On the wild sides in Tanzania’s Serengeti and Tarangire reserves
A love-song serenade to the safari in Tanzania.
In a bush kitchen with canvas tented sides, demountable shelves packed with sacks of spices, coffee beans and Zanzibari chillies, and firm earth beneath our boots, Eli Amin is painstakingly giving me the recipe for his chilled avocado soup. I have had two serves for lunch and am still marvelling at the miracles that come forth from camp stoves in East Africa’s relatively remote safari destinations. The secret ingredient, he tells me, voice lowered in case of roving spies, is two dashes of Tabasco sauce. He repeats “two dashes” and watches as I make my notes. “Not one dash, not three … it’s the small things that count.”
This amiable head chef at Sanctuary Kichakani Serengeti Camp in northern Tanzania could be describing the very act of safari. Wildlife viewing is not only the big, thrilling picture but an accretion of tiny, telling details. It’s not just spotting the so-called Big Five, although who among us would complain at seeing lion, leopard, buffalo, elephant and rhino.
It’s also about the lovely emptiness of timeless landscapes, with their tawny camouflaging colours and hard old trees. It’s birds on the wing flashing undersides as shiny as silk and guineafowl scurrying across dirt tracks as if late for frightfully important appointments. It’s termite mounds and amusingly ugly ground-dwellers such as warthogs with tails that fly stiff and high as they run from the approach of our vehicle. It’s the sheer heart-thumping rush of close encounters with nature and the cleansing of mind that occurs when you’re free from the constant ping, buzz and hurry of urban lives.
And most of all, it is the highly trained rangers who take their assigned guests in sturdy and well-cushioned 4WDs on adventures that sometimes seem beyond the realms of possibility. At Kichakani, guide Emmanuel is my eyes and ears as we trundle off each morning at first light and again in the cool of late afternoon. Between the two daily excursions, there’s ample time to scoff chef Eli’s daily-changing soups and salads and to snooze, mimicking the wild animals that retreat to shade and shelter to avoid the searing heat of the midday sun.
This is a mobile camp that shifts with the seasons and the migratory pattern of the great herd animals, leaving virtually no footprint. During my stay it is sited in the northern Serengeti, which blurs with the border of Kenya’s Masai Mara. But its impermanence doesn’t equate with any degree of discomfort or roughing it. The look is colonial Out of Africa, all khaki-coloured and eclectic, with leather-strapped campaign trunks, cowhide director’s chairs draped with soft throws, and old Singer sewing machine tables dotted about, looking perfectly reconditioned and ready for action. There are circular light fittings made from old torches and the sheer luxury of ensuites in all 10 tents with copper basins, Africology toiletries blended with fragrant bush essences, and finely woven laundry baskets. Toilets flush and showers work on a bucket drop system.
On the first night, I become aware of muffled laughter as I belt out an Adele tune while soaping up. It transpires that a couple of tent attendants are behind the canvas flaps, waiting to remove the bucket when it’s emptied. When I call out “hello’’, they clap my dreadful singing. Tucked into a proper bed dressed with white linen that smells of sunshine, I close my eyes to a soundtrack of skitterings and scufflings, the nocturnal noises of the bush amplified in the clear, cold air. Footprints close to camp next morning reveal the lions of the Serengeti did not sleep last night.
Emmanuel drives me over flat plains of red oat grass, the horizon rimmed with pale blue hills. The name Serengeti is a Masai word, he tells me, and it means endless plains. I am full of questions and he is patient with his replies. The Thomson’s gazelle, he says, has a tail that spins like a propeller and is given to pronking, or jumping as if hurdling when pursued by a predator. He says I may refer to them as Tommies. I clutch my Eco Checklist from Sanctuary Retreats and tick off the likes of lions, hippos, topi antelopes and goofy-looking wildebeest. We see a line of elephants at sunset moving slowly in the distance like galleons in full sail. Two male cheetahs look at us dismissively as we approach. “They are the border boys,” says Emmanuel. “They like to take holidays in Kenya.”
Earlier this week, on my first safari outing from Kichakani’s sister property, Sanctuary Swala Camp in Tarangire National Park, southeast of the Serengeti, guide Samwell is worried that I have no camera, just an iPhone. His range of photographic equipment is vast and his shots make mine look miserable. But then he pops my iPhone next to his telescopic lens and he zooms in on a baby elephant waving its little trunk in a charmingly uncoordinated manner. Snap! It is a very clever and artistic shot and Samwell, who senses my gratitude and now asks me to call him Sammy, seems quietly pleased.
Like Emmanuel, he is a superb safari guide, full of gentle humour and endless patience. I clutch another Eco Checklist and tick off a multitude of sightings, both beastly and botanical, as Sammy points out euphorbia candelabra trees that look freshly sculpted and big-trunked baobabs ravaged by elephants.
We pause to admire the exaggerated beauty of weaver nests, which are so finely woven they could have been fashioned in a craft atelier. Sammy tells me these bauble-like creations are made by the male birds from grass, fibres and twigs and “the fellows must do an excellent job to attract the ladies”. As we move slowly through seemingly infinite grasslands, Sammy points out chestnut, rufous-tailed and white-headed buffalo weavers, all as busy as can be.
He is a bird-spotter extraordinaire and reels off names that suggest a carnival of colours, such as glossy starlings, lilac-breasted rollers, orange-bellied parrots and, best of all, yellow-collared lovebirds, which look dressed in tiny clown costumes with big, sad, white-rimmed eyes.
Zebras appear by the dazzling hundreds, giraffes have the slow-mo gait of catwalk models, my head swivels to take in 180-degree panoramas punctuated with emblematic flat-topped acacia thorn trees. We watch the acrobatic swirls of bateleur eagles while vultures perch on bare branches, heads tucked in, as grim as undertakers. It is endlessly, utterly fascinating. My Eco Checklist has 36 pages, from “antelopes and relatives” to common grasses. Will there be time to spot a pygmy falcon, a black-backed jackal, a yellow-crowned bishop or a white-bellied bustard? Maybe, says Sammy, but first it’s time for sundowners. He produces a wicker basket and fashions a pop-up bar on our Toyota LandCruiser’s bonnet, carefully easing lemon slices into the evening drinks and passing around warm nuts. Sammy keeps one eye on the vehicle and the other on a great bull elephant eyeing us from a thorny copse as he moves through tree trunks like a tractor.
Swala has had a recent refurbishment, with block-printed Masai tribal textiles introduced to thatch-roofed public areas, and rustic tents replaced by 12 attractive canvas-canopied pavilions overlooking flat savanna lands, each named for a species of antelope and sheltered by giant acacia.
I am safely ensconced in my Dikdik habitat, between neighbours Kudu and Duiker. Roped decks, indoor-outdoor showers and double vanity basins, ceiling fans, limed floors and billowing mosquito nets constitute a designer look that’s pure Africa chic. Here, in the middle of nowhere, the bedside reading lights are bright and perfectly positioned, and morning wake-up tea or coffee is delivered in smart Thermoses by staff who are forever dodging merry bands of vervet monkeys.
It is all supremely snug, even if the night sounds of the bush can be alarmingly loud. I dream there is an elephant at the door and next morning there is the indisputable evidence of shredded leaves and twigs and a robust pile of dung on the front steps.
Dining at Swala means breakfast under a huge baobab on the central alfresco deck or lunching on fresh pizza. A three-course dinner may be followed by a fantasy dessert such as Chocolate Kilimanjaro, named for Tanzania’s famous mountain with high peaks of well-whipped cream. It’s madly improbable and therefore somehow wonderful.
But despite the odd lavish touch, Kichakani and Swala are appropriately luxurious, not overblown or too jazzed-up. And a safari is an achievable adventure for travellers of all ages and fitness levels. Just unplug yourself from social media and definitely forget about TV. There’s no need for the Nat Geo Wild channel when you’re actually living in it, playing on an endless loop.
Susan Kurosawa was a guest of Abercrombie & Kent.
MORE TO THE STORY
Tanzania is a superlative safari destination, with national parks, game reserves and conservation areas that cover more than 250,000sq km. Sanctuary Retreats owns and operates two classic camps in the Serengeti, the permanent 12-tent Sanctuary Kusini, which is an ideal spot to watch the annual migration of herds of wildebeest, and mobile Sanctuary Kichakani, which moves with the seasons and migrations; plus Sanctuary Swala Camp and Sanctuary Ngorongoro Crater Camp. Sanctuary Retreats and Abercrombie & Kent also run philanthropy programs in districts surrounding the properties, from conservation and education initiatives to community projects such as beekeeping.
Itineraries booked with Abercrombie & Kent can be designed to mix and match,
with transfers by small aircraft from Tanzania’s safari gateway capital of Arusha and between camps. Programs can be extended to cover the newly refurbished Sanctuary Olanana in Kenya’s Masai Mara. Visas are required for Tanzania and cost $US50 ($71) on arrival at Kilimanjaro airport (Arusha) or other international gateways. Rates include all meals and afternoon teas, game drives with sundowner drinks, and daily laundry. Extended stay offers, valid all year, cover 30 per cent off the tariff for four to six nights or 40 per cent off seven nights or more at either one camp or a combination of properties.