Endless savannah, lions, giraffes, elephants, leopards, cheetahs, monkeys, rhinos, hyenas, hippos, millions of wildebeests and zebras – it’s forever!
Everyone has read Bernhard Gjimek’s book The Serengeti Must Not Perish. Of course, as a child I had read it and dreamed that one day I could see the wildlife of Africa up close. And it happened! I found out on the spot that the Serengeti is still there, as well as the animals that inhabit it.
I still can’t believe I’ve witnessed sights like the great migration of wildebeests and zebras to the Masai Mara in Kenya, the lions lurking in ambush, the big elephant families, the fast cheetahs, the graceful giraffes, the the herds of camphor buffaloes and the many other animals in the savannah.
Bernhard Gzymek defends the thesis that
the African steppes
must be part
from the world
Cultural Heritage
and must be protected at all costs. Considered the founder of modern tourism, in just a few decades the German biologist completely transformed the landscape and the inhabitants of East Africa. Hundreds of people are heading to Tanzania in the footsteps of what the two conservationists have described. This is still the case to this day.
In the lands of lions, among the open latitudes of the steppes and the clatter of wild hooves, in the heart of the mythical Black Continent beats an incredible nature that human intervention threatens to destroy. When in 1957 the British authorities decided to reduce the territory of the Serengeti National Park by a third, two Germans, a father and a son, flew with their zebra plane and the little poppy monkey to Tanzania to count the wildlife and track their migration. . There is one small detail, however – no one has done it before. Leaving the comfort of a prosperous life at home, Gzimek counted hundreds of thousands of wild animals, traced their habits, encountered and even shot poachers, met and befriended the local Maasai.
After a carefree vacation on the island of Zanzibar, flying small planes to the city of Arusha, Tanzania, began the second part of the adventure, which most of us were looking forward to.
Loaded in jeeps and armed with cameras, we set off to make our dreams come true in the Ngorongoro Protected Area and the Serengeti National Park. Ngorongoro is a crater of an extinct volcano, or more precisely a caldera, located in northern Tanzania.
It died out about 250,000 years ago, and first erupted about 2,500,000 years ago. Powerful explosions destroyed its top and formed a crater with a perfectly domed shape. It is the largest volcanic crater on Earth. Its diameter is 20 km. The walls of the crater rise steeply to a height of 600 m from its bottom, which today is a vast valley. The bottom of the 260-square-kilometer crater is one of the most densely populated wildlife sites in Africa, numbering about 30,000.
Ngorongoro Crater has been declared a reserve and serves as a refuge for many rare African animals. There are 50 species of large mammals – lions, elephants, rhinos, hippos, several species of antelope, African monkeys, baboons, warthogs and hyenas. There are over 200 species of birds – ostriches, ducks and guinea fowl.
Every year, after heavy rains from December to May, the crater’s pastures turn emerald green, strewn with pink, yellow, blue and white flowers of petunia, lupine, daisy and rare blue clover, growing on the rich volcanic soil.
The crater has many springs and streams and a large salt lake with bright blue water.
The view to
Ngorongoro Crater
from a height of 2400 m
is amazing
Some larger animals could be observed with binoculars, but we would also see them up close on the way back from the Serengeti.
Traveling to the national park, we passed many animals, stopped, took pictures, enjoying the view like little children.
After a long drive on dusty and muddy roads we arrived in the Serengeti and settled in a tent camp, where we would stay for the next 3 days. Sleeping in tents is a very authentic experience, closer to nature and to animals literally. We had a visit to a hungry hyena pulling a basket of leftovers. Going to the bathroom at night was an adventure, shining with a flashlight and seeing one eye glow in the dark. It’s raining heavily on us. We had a visit to a herd of wild buffalo buffalo. Large marabou birds landed like planes on the lawn in front of the tents.
We were attacked by falcons, which descended from above and with great dexterity stole a piece of chicken from the plate while we had lunch. We were visited by several mongoose families who came to steal some food. Africa!
And so, finally, the Serengeti.
National Park
“Serengeti”
in Tanzania
is the largest and
comprehensive home
of wildlife
on the ground
To this day, these “endless plains”, as the name of the national park in Tanzania translates, are close to the idea of paradise for many people who have had the good fortune to visit them. And the Maasai, who have inhabited the vast grasslands for millennia, have always accepted them that way. For them, this is Siringitu: “The place where the earth moves forever.”
In the region of 30,000 square kilometers there are two sites included in the UNESCO World Heritage List, as well as two biosphere reserves. The local ecosystem is unique and one of the oldest on Earth. In general, the climate, flora and fauna have changed very little in the last few million years, and the way of life, adaptation and migration has remained the same as it was from the very beginning.
The main goal was to chase wild animals on jeeps, or so-called photo safaris. The guides told each other where the animals were, and the jeep headed quickly. 6-7 jeeps gathered at the places with concentration of animals. But that didn’t scare the animals. A pair of cheetahs drank calmly from a puddle, another pair of lions lay in front of the jeeps, not paying attention to us. Elephant families walked around us. The giraffes were the most graceful. It was as if they were not stepping on the ground, but floating like an air cushion. Millions of wildebeests and zebras grazed peacefully as they headed north. We saw a lioness guarding a zebra carcass from hyena attacks. We observed many hippos in a river that made characteristic sounds.
Of course, we wanted to see all the animals in the Big Five. The most difficult to detect were the rhino and the leopard. In the Ngorongoro crater we managed to see a group of rhinos about 2 km away, and only a few saw the leopard, so the photos are not of good quality.
Not everything can be described, this beauty must be seen. I wish everyone the opportunity to touch the true wildlife of Africa!
– .
