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Most visitors contain their travels to the north, and with good reason. The city of Arusha, the north's main hub, is served by Kilimanjaro International Airport. The list of attractions that can be reached from Arusha on good roads is a long one. For the best time to visit please see When To Go. Tarangire National Park Lake Manyara National Park Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) The Crater Highlands Some of the most beautiful parts of the forest cover the slopes of Empakai Crater. From Empakai's rim, outside of heavy seasonal fog June through August, it is possible to see the dramatic cone of Mount Lengai, Tanzania's only active volcano, to the north, and Mount Kilimanjaro's flattened summit to the east. The Ngorongoro Crater The crater is a busy place. I counted 70 vehicles with at least six occupants each at the crater's rest stop when I was last there. One solution to limit the impact of tourism is to allow only half day visits, although it remains to be seen how well authorities enforce such a rule. Olduvai Gorge Fifty kilometers long and 90 meters deep in places, Olduvai stretches between where a visitor's center has been placed strategically to overlook its main cavity and the intersection of a smaller side gorge, and Lakes Ndutu and Masek to its west. The numerous dry gullies called korongo which snake away from the main and side canyons are where many of Olduvai's major finds were made. Outside of the rainy season, when runoff rushes through the gorge from Lakes Ndutu and Masek, Olduvai is hot, dusty and dry, its only vegetation stunted acacias and wild sisal that the Maasai call oldupai and from which the gorge takes its name. Two million years ago, the Ngorongoro volcano had collapsed creating the mother crater, but Olduvai Gorge didn't yet exist. A large alkaline lake occupied the spot into which groundwater from the Crater Highlands drained. The lake accumulated tidy layer upon tidy layer of volcanic ash and windblown sediment, trapping and preserving as it did the bones and debris of early animal and human life that lived by it. An earthquake emptied the lake, while much later in geological time, the seasonal Olduvai River cut down through the pristine layering, creating the gorge as we know it today, and exposing its windfall of fossils. Thanks in great part to the Leakeys, there is general consensus among scientists that our beginnings were in Africa. Geneticists claim that mitochondrial DNA analysis points to the metamorphosis from archaic to modern human as having definitely taken place in Africa some 100,000 to 140,000 years ago. They say that all of us can trace our genetic inheritance to just one woman —an African "Eve"— a theory which should give racists pause for thought. Climate change swept us off the African continent in waves, the first of us going across the Red Sea to Yemen, then to India, Australia, and finally into Europe. DNA testing around the globe substantiates our route. The big question for science to answer is exactly when it was that our evolution diverged from that of the other primates, or the moment when we rose off of all fours, since bipedal-ism is considered the crucial step in the development of our larger brains and the awakening of consciousness. The huge importance of Mary's 1975 find of 3.75 million-year-old fossilized hominid footprints at Laetoli was that the prints revealed a big toe aligned with the rest of the foot and not angled like an ape's for gripping. This meant that our ancestors were upright far earlier than was imagined. Fast forward 30 years. Study of the seven-million-year old Sahel shows that hominids were walking even then. If science can determine when bipedal-ism occurred, it might also be able to answer where and why it occurred. Conventional wisdom has been the location of the Great Rift Valley because that is where so much of the evidence about our early days has been found. What we know of the climate change that was taking place also supports the valley's candidacy. East Africa was drying out and we needed to see over the taller grasses and to walk greater distances for food. But it may be that the geology of the Great Rift Valley simply presents unique conditions for the preservation of old bones that have not survived elsewhere. The reigning champion Sahel was found almost 1000 kilometers to the west of the valley in present day Chad. He raises the possibility that where we took our first steps wasn't in treeless savannah at all, but somewhere where it was wooded, or at least partially so. Two years before Mary's achievement at Laetoli, a little skeleton of the same species of hominid who left their prints - Australopithecus afarensis - was recovered in the Ethiopian Rift Valley. Her finders called her "Lucy" and for a while she was believed to be from whom modern man descended in an uncomplicated progression. Presently, there is another theory: that there were multiple offshoots of hominids after their path separated from the apes. They competed with each other, no doubt waged nasty war with one another, and Homosapiens eventually won out. The West African shaman, Malidoma Patrice Some, says that bones are the storage place of man's collective memory. When we say that we are certain about something - that "We can feel it in our bones" - we aren't feeling as much as we are remembering. We are disconnected from our ancient past, but we still respond to what our bones tell us, although in a misguided way. We gather up what is old and put it in museums. Mary Leakey devoted her life to Olduvai. It was her home as well as her work; only age and deteriorating health led her reluctantly to abandon it. There are pictures of Mary in the little museum at the Visitor's Center. She seems to hang in the background of them, although she was more successful at the fossil business than her gregarious husband. Laetoli made her the finder of the world's oldest hominids, for a while at least. Ndutu George's camp remains open for business as the Ndutu Safari Lodge under the ownership of a Dutch woman who came to Tanzania with her game hunter father and who ended up studying Serval cats in the Ngorongoro Crater. She feeds genets in the dining room's open rafters - the much photographed animals start collecting at dusk - and brings her telescope to the lodge's evening campfire. Her managers are a British couple who came to East Africa on a holiday and were determined to find some way to remain. Paul has said that in any wet season a minimum of 23 tourist vehicles get stuck around Ndutu; he's had eight kitchen staff digging for an entire day to free one, but not a day goes by when I don't think of calling up and asking him if he and his wife Louise are ready to give up their jobs. My husband and I would be only too happy to take over.
The Ndutu lodge is the kind of place that tends to have interesting vehicles parked out front, like those belonging to the Serengeti Cheetah Project, the Frankfurt Zoological Society, and documentary film crews from all over the world. I met Briton David Bygott at Ndutu. He's the author of a little book of essential facts about the NCA that I wouldn't be without when I travel in the north. Before our introduction at Ndutu, I had come across David's name in the stories of the early figures of Tanzania's parks and conservation history. While collecting data at Gombe Stream National Park, he was the first to witness and report murder and cannibalism by chimpanzees. For several years, he and his wife Jeannette headed the Serengeti Lion Project and produced a book of their experience in 1982 called Lions Share: A Story of a Serengeti Pride. David was the one who showed me how to approach cheetahs by driving towards them in wide sweeping meanders so as not to alarm them. He knew many of the Ndutu elephants on sight.
In the early 1970s, the Dutch photographer Hugo Van Lawick spent time in Ndutu, filming and writing for his many projects. He is buried there now, on a beautiful forested bluff which overlooks both Lake Ndutu and the track out to "Three Trees" and the lairs of Bat-eared foxes that I've come to know out there. (With their enormous ears, they look like Gremlins; or rather Gremlins resemble the foxes.) In the 1960s, National Geographic magazine sent Hugo to Gombe Stream National Park to film a young Jane Goodall who was habituating wild chimpanzees to her presence in western Tanzania. He and Jane married, although the marriage didn't last. I made a pilgrimage to Hugo's grave shortly after his death in 2002. I had with me a young African who suggested that we pay our respects to the man who he considered as having done more for Tanzania through his art than any head of state since independence. Nasera Rock Nasera is one of the more distinctive monoliths which dot Tanzania's northern plains like rock islands in an ocean of grass. One hundred meters high, it is tucked away in the Angata Kiti, a canyon of grassland that severs the NCA's Gol Mountains in two and which runs east to west gaining in elevation as it does from either direction to crest in the middle. Migrating wildebeest and zebra on their way down from Kenya often separate and come together again, using the Angata Kiti as a corridor. Nasera is best when the wildebeest and zebra are passing through, which is typically between December and March. When I camp at Nasera, I pitch camp against one imposing canyon wall where I have sweeping views of the plains in three directions. Along with the wildebeest, I always hope to see cheetah. The Maasai, whose round huts are tucked away inconspicuously at the foot of the Gol Mountains, call Nasera "Big Rock." When the wildebeest arrive on the plains, the tribe moves its cattle to the top of the Gols because cattle are vulnerable to a respiratory disease that wildebeest carry. Goats are immune to the wildebeest illness. One morning, several young goat herders appeared in my camp at Nasera, one of them a splendid looking adolescent, beaded and tinseled and all of 13-years-old. He stood in the heron pose that the Maasai adopt, one leg bent at right angles to the other while leaning on implanted spears, and observed me intensely without condescending to smile. He was firm in his decision that I couldn't photograph him. I had no problem at all imagining him defending his animals or his people to the death. OlKarien Gorge I have often asked the Maasai about their love affair with the color red and received such answers as "It drives our women mad" or "It's the color of cattle blood." Visibility might be a factor: red clothes stand out in vast open spaces where distances look less than they are, like landfall often does from a boat. I wonder also if color blind animals are more wary of dark colors which they would perceive as black. Tribal peoples wore goatskins and wraps of bark before the Arab traders arrived with cotton substitutes, which the Maasai stained with red ocher. I found lumps of the mineral in the spring bed that ran through the gorge. Lake Natron There is another way to reach Natron. If you are already in the northern Serengeti you can cut across the borderlands with Kenya on a track which arrives at the rift valley wall directly above the 60 kilometer long lake and then descends it in a series of hairpin turns to the bottom. From the height of the escarpment, the lake, which has no outlet, shimmers in the heated air, mirage-like. Its surface appears white and marbled from the soda crust that forms when alkaline water, full of bicarbonate soda from volcanic soil and with no place to drain, evaporates. It is stained with the palest pink as well, which is what thousands upon thousands of Lesser flamingoes look like from 2000 meters. Natron is fed by hot mineral springs. The shallow mineral stew provides ideal conditions for the growth of spirulina algae, choice flamingo food and the reason why the birds' naturally white feathers turn pink. Some four million flamingoes wander between the soda lakes of the Great Rift Valley, moving on as quickly as overnight when the supply of algae is depleted, which it frequently is: 100,000 flamingoes eat 35 tons of algae a day. Natron is one of the few spots where flamingoes regularly lay eggs and raise their single chicks. The swamps of sticky volcanic soil that encircle it make access to nests difficult for predators, but determination wins out. Hyena and jackal spoor is sunk into the black ooze at water's edge where flamingo bones lie scattered. Marabou storks and Fish eagles attack flamingoes on the wing. During the dry season, lone wildebeest and zebra feed on long, tubular grasses of brilliant emerald that grow near Lake Natron. They seek the salt that it has absorbed. Elephants have sometimes arrived on Natron's shores to wreak havoc with crops. They come down from the forested slopes of Mount Gelai, an old volcano that rises on the lake's eastern shores. In the past, buffalo and eland have also turned up from Gelai, but no one has seen them in some time. Gelai falls within a game controlled area that extends east to Longido where hunting is allowed and the animal numbers are decreasing. The deeply sunken land that Natron occupies was created when the Crater Highland volcanoes collapsed and the valley floor to their east fell. At the time of their demise, Mount Kerimas was the great force east of the rift wall. Wind bore ash from its eruptions westwards over the Salei and Serengeti Plains, which became the fertile foundation from which the precious Serengeti grasslands took root. Its ash fell as another protective layer over Olduvai's fossils. Only when the Olduvai River was busy carving out the gorge that we know today, was Kerimas' power finally spent and Mount Lengai born. The one-street Maasai town on the shores of Lake Natron is called Ngaro Sero. It means "Brown Water Bush" and refers to the color that the freshwater streams become at the point when they merge with the lake's poisonous brew. It is assumed by Natron's residents to whom fresh water is so vital that every visitor will want to hike to the crystal clear waterfalls that breach the escarpment, but I prefer to remain around primordial waters. Natron is where I feel our planet's unfathomable longevity and the might of the natural forces which have torn it apart. Lake Eyasi For much of the way down from the highlands you keep the soda lake in sight - at over 1000 square kilometers, it is the fifth largest in the country. At the end of the dry season, it becomes a shrunken rendition of itself. Shallow waters begin a long walk out over an exposed bottom that cracks like shattered porcelain and frosted with salt crystals that crunch underfoot. On the lake's far side, glowing copper in a setting sun, are the 1500-meter high cliffs of the Eyasi escarpment, one of the first rifts of the Ngorongoro area that dates prior even to the formation of the highland volcanoes, and which today forms some of the southern border of the NCA. On that side of the lake, away from human habitation, the chances of seeing wildlife are greater. Eyasi's primary attractions are the Datoga and Hadza tribes, both of whom it is possible to visit, although you must decide for yourself whether people-turned-tourist attraction is beneficial or harmful. Please see the Culture section. The Serengeti The great herds of the migration number one million wildebeest and 250,000 Burchell's zebra - America had 60 times the number of bison which puts the enormity of our travesty into perspective - and move clockwise in a perennial cycle that chases the rain and resulting nutritious new grasses. When the prairie dries out, the herds move on, traveling as they do in long, meandering columns. Their route is not contained by the Serengeti: the park's 12, 950 square kilometers would have to be doubled for that to be possible. The herds cross into Kenya where they remain for four months of the year and where the extension of the Serengeti plains is called the Maasai Mara. A visitor might associate the Serengeti with only prairie, its name derived as it is from the Maasai for "endless plain" or "open space". There are actually a few translations for the Maasai word "siringet" from which Serengeti evolves. Yet prairie covers only one third of the park, primarily in its south and east. The other two thirds are a combination of plains and woodland. Where such mixtures of topography exists, there is richer diversity of wildlife, which is understandable when you bear in mind that maintaining balance is nature's cardinal rule. Arusha National Park
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Tarangire is an easy one and a half hour drive from Arusha. It makes for a good first stop on the way to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) and Serengeti National Park, or, as I prefer, the perfect end to a safari of the northern circuit. Tarangire is one of the most scenic of the northern parks, a 2600 square kilometer mix of grassland, acacia woodlands and rocky hills. I associate it with the mighty baobab tree which grows prolifically there, and with elephants. Tarangire is known for its large resident population of elephants because of the year-round availability of water in the Tarangire River. I also associate Tarangire with an extraordinary leopard sighting. In what was uncharacteristic behavior for the reclusive cat, my husband and I spotted a leopardess walking in the open with a single cub. Finally urging her offspring into concealing grasses, she then padded up to the open window of our vehicle in which we sat frozen in disbelief and wonder and snarled a raspy warning. There is little to compare with the splendor of a leopard's spots gazed upon from a distance of a few meters.
Manyara is known for its tree-climbing lions, which I have seen many times, but, I must admit, never in Manyara. I associate the park more with birds, baboons, and elephants - one particular elephant in fact. I drove into Manyara one hour before dark and closing time, thinking to take a quick game drive before returning the following day. I had a young Tanzanian friend with me. We became lost on unmarked tracks, which didn't worry us until, in the fading light, an elephant protecting young blocked what we were sure was the way out. At each of our tentative attempts to pass, she threatened the vehicle with extended ears flapping like sails, swaying body as if in dance, and with hair-raising screams of rage. We took the prudent path of withdrawing and idling awhile until the protective mother plunged into the forest with her family.
In a country where I have had any number of superlative experiences, one on Empakai's mist-shrouded rim comes to mind. I startled three small figures dressed in the black shuka of newly circumcised Maasai boys. Often boys will apply heavy white lime to their faces as well after circumcision rites. The black clothing and white paint symbolizes the demise of childhood and rebirth as men. Youngsters in this ritual garb stand along the road to the Serengeti, but they want to be photographed for payment. The boys at Empakai wear headdresses which distinguish them as genuine initiates, halo-like wooden frames to which are strung the soft, dead bodies of colorful, little birds like beads on an abacus. Boys compete among themselves for the most beautiful headdress by learning to stun the birds with careful aims from their sling shots so that the feathers remain undamaged.
In geological terms, Ngorongoro Crater is not a crater but a caldera, the sunken cone of a volcano which collapsed some two-and-a-half million years ago and which possibly surpassed in height today's 5896 meter high Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest mountain on Tanzanian soil. When I stand on Ngorongoro's rim and take in its vast circumference, it is a sight which I equate with only one other, and that is Arizona's Grand Canyon. The crater's near vertical walls rise 600 meters from a grassy floor. It is home to some of the last remaining Black rhino as well as a wide range of East Africa fauna, with the exception of giraffes which cannot negotiate such steep walls.
Louis Leakey believed in Olduvai's secrets. After years of patient search, Mary's 1959 find of the remains of a 1.75 million-year-old hominid she called Zinjanthropus —or "Nutcracker Man"— because of its huge molars, finally brought the gorge and the Leakeys their first research grant, and fame. In 1960, Olduvai yielded —this time to Louis— a Homo erectus skull, the closest progenitor to the Homo sapiens species which existed a mere 700,000 years ago, but which was the first of its kind to be found in East Africa. This was followed in 1963 by a skull of Homo habilis or "Handy Man", a hominid which (aren't hominids deserving of who rather than which?) lived between 1.9 and 1.6 million years ago and thought to be the first of our ancestors who used tools. "Handy Man" eventually proved to be a descendent of an earlier tool-user, an usurper who didn't come to light in Olduvai at all but in the Great Rift Valley of Ethiopia where a great many fossils have turned up - and continue to turn up - which have upstaged Olduvai's over the years. Ardipithecus ramidus ramidus came from Ethiopia, a 4.4 million-year-old hominid who became the oldest of our lost ancestors until he was dethroned by his fellow countryman, 5.8 million year old Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba. Seven-million-year old Sahelanthropus tchadensis has now overthrown kadabba.
The best time to visit Ndutu is during the wet season when the migration passes through and wildebeest, zebra and other grazers fill its woods and marshlands. Animals not known for their intelligence, wildebeest sometimes stampede across Lake Ndutu instead of going around it, drowning at times in their crazed state of self-imposed crisis. The lakeshore is littered with their skeletons.
Olkarien Gorge is a narrow cleft between two vertical soaring walls of rock where the sun doesn't penetrate. The Ruppell's griffon and the White-headed vultures nest in the craggy rock faces every March and April. Each morning, the birds leave their nests and fly out to the plains and the migrating herds of wildebeest and zebra where they locate the kills of the previous night and scavenge, and where they remain for the day, circling, watching, and waiting. Light is failing before they return home. They first appear as pinpricks in the sky, which grow in size as they descend slowly in tighter and tighter circles, until they glide into the gorge on rustling wings and into their respective niches. They are remarkably silent. On a carcass, they hiss like snakes.
Many of Natron's visitors climb Lengai, claimed by Massai as their "Mountain of God." If a 2878 meter summit and perfectly symmetrical cone of an active volcano sounds like a hike in hell, then there is the easier climb to Lengai's southern and extinct crater to consider, which is where the Maasai make their pilgrimages to pray to god Ngai for rain and children. Drought is considered a sign of Ngai's anger, as is of course an eruption of the mountain.
Accurate statistics are difficult to come by, but the Serengeti may now receive over 150,000 visitors a year. This popularity has much to do with its success in guaranteeing visitors sightings of animals on the "big five" list, although the Ngorongoro Crater offers the best chances of seeing rhinoceros in Tanzania. ("Big five" animals are rhino, buffalo, elephant, leopard, and lion, the same considered by trophy hunters to be the most dangerous "to bag.") But the Serengeti's primary claim to fame and which makes it a UNESCO World Heritage Site - as of 1981 - is the wildebeest migration and its accompanying herds of zebra - and to a lesser extent gazelle, eland and topi - the last of its kind of wildlife spectacle on the planet since we shot all the American plains' buffalo.
The Serengeti's rhythms revolve around the migration. Where you go within the large and varied park is dependent upon when you go, with the exception of the Central Serengeti. It is center of park operations for a reason. Where there is year-round water in the Seronera River there is wildlife. Your best chances of seeing leopard are often the Seronera area. The Central Serengeti has many resident lion prides too.
