I went to Tanzania to visit the Serengeti and to climb Mount Kilimanjaro; I did see the Serengeti, but the closest I came to climbing Kilimanjaro was to drink a beer by that name. As with most of my trips of late, I ended up getting stiches from a witchdoctor in a hut, but more on that later …
We were able to watch a cheetah and her adolescent hunt as a team when we first drove into the park. They both passed within feet of our Landcruiser at times. It was breathtaking.
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| Sunrise on the Serengeti with a pride of lions. There were actually around 7 lions here, but as soon as they lay down they are nearly invisible, you could easily be 5 feet away from a lion and have no idea they were there (until they invited you to dinner). |
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So wonderful to meet such a fun-loving
and welcoming gang of people! |
From South Africa, I flew to the island Zanzibar on the East Coast of Africa. Zanzibar is technically Tanzania, but culturally quite different from the mainland. It is known for its exotic spices and that it is the birthplace and childhood home of Freddy Mercury (which is a dramatic improvement from its previous mantel of being a capital of slave trading).
In Zanzibar, there is a kite-surfers paradise called Paje that has postcard perfect turquoise water, sugar sand beaches, and a rare confluence of native peoples and bohemian travelers living side-by-side. There I met an amazing cadre of kiters that were mostly from Holland.
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| The Serengeti Safari crew. When we were near big cats that could pounce on us, I would whisper “Nihonjin oishī des ney” which roughly translates to “Japanese people are tasty.” Although the fellow travelers appeared appreciative that I knew a few words in their language, they did not seem very thankful that I was sharing that information with apex predators :) |
Who knew that Zanzibar was a great place to try and learn Dutch? We traveled as a pack for weeks and learned that we should probably order food a day in advance rather than just showing up to a small hut restaurant and asking them to seat a table of 16. Fun fact, the longest we ever waited for our meal was 3 hours from the time we were seated. I love that the farther you are away from time saving devices, the more time you seem to have on your hands :).
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| Sunrise on the Serengeti with a pride of lions. There were actually around 7 lions here, but as soon as they lay down they are nearly invisible, you could easily be 5 feet away from a lion and have no idea they were there (until they invited you to dinner). |
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| These are the faces you make when you have just swum with 20+ whale sharks. It has been a lifelong dream to see them and it made it even more fun to do so with my favorite Chilean wanderlusts. The sharks were estimated to be about 30 feet (10 m) each. We found them on a remote fishing island named Mafia. They are filter feeders, so they pose no danger, but it still got your heart racing when they opened their mouths and you could fit inside their mouth in one bite! |
While taking a kiting class, I was exposed to, and almost learned, an important life lesson. While walking out to the water to kite, I asked the instructor if the thunderstorm down the beach was going to be a problem. It looked really sketchy to me. He said, “do you think all the other people would be out kiting if it was dangerous.”
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| Visiting a Maasai village. It was culturally fascinating but a little depressing to see people living in tiny huts made of dung, pebbles, and twigs. The kids had beaming smiles and were having a ball running around playing while the parents walked with canes (in case they needed to fight off lions). |
I put on the board and went out for my first turn, the thunderstorm converged within seconds, and the next thing I knew I was over 15 feet (5 meters) in the air flying. If you are really good, this is presumably a fun thing to do, but if you are still learning, it was pretty alarming. I landed on a sandbar, tried to ground the kite in the water, but it powered up again and I was again flying and spinning around. When I bounced off a what may have been a reef or a sandbar the second time, I released the 1st safety line to depower the kite and then the 2nd line broke and my kite went flying off into the void.
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| Visiting with Maasai students near the Ngorongoro crater. They seemed happy to see tourists, perhaps because we made donations to their school. They sang the alphabet and showed off the counting skills and enjoyed giving and receiving high-fives. |
It was not till I was on land (and thankful that I did not break my neck) that someone pointed out that my swimsuit was blood-soaked. I looked down and somehow I was cut open half of the way from my knee to my hip. I went to the local ‘doctor’ and he stitched me up as we both sat on plastic buckets outside a hut. The doctors work on a ‘tipping system’ there, so I gave him all the cash I had, and he gave me antibiotics as a parting gift.
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| Paje, Zanzibar. Most of the time I was not able to kite because my stitches had to heal, but somehow I was able to while away the day … |
The takeaway message should have been “don’t outsource your sense of personal safety to strangers” however, given that I hung my self out of a vehicle 6 feet (2 meters) from a pride of lions a few weeks later, because my driver told me too, suggests that the lesson did not stick.
After Zanzibar I went to the Serengeti. There I saw cheetahs hunting, a leopard bringing an antelope up a tree, and lions galore. On the way into the park we were extremely lucky to see the annual mass migration of wildebeests and zebras going to Kenya. In total, it is estimated that the herd we saw was 1.5-2.0 million animals … a breathtaking sight to see.
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The Zanzibar kiting gang on a day trip
to swim with dolphins and visit a remote sand atoll. |
I was tent camping in the Serengeti where I had another personal first. When I got up in the middle of the night to pee, I took out my earplugs and grabbed the zipper of the tent. At this time, I realized that I was surrounded by yipping hyenas that were circling my tent. I figured I would just try and wait till tomorrow to go the restroom when the chances of being mauled and eaten by wild animals was slightly lower.
My uncle needed emergency surgery, so I cut my trip short to return home to California unexpectedly. The surgery was a complete success and he is much better, but I don’t wish the 51-hour door-to-door commute time from Sub Saharan Africa to Sacramento I booked last minute upon my deepest enemy.
I’m now back to beautiful California and enjoying the company of old friends and happy as a clam with my dog once again sitting on my lap. Looking forward to seeing you soon, Tony
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| The Kiting Crew on a field trip on a field trip. |
