Kenya and Tanzania

The day after Christmas 1997, I received a call from my dad. He had given my mom an African safari for Christmas and my mom’s favorite travel partner, Aunt Jeanne, was unable to make it. I was a newlywed and needed an adventure to remember myself. The trip was a group trip with the Cincinnati Zoo and Thane Maynard in the Education Department (now the Curator) was our tour guide.

I estimate there were approximately 20 people in our group from all walks of life but with a common sense of wonder about all things wild. We were to depart Cincinnati in August of the next year so Mom and I began planning. Vaccinations, appropriate attire (both practically and culturally), cameras, supplies, travel medications and some basic Swahili phrases and we were ready to go. We flew through New York to Amsterdam and we were to land in Arusha, Tanzania 20 hours later on the evening of August 7, 1998.

My first lesson learned during this trip was flexibility. As we were approaching Arusha, we received an overly calm message from the Captain that there was a small issue at the nearby Dar Es Salaam airport and we were being re-routed to another airport. This seemed strange but we had full faith in Thane and trusted that we were in good hands. He assured us that whatever the issue was could be fixed and we might have to make some minor itinerary adjustments but that nothing was going to be a problem. Slightly sleep deprived but anxious to start an epic adventure, we all made it through Customs and to our transportation. Our driver greeted us with an enthusiastic “Jambo!” to greet us. As we made it to our first destination, we heard whispers of an international incident that had occurred which was the cause of our re-routed plane but none of the locals wanted to discuss it so we all naively assumed it was relatively common and uneventful. We all made it to our first Tanzanian hotel on a coffee estate on Luke Duluti with a spectacular view of Mt. Meru and Mt. Kilamanjaro. We ate dinner, had our nightly briefing and went to bed with anticipation for the next day’s safari.

We woke up early, ate a quick breakfast and boarded our Land Rovers to start our search for Africa’s big 5: elephants, African buffalo, lions, rhinoceros and leopards. Our first day did not disappoint… we saw our first elephants, buffalo and lions! In the areas of Tanzania where we visited, the bush is thick and makes it difficult to see large numbers of wildlife. They have more places to hide, and especially since we were novices, they could easily camouflage themselves within the dense underbrush. However, the scenery was breathtaking and any sighting makes it that much more special. The most unexpected delight of the whole trip was the variety of spectacular birds that we saw. I did not go to Africa in search of birds. My mom though is a VERY experienced birder and regularly goes on birding trips throughout the United States to follow migratory patterns of birds to add to her life list. Seeing her enjoyment of the myriad bird species made my trip even more enjoyable. 

We spent the next two days in Ngorongoro Crater, our first place since arrival into Arusha that had access to a phone. We were warned to keep our call short because the cost was $5 USD per minute. My mom called dad and I called my then husband to tell them about the amazing time we were having and all that we had already experienced. To our surprise, they were both worried and pretty aggravated with us for our delayed contact. We then learned some of the details of the small “incident” that occurred the night of our arrival. The US Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya (our departure city 5 days later) had been bombed by Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda and there were local rumors of a bounty on the heads of American tourists. We were completed disconnected from our lives at home and didn’t fully realize the gravity of the situation until we were home safe and read the newspapers.  

But for the moment, we were still on a travel high and ready for the next day’s safari. My background in science had rooted in me a deep love and fascination for evolutionary biology. The opportunity to be in Ngorongoro Crater, the cradle of mankind, was the part of the trip that I had most anticipated. To walk on the same ground as our earliest identified ancestors gave me a strange sense of being “home” and I felt the presence of those beings who walked the earth long before any of us had. I have great respect for Louis, Mary and Richard Leakey and all the other archaeologists who have dedicated their lives to the discovery of human beginnings.  

Our safaris then took us through Tarangire National Park and then on to Serengeti National Park and across the Tanzanian border into Kenya. We visited a Maasai village in Maasai Mara National Reserve, met their elders, played with their kids and learned about their culture. I paused and gained a greater appreciation for our global community.  

In addition to Thane, we had a local tour guide who traveled with us for the entire trip. She was an ex-pat from the UK who fell in love with Africa and decided to move and become a tour guide. She was incredibly knowledgable about the wildlife, people and places and she was funny as hell!

The difference in the landscape between Tanzania and Kenya was striking. Where Tanzania’s foliage was dense, Kenya’s wide-open plains were vast and unending. We witnessed the Great Migration as we saw and heard the thunderous hooves of tens of thousands of buffalo, impala, on their quest for water.

We traveled to Amboseli National Park and then to Tsavo National Park.

One of the best parts of our trip was visiting Dr. Cynthia Moss’ Elephant Sanctuary. Cynthia is a world-renowned conservation scientist and runs the Amboseli Elephant Research Project. Many will remember her book and PBS special “Echo of the Elephants”, a story of a matriarch named Echo and her family. Cynthia has a tent in the middle of the camp where she stays and studies the wild elephants. It was an incredible honor to meet her and we were even fortunate enough to see Echo wander through the camp!

We slept at Siana Springs Tent Camp and watched as one of the guards beat a puff adder to death 10 feet from our tent so that he would not crawl in and snuggle up with us at night. We tried to tune out the Tree Hyraxes at night so that we could sleep. They are the loudest animal I have ever heard in my life and they scream like they are being murdered. As a bonus, they are nocturnal!

We watched giraffes fight, swinging their long necks into each other in an attempt to knock the other down. We spotted one black rhino and her calf far off in the distance. We were charged by an African crested porcupine and an African bull elephant who was in musth (very pissed off) in the same day. We saw female elephants in their matriarchal societies including a calf less than a week old playing in the mud.

We saw one very elusive cheetah in dense underbrush and another in a tree but from very far away. We saw a bloat of hippos in a river. We made friends and bonded with our fellow travelers and found joy in each other’s daily sightings. We all had diarrhea and/or vomited at some point or another either from altitude changes, food or water but none of that mattered.  

We eventually made our way to the bustling city of Nairobi, our departure city. As promised, Thane and his travel team kept us safe during our travels. I left the next day with a renewed sense of what it means to be alive in this world. I had never been in a country this different than my own and it was exhilarating. And so began my craving for adventure travel….