2017-12-08 Friday

National Parks and Conservation Areas

Tanzania has had to negotiate the balance between resource conservation and the rights of indigenous peoples. One prominent tension is between the Maasai people and the areas rich with wildlife. The Serengeti as a national park in 1951 so the Maasai people were forced to move out of the park. They were relocated in nearby areas. Eighteen years later, in 1969, Ngorongoro was set aside as a conservation area. The laws protecting the wildlife are the same as the national parks, but the indigenous peoples are allowed to live there and raise livestock.
To me it is very interesting that the government and the local tribes have been relatively successful reaching a peaceful and fair solution. The Ngorongoro Crater is now restricted like a national park, but it is in the much larger Ngorongoro Conservation area.

Sopa Lodge

The Sopa Lodge is one of the lodges on the rim it is a four star hotel. BTW, it was a free upgrade to our party. We left early, at 7:00 for our safari into the crater. The is only two road accesses at the crater, each a one-way road, so we entered the crater via the eastern road. The descent is though a thick forest. Since it had rained the previous night, the road was slippery red dirt (like all of the other roads in the crater.) The road descends 2000 feet in a few miles.
Near the bottom of the road along a gully, there were at least 20 hyenas lying around on both sides of the road. A few were walking around. Fahad knew what was ahead, but we didn’t. We sat and occasionally crept forward watching the hyenas lay around. Then someone spotted a Cape Buffalo carcas on the riverbank. We were very puzzled that the hyenas were not scavenging it. We eventually found out why: there was a large male lion nearby watching it!

Lions!

Fahad told us that if the kill was made by lionesses, the hyenas would try to move in and drive the lionesses away. But they would never challenge a lion. He once saw a hyena running away from a kill in a panic right into the path of a lion. The lion swiped down on the hyena so hard its intestines flew out.
No animal challenges the King of the Jungle!
We watched absolutely fascinated for about half of an hour even though the lion only moved his head occasionally.
Finally we slowly drove on and saw lionesses for the first time a few hundred yard away. They were passively lying around stretched out on the hillside. There were probably at least another half dozen in the lion’s territory. Fahad said once the lion had his fill, he would call the females in and he would leave and the lionesses would have to fend for themselves. On the other hand if the lionesses made a big kill, they would call the lion to eat first.
Also prides of lion always consist of two to three males and numerous females. The pride is run by the Boy’s Club. We didn’t see them, but the other males will also show up and eat before the females can start.
Some of the nastiest battles on the plains are when hyenas challenge lionesses or vice versa over a kill.
We saw one other pride on our safari today. We saw a group with two males and four females right beside the road. We all totally ignored us. About a quarter mile away we counted about a dozen females scattered across a hillside sleeping or not moving. Lions sleep a lot, so you could watch a pride for a long time without seeing anything happen.

Hippos

The hippos were easy to watch. We drove to a lunch spot with a bathroom right next to a hippo pond. About a dozen hippos were in the water. Most of the time only their eyes, ears and snout were visible. Occasionally one would dive for whatever hippo reason it had and pop up a minute later. Sometimes they would stand briefly. We ate lunch and watched them for about an hour. Finally they all got the hippo message and slowly worked their way up the river.
It was cool to eat lunch while listening to their hippo snorts.

A Black Rhino

We were driving along a while later, when the driver suddenly stopped and pulled out his binoculars. After looking for a couple of minutes, he said, “There is a rhino over there.” Sure enough, a dark bump about 300 yards away was a rhino. When he rolled form his side to his belly, we could see his pair of horns with binoculars. Rhinos also sleep a lot, so we moved on after about 10 minutes.
With that sighting, we complete four of the Big 5: lion, leopard, rhinoceros elephant, and Cape buffalo.

Ostriches

We saw quite a few ostriches today. It was cool and overcast, so most birds were not very active. We came up to one pair very close to the road and watched them watch us for 10 minutes.

Caracals

The most unusual sight we saw was three small cats called caracals. They are about bobcat sized, but with tails and very tall pointed ears. In 17 years this was only the third time Fahad saw them. One was eating a European stork about 20 feet from the road. The other two were a little farther away laying down. They blended in well with the grass. Caracals usually only come out at night, so the dense overcast probably played a part in them being active.

The Birds

There are many, many birds in Ngorongoro crater. Here is a list of some that I remember: - Pelicans - small colorful birds - crowned Crane - European storks - Cory bustards - Black kite (like a hawk) - Egyptian geese - Oxpeckers riding on the backs of zebra & buffalo
We finally left the crater and had a long drive back to Arusha and the Spiritan house. We got back around 6, but of course Michael Write had a dinner scheduled for us. We went to dinner at a nice hotel in Arusha and had a presentation by Erwin Kinsey, director of ECHO, a center for bringing sustainable agriculture to the Maasai people. A Duquesne student Julia who is finishing her Physician’s Assistant degree from Duquesne was also there. It was exciting to see how through Duquesne’s Semester Abroad program she became committed to working in Africa.
As usual, dinner wasn’t over until after 10 PM.