Part II: Safari in Tanzania

If you love the National Geographic channel like I do, then you will loooove seeing the real thing live! The only drawback is that you can't really get too close to the animals the way a camera lens can zoom in. But you will be able to drive up very close to the animals with no obstruction from fences or windows that you see at a zoo. At one point, I was literally 3ft away from a pride of lions! I really did have an urge to step out of the vehicle to curiously pet them. But that wasn't allowed by my driver. (Ha! I wonder why). So what's the next risky thing I could do? I stuck the entire half of my upper body out of the window. Yes, I know. It was not the brightest thing to do, but I wanted to take a photo and show people how close I was! And then... I lost my arm!!! Ha, just kidding! But in all seriousness, I really don't advise anyone doing what I did. Thinking back, if those lions were hungry, they could have easily jumped on me and pawed me out so fast that I would have been their Asian fusion meal for that day.

GAP Adventures
For my amazing safari adventure, my sister-in-law's cousin and I hired Gap Adventures. It was a 4 days tour that included a visit to Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater, Mto wa Mbu, a Maasai village, and a delicious local Tanzanian meal. We were very fortunate to have the jeep all to ourselves and "Thomas" as our driver/guide throughout this journey. He was extremely knowledgeable and passionate about his job. I actually think he was the 'predator' because throughout our search, he persistently wanted to hunt down the animals during the moments when we were weary. He was so good that at one point he stopped the jeep and told us to look. We scrutinized the vast savanna but didn't see a thing. As it turned out, Thomas wanted us to see an army of ants rushing about on the ground near the tires! How the heck did he see that while driving?!
www.gadventures.com

Personally, 4 days is the perfect number of days to see all that we saw. Though I would probably extend a few more days to glimpse more of the Tanzanian culture. But 3 days of watching the wildlife was enough for me. After a while, you see the same animals over and over again and can get superfluous. The concentration of wildlife at Serengeti and Ngorongoro basically allows one to see all the animals within the space of one-two hours. But perhaps, not that I enjoy watching gore but I acknowledge the survival of life, it might have been more exciting if we saw some predation or killing on this trip. Instead, the animals that we saw basically lounged around, gave us an aloof and indifferent eye, and as if they were thinking "not another group of pitiful aficionados."

Maasai

Though it took 1.5hrs from Moshi to Arusha and another 3.5hrs to Ngorongoro Crater, driving is a great way to see Tanzania. Arusha is about 5x more populated than Moshi, and hence, busier and more active. At Arusha, I saw the most beautiful purple foliage! I didn't even know tree leaves can be purple! And that astonished me. But then the drive from Arusha to Ngorongoro became even more foreign mostly savanna range lands with scattered Maasai villages. Wow, did I just go back in time?! I learned that the Maasai clan is a semi-nomadic tribe that has resisted assimilating into the modern world. The traditional Maasai people still wear their traditional red robes (shuka) and live in huts the way their ancestors lived hundred years ago. Maasai society is still strongly patriarchal in nature and polygamy is common. Women do most of the work. And the measure of a man's wealth depends on the number of cattle and children they have. Some boys as young as 12 still practice circumcision rituals to represent the transitioning of boyhood to 'junior warriors'. During the healing process they would wear black clothes and paint their faces in white. I tried to capture pictures of these boys but I had a crappy camera and they charge outrages amounts for a photo. At last, when we went to visit a Maasai family's home and tour their living space, I thought I had stepped inside one of the displays at the Natural Museum of History with a cast of people dressed in Maasai styled robes. But behold, these people were real Maasai and those huts were really their homes! It was amazing. So if you want to see how our ancestors probably lived centuries ago, then I highly recommend a visit to Africa. Heck, you must visit Africa! It's a beautiful continent. It's nothing that I have ever seen before and it's enlightening. And finally, let me tell you, the traditional dances that the Maasai women do appear so simple. But in contrary, I just couldn't bob my chest or shoulders the way they do! [Check out what I mean in my video under Videos].