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The
National Parks of Tanzania
Serengeti
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Possibly
the best known game park in the world, the Serengeti IS “Africa”
to many, many people. That
stark, solitary acacia, umbrella branched canopy in silhouette,
against the endless sky and the horizon-to-horizon grasslands…that
is Serengeti.
Swahili
for “endless plains,” Serengeti is the southern, Tanzanian,
continuation of Kenya’s Masai Mara and, together with it, creates
the scene of the annual clockwise foraging journeys of gnu and zebra
known as The Migration. For
5,700 square miles Serengeti is home to prey (zebra, gun, gazelle
and antelope) and predator (lion, leopard, cheetah, jackal and
hyena), in fact this may be the best place in Africa to see lion.
Ground
travel to the Serengeti is from the Ngorongoro Conservation Area
(the north border with Kenya’s Masai Mara has been closed by road
for some time now) and
as soon as you’ve left the volcanic highlands you know you’re in
a different world. Crossing into the park through the Naabi Hill Gate the
koppis (or kopjes) pop out at you almost immediately.
A tumble of erosion smoothed boulders, the koppis are the
tips of buried rock mountains the Serengeti plains grew up around. Little oases of elevation and scrub greenery, they’re a
favorite vantage point for lions and a cool hiding place for the
lone impala buck.
We
weren’t 15 minutes into the park when our driver somehow spotted
movement maybe 500 yards ahead in the tall grass (driver guides have
exceptional vision – it took us several minutes to see what he was
looking at even after it was pointed out).
A mother cheetah with four young, maybe month-old cubs, was
beginning her hunt. She
moved swiftly, soundlessly, ignoring us but totally focused on a
tiny band of gazelles further on.
Not wanting to disrupt her concentration we held back. Cheetahs work hard for each meal, only eating what they’ve
killed, and this young mother had a larger than usual litter.
As we turned to drive away, we surprised a Kori bustard,
Africa’s largest bird that can fly, who was airborne in just a few
short strides.
Sunlight
plays over the grasslands, every minute the scene changes.
The land is alive, pulsating and vibrant.
We fully recognize that we’re visitors here, silent
observers, safe in the pop-top Land Cruiser.
Asking our guide how long a person on foot would last out
here alone he stated chillingly, “Not even one night.”
Serengeti National Park is another World Heritage Site and
rightly so…these places need protecting, not just for the
animals…but as a place to remember that humankind doesn’t own
and control everything.
Nature is, at best, on loan and our responsibility to leave
the way we found.
Serengeti is the kind of place where thoughts such as these
seem to come naturally.
We hope that will always be true.
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