Naabi Gate and Into the Dust Beyond
Friday, September 2, 2005
Exactly twenty-four hours after entering the Serengeti National Park, our overland truck rumbled into the dusty Naabi Gate entrance/exit area. Our allotted time here was up.
It seems that this is a more popular entrance to the Serengeti than the gate we entered by, and the parking-lot for visitor registration was filled with tourists, somewhat of a shock after seeing so few people besides ourselves on the savannah itself.
We had half an hour or so to relax and drink a cup of tea or climb up to the Naabi look-o
ut. Jeff and I decided to do both.
The trail up to the look-out was steep but short with a view over the grasslands and acacia forests we had just left. Along the way we saw many more agama lizards skittering among the rocks and also another kind of lizard, possibly an anole, which seemed to levitate from vertical rock surface to surface. It was the most physics-defying little creature I'd ever seen!
Descending once more to the gate, we watched the iridescent-blue starlings gather to drink at the stone bird baths. There were a lot of birds up in the trees too. I decided that a beautiful book of East African birds (authors Chris and Stuart Tilde) offered at the little shop here would make a nice souvenir of the Serengeti, but alas it cost 30,000 shillings ($30) and we didn't have enough Tanzanian money changed at the moment.
I saw tiny animals moving underneath a tree and sat down on the grass with my camera ready. The animals disappeared like lightning. I held perfectly still and soon the mice came creeping out of the holes in the bottom of the tree to play in the grass again. But at the slightest movement from me to focus my camera, they disappeared again.
Before we left Naabi Gate, a memory that still makes me giggle: the horrified nose-wrinkling of a female tourist in designer khakis as she came out of the public bathroom here. She put up her hand to stop me as I entered the loo, saying in a hushed and distressed voice: "There is NO toilet paper in there!" I smiled and showed her the folded wad of tissues in my pants pocket.
"Don't worry, I don't think I've been in a toilet with its own paper this trip", I laughed. She looked at me as if she'd rather have faced a lion than carry her own loo paper around. Ah yes, a good tip on an African trip: always bring your own toilet-paper.
The rest of our afternoon was a long dusty, dusty ride toward the Ngorongoro Crater area. Choking dust in shades of orange and grey followed in our wake in an enormous cloud, silting in through the open sides of the truck and coating our skin in hair in a fine layer of grit.
Later, I would do my laundry and watch as the washing water turned the colours of Serengeti mud.
Yes, bandannas: they're not just for bandits and cowboys anymore. I slitted my eyes against the glare of the sun and held a hankerchief over my nose.
The roof of the truck vibrated so hard as we jolted over the road that once again the screws in the ceiling began to work loose. Somebody was always getting up to tighten them.
We also had to be careful that none of our possessions fell off the upper shelf to fly out the window. Jen lost a flip-flop shoe today somewhere along the long road through these Masai lands. The bread and other groceries also needed a good shove once in a while so we didn't lose them. As for carbonated beverages, they were opened tonight at the owner's own risk after the shaking they received today.
This was incredibly arid land---a flat, yellow-grey prairie, a wasteland of rocky soil and dessicated grass to the horizon. The termite mounds here were made from grey clay, unlike the red mounds in the reserve area we'd spent the last day on.
Once in a while we'd see a bright splotch of colour in the landscape--bright red in a sea of dull colours. It would be a Masai herdsman walking along with two or three cows. He was literally miles and miles away from...anything. It was incredible.
It got me wondering if the modern world touches these people at all. What does the whole rat race matter out here? I suddenly felt like I had way too much stuff.
Once or twice on the way to our campsite we passed a circular boma, a small Masai compound encircled with a wooden fence. You could easily pick out the Masai people from a distance--clad in bright red or purple they were the most colourful thing in the land for miles around.
Exactly twenty-four hours after entering the Serengeti National Park, our overland truck rumbled into the dusty Naabi Gate entrance/exit area. Our allotted time here was up.
It seems that this is a more popular entrance to the Serengeti than the gate we entered by, and the parking-lot for visitor registration was filled with tourists, somewhat of a shock after seeing so few people besides ourselves on the savannah itself.
We had half an hour or so to relax and drink a cup of tea or climb up to the Naabi look-o
ut. Jeff and I decided to do both.The trail up to the look-out was steep but short with a view over the grasslands and acacia forests we had just left. Along the way we saw many more agama lizards skittering among the rocks and also another kind of lizard, possibly an anole, which seemed to levitate from vertical rock surface to surface. It was the most physics-defying little creature I'd ever seen!
Descending once more to the gate, we watched the iridescent-blue starlings gather to drink at the stone bird baths. There were a lot of birds up in the trees too. I decided that a beautiful book of East African birds (authors Chris and Stuart Tilde) offered at the little shop here would make a nice souvenir of the Serengeti, but alas it cost 30,000 shillings ($30) and we didn't have enough Tanzanian money changed at the moment.
I saw tiny animals moving underneath a tree and sat down on the grass with my camera ready. The animals disappeared like lightning. I held perfectly still and soon the mice came creeping out of the holes in the bottom of the tree to play in the grass again. But at the slightest movement from me to focus my camera, they disappeared again.
Before we left Naabi Gate, a memory that still makes me giggle: the horrified nose-wrinkling of a female tourist in designer khakis as she came out of the public bathroom here. She put up her hand to stop me as I entered the loo, saying in a hushed and distressed voice: "There is NO toilet paper in there!" I smiled and showed her the folded wad of tissues in my pants pocket.
"Don't worry, I don't think I've been in a toilet with its own paper this trip", I laughed. She looked at me as if she'd rather have faced a lion than carry her own loo paper around. Ah yes, a good tip on an African trip: always bring your own toilet-paper.
The rest of our afternoon was a long dusty, dusty ride toward the Ngorongoro Crater area. Choking dust in shades of orange and grey followed in our wake in an enormous cloud, silting in through the open sides of the truck and coating our skin in hair in a fine layer of grit.
Later, I would do my laundry and watch as the washing water turned the colours of Serengeti mud.
Yes, bandannas: they're not just for bandits and cowboys anymore. I slitted my eyes against the glare of the sun and held a hankerchief over my nose.
The roof of the truck vibrated so hard as we jolted over the road that once again the screws in the ceiling began to work loose. Somebody was always getting up to tighten them.
We also had to be careful that none of our possessions fell off the upper shelf to fly out the window. Jen lost a flip-flop shoe today somewhere along the long road through these Masai lands. The bread and other groceries also needed a good shove once in a while so we didn't lose them. As for carbonated beverages, they were opened tonight at the owner's own risk after the shaking they received today.
This was incredibly arid land---a flat, yellow-grey prairie, a wasteland of rocky soil and dessicated grass to the horizon. The termite mounds here were made from grey clay, unlike the red mounds in the reserve area we'd spent the last day on.
Once in a while we'd see a bright splotch of colour in the landscape--bright red in a sea of dull colours. It would be a Masai herdsman walking along with two or three cows. He was literally miles and miles away from...anything. It was incredible.
It got me wondering if the modern world touches these people at all. What does the whole rat race matter out here? I suddenly felt like I had way too much stuff.
Once or twice on the way to our campsite we passed a circular boma, a small Masai compound encircled with a wooden fence. You could easily pick out the Masai people from a distance--clad in bright red or purple they were the most colourful thing in the land for miles around.
posted by Spider Girl | 8:41 PM
3 Comments:
Great tip--"always bring your own toilet-paper". Last May while in Morocco I quickly learned that, even some hotels don't keep toilet paper stocked in the bathrooms.
T.P. I keep it in the vehicles at all times, I have been stuck using scratchy or wet leaves WAY too often! But, about the rest of the post, dry and colourless, vibrating in a vehicle for long stretches doesn't sound the trip's highlight!
Actually, Pol, although the landscape was bleak and the dust unpleasant, it was a memorable trip nonetheless. I did a lot of thinking while we drove....
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