medicine should we use?  What clothes should we take since we are so limited by size and weight?  Where can we get our clothes professionally treated with insect repellent?  What should we carry in a first aid kit?  How and when do we get a visa?  These were just a few of the questions that kept us busy on Google almost constantly for the past year.  I will touch on many of these in the upcoming blogs.

I also read almost everything I could get my hands on about East Africa.  This included well known books such as The Green Hills of Africa by Ernest Hemingway, Born Free by Joy Adamson, Out of Africa by Karen Blixen, and multiple books about or by different members of the Leakey family concerning their archaeological work on the origins of mankind in East Africa, especially in Olduvai Gorge.  I also read many books by people who had taken safaris or by guides who had led them.  Squeezed in were some books about historical events such as Stanley and Livingstone's adventures and East Africa's role in World War I when Tanzania was German and next door Kenya was British.  Of course there were also many many books about the animals and the various efforts to save them from multiple threats.

Major Highlights.  Somehow it all came together and was a magnificent trip.  Some of the highlights include:

We knew it was not a given, but we hoped to see a river crossing of the wildebeest as part of the Great Migration.  We saw two river crossings!

We knew we would likely see lions, but hoped to see some lion cubs, possibly interacting with the adults.  We saw as many or more lion cubs as adults with lots of amazing interaction usually within feet of where we were sitting.  One morning we saw the little ones coming out to greet the mothers who were returning from an overnight hunt.

We hoped to see the Big Five, elephant, buffalo, leopard, rhinoceros, and lion, but knew it was a long shot.  We saw all five!

 

Leopards are notoriously hard to spot.  We saw two leopards, including one that walked within feet of our vehicle.

We had watched this leopard in the tree for some time.  She then climbed down the tree immediately in front of us

We did not expect to see a rhinoceros, since they have been hunted almost to extinction in Tanzania by poachers going after their horns  Although the picture is terrible through lots of  heat mirages, the black dot visible with the naked eye probably about 2 miles away was clearly identifiable as a rhino with my 3000 mm lens.

Rhino at least two miles away, but we saw it!

 

Buffalo were everywhere.

A buffalo checking us out

As expected we saw lots of elephants.

A few of the many many elephants we saw

These weren't the only animals by a long ways.  We saw more zebra than we could count, plus giraffes, cheetahs, hippos, hyenas, warthogs, mongoose, hyrax, crocodiles, baboons, monkeys and a huge number of different types of antelope.  That doesn't even include the huge number of birds, from ostriches to eagles, and many beautiful little birds.

It wasn't all about the animals. We learned lots about coffee at the coffee plantation, saw some of the native crafts, learned about tanzanite, and visited the central market in Arusha. 

 

Central market in Arusha.

A special highlight was a visit to Olduvai Gorge and the museum there.

 

Looking down into Olduvai Gorge

Just being in the Serengeti was an experience, especially when they surprised us with things like a bush dinner.  Wait until to you see when they "serenaded" us!

Bush dinner in the Serengeti

There were no major calamities.  We had plenty of outlets in our rooms and power all night, except for the night the buffalo got frisky and tore apart the power cable to the camp.

We heard lots of animals during the night and saw evidence of elephants adjacent to our room one morning, but did not have any trouble with animals except for the bat in the room the last night.  

 I can't not include mentioning our wonderful guide, Fazal, who was a major reason that the trip was so successful.

 

Fazal, Frog, and the Turkey finishing lunch at Olduvai Gorge

Hopefully you can tell, there are major stories to tell about so many things.  I will go into lots more detail in the upcoming posts.  Note also that the pictures here are not necessarily the best, just a few that begin to tell the story. Between the two of us we have more than 7000 still images and videos. It is going to take some time to go through everything.  Stay tuned for much much more.