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One wild honeymoon
By GREG SAITZ
STAR-LEDGER STAFF - Serengeti National Park, Tanzania
It was only 9:30 a.m., but the score already was lopsided: lions, 3, zebras, 0.
The victors relaxed under the shade of some trees, their bellies bloated and their faces smeared with crimson, as if a 7-year-old girl gripping stolen lipstick had gotten ahold of them. The zebras were not faring as well, having become part of the perpetual cycle of life that is ever-present on these vast African plains.
The scene that unfolded on that overcast morning came five days into our honeymoon safari. By then, Kim and I already had witnessed a smorgasbord of wild sights and sounds that we previously only knew through PBS "Nature" specials.
It was all slightly overwhelming. A couple of days later, sitting on a rooftop deck and watching the setting sun surrender to a night sky drenched with stars, it still was hard to believe. We were in Africa. On safari.
Poa. (Swahili for "cool.")
For us, a honeymoon safari had a certain allure. Sure it was expensive, required a shoulder full of vaccinations and medication and took forever to reach. But if we hadn't gone, we never would have seen a lion cub playfully pounce on its sleeping father, juvenile elephants wrestling and mischievous Masai children.
We had arranged our eight-day safari through a company with offices in Tampa, Fla., and Tanzania, one of perhaps 100 offering trips into the bush. This was a private safari, meaning it was just us and our guide, Joseph, who told us about everything from ants living inside nodules of certain acacia trees to why Marabou storks poop on their legs (to keep the flies away).
The plan was for us to visit three spots: Tarangire National Park, known for its abundant elephant herds; the Serengeti, and the Ngorongoro Crater, formed 2.5 million years ago when a volcano erupted and collapsed.
We also decided that instead of loafing around on our first full day in Africa to recover from our flight, we would do a one-day trip to a national park in Arusha, the city that is a starting point for most safaris in northern Tanzania. (See sidebar.)
Getting to Arusha National Park, like getting to many of the country's other parks, required traveling on roads that my kidneys and other internal organs would describe as marginally passable.
But we were in Africa and on safari; I told my churning stomach to deal with it. (Here's tip No. 1: Don't have a big meal before setting off for a long, bouncy ride.)
In fact, eating in Africa, at least for us, was an exercise in risk management.
A nurse at the travel health center we visited for our vaccinations had put the fear of funky food in us before we left. She warned us away from salads, fruit we didn't peel ourselves, questionable meats, some dairy and other cuisine.
What did that leave for two hungry (and paranoid) travelers to eat? Well, the boxed lunches provided by the lodges where we stayed the previous night did have some biscuits and a juice box.
Good thing we packed energy bars and vacuum-sealed pouches of tuna for the trip.
Eating, though, was not nearly as important as watching and listening to the wildlife. The animals were just going about living their lives, but to us their behavior was fascinating.
Before heading out into the bush, we stopped for bottled water at a supermarket (believe it or not, named Shop-Rite) in Arusha. I will never curse New Jersey traffic again. Well, never's a strong word.
Arusha, a city of 350,000, has no traffic lights. But it has plenty of cars, scooters, trucks, pedestrians, bicycles, carts and some animals, all seemingly going in their own direction without much regard for whoever else might be doing the same thing.
Somehow, inexplicably, we managed to get through without being involved in or witnessing a donkey-car-moped pileup. In two hours (on paved roads), we were at the gate to Tarangire (pronounced Tar-an-GEER-ay) National Park.
A man in a Tyvek suit lugging a large container went from safari truck to safari truck spraying an insecticide on the tires and sides of the vehicles. He was the tsetse fly guy. These flies, the size of honeybees, have a bite just slightly less painful than that of a hyena and carry African sleeping sickness. Oh joy.
Joseph noted these flies chase after the safari trucks, having no doubt learned of the tender meals inside such vehicles. They tend to be most active when it's hottest, unfortunately also when you least want to be swatting flies and working up more of a sweat. (Let me say this of the tsetse flies: They can take a punch.)
Although the climate varied greatly depending on our location and elevation, I came away from the trip with a deep understanding of the phrase "Africa hot."
Tarangire is known for its elephant herds, and we had many close encounters. So close, in fact, we could hear the earth crunching under their massive feet and the sound of them munching on acacia leaves.
It was here we also experienced some of the vast diversity of wildlife: elands (a type of antelope), zebra, giraffe, wildebeest, a fish eagle, red-necked spurfowl, reedbuck, a striped mongoose, hartebeest, vervet monkeys, a leopard sleeping high in a tree, an African tortoise, a cheetah call her two cubs to come out of hiding, baboons, ground hornbills, warthogs, superb starlings and oxpeckers (both yellow-billed and red-billed), which hang out on large mammals and feast on ticks and other parasites.
Early one morning, we watched a male ostrich, his neck red for mating season, come galloping toward two females near our truck. He did a mating dance, the equivalent of some `70s disco moves that kind of reminded me of Rerun on "What's Happening!!"
Alas, the ladies weren't interested. Given his moves, not surprising.
The legendary Serengeti was our next stop, about a four to five hour drive away. On our way, we passed Masai villages with their homes made of sticks and cow dung. There were young Masai boys tending cattle in the sparse fields.
At one point during our drive, I noticed a group of young Masai boys sitting by the side of the road. Some children waved and smiled at the safari trucks, while others just stared.
But one boy in this group did something else. He stood up as we passed, flipped aside his traditional red and purple robe and mooned us. That was a nice cultural exchange.
The eastern section of the Serengeti announced itself with its vast, flat plains of golden grass straight to the horizon. Arriving on a cloudy late afternoon, we bounced by herds of Thomson's and Grant's gazelles, then sidetracked to a rocky outcrop called a kopje (pronounced kop-ee) where several other safari trucks were parked.
There were trees growing at the top of the granite, providing a nice hiding place. Pretty quickly, we spotted a couple of lion cubs lounging at the top of the rock.
Then as I looked through my camera's zoom lens, I saw another and another, perhaps eight cubs in all. They started to stir, with a few attacking a stick on the side of the rock.
A couple of others maneuvered to the ground, where they jumped on and wrestled each other. One particularly adventurous cub wandered over to some waist-high grass, where its father was passed out on his back, paws in the air — the exact pose our house cats have struck countless times.
The cub pounced. There was a flash of teeth and flying mane as the lion swung his head around and shook off the cub. In seconds, the pint-sized predator learned just how grumpy a dad can be when awoken from his nap.
The next morning was when we came upon the three zebra kills. These lions seemed well fed, but Joseph was quick to point out not every chase ends in a kill and Serengeti's predators must work hard to earn their meals.
Similarly, not every game drive results in tripping over wildlife. There were times on our trip when we went for long stretches without seeing animals or at least the ones we were looking for.
That was frustrating, but we weren't at Disney and I realized the leopards didn't come out for performances at 3 and 5.
Our third night in the Serengeti was spent in the northern part of the park at a place called Migration Camp. It's an amazingly luxurious collection of 20 tents on wooden platforms that at certain times of the year gives visitors a front-row seat for the annual wildebeest migration.
Our canvas-sided "tent" had a king-sized bed, overstuffed leather chair, desk, double sinks, bathroom and shower heated by solar panels.
We gathered with other guests on a rooftop deck before dinner to watch the sun set over the Serengeti and, once the stars emerged, listen to the grunting of hippos in the nearby Grumeti River. (Once it's dark, management insists visitors be escorted on the grounds; hippos are one of the most dangerous animals in Africa and they like to graze near the tents at night.)
For once, we put aside our food phobias and wolfed down the excellent meal and wine. We were impressed, considering all the camp's supplies are trucked in from Arusha, nearly 250 miles away.
Safely back in our tent, we huddled under the blankets — at almost 6,000 feet above sea level, it gets cold at night — and fell asleep to the sounds of grunting hippos and the occasional crashing of furry, gopher-sized hyraxes jumping on the tent roof.
The last stop on the trip was the Ngorongoro Crater, just east of the Serengeti and sporting one of the highest concentrations of predators on the continent. It was in this 1,900-foot-deep crater we saw the only chase of the trip — a lioness trying unsuccessfully to catch a warthog — and a black rhino, one of just 20 that has managed to survive illegal poachers.
We spent our final morning in Africa trying to stuff in as many wildlife encounters as possible. We watched vervet monkeys groom each other, a serval cat make high-arcing leaps onto its breakfast of rodents and a hippo performing kayak Eskimo rolls in a pond.
Some 30 hours after leaving the crater we landed in Newark. The African soil was still stuck in my boots, just like the memories of a great start to our new life.