A Flamingo Takes Flight Before the Ngorongoro Crater Wall

Warning to sensitive readers: the next few posts include a few photographs and text depicting predator eating prey in the wild. If you find that unpleasant, maybe this series of posts isn’t for you.

Also, this is Part 2 of a Series, if you missed Andrew’s first post, click here to start from the beginning.

After our visit with the Maasai, Machine delivered us to a cottage resort with mosquito nets over a four-poster bed, a fireplace in every room, and flowered gardens in the surrounding grounds. We enjoyed a hot shower to wash away the dust collected while romping with the Maasai. We then retreated to a dining room with a big fireplace and a statue of a man in a pith helmet and safari gear watching over my evening Kilimanjaro brew. Pete and Jen joined us, eventually, and though Jen continued to count the days she'd been in Africa without seeing a giraffe, we were abuzz with the color of the past two days and anticipation of what the next might bring: Big Kitties?

We can only hope.

They fed us course-after-course for dinner. Breakfast was equally plentiful, this resort subscribing to the notion a fat safarier is a happy safarier - or at least a fat safarier is more likely to attract the attention of big kitties and that works for me, too.

Day 3's plan was to complete a full circuit of the Ngorongoro Crater. We started our morning at first light, Machine zooming along switchbacks shrouded in mist. We enjoy our first sighting of zebra trotting down the road dressed as they are for a black and white event. “ZEBRA!” Leslie cries out, draping her body half out the window to snap photo #1 of what must ultimately be 6,000 zebras sighted over the next week.            

We crest over the ridge of a fully intact, 360 degree crater formed by a sunken volcano. As sharp as the rise was, the descent inside was even more steep. As we dropped altitude, we could see flat terrain stretching off in every distance until it hit the other side of a vertical wall. A large lake reflected sunlight in the middle, and birds perched in cactus and acacia on the steep mountain edge.

Had there been any time, we might have wondered what we would see next, but as it was, immediately upon entering the valley, Machine stopped short. "A hyeena," He says, pointing at an animal much bigger than I expected a hyeena to be. The hyeena was surrounded by grasses, nose pointed intently in one direction. After a closer look, more hyeena waited in the wings.

"They are waiting for the lions to be finished, see?" We follow the hyeena’s gaze and Machine's pointing hand to a corner where a female lion was tucking into her morning breakfast, leftover blood on her muzzle. We all jump to our feet, heads protruding from the lifted rooftop, peering through binoculars and long camera lenses, the latter clacking with the same staccato of excitement as our racing heartbeats.

“What is she eating?” Jen asks.

“Oh, I think it is a cape buffalo, see the others standing off in the distance?” Machine points, and Pete is gleeful to deliver the first of what was to be many repetitions of the “Buffalo Sentence” - a fully formed, grammatically correct sentence using eight repetitions of just three versions of the word "buffalo” to form its meaning: the city named “Buffalo” (New York), the noun “buffalo” (the animal), and the verb “to buffalo”.

“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.” Pete recites.**

This sentence is one of the seven wonders of Pete's World, one of those rare mysteries of the universe that makes Pete's life worth living. I think he alerted us as to the existence of the Buffalo Sentence that first Christmas dinner we shared in Thailand. He wouldn't have waited much longer. And now, surrounded as he was with buffalo, he just could not resist.

We stay for nearly an hour, watching this scene unfold. The pride of lions each taking their turn with the carcass in order of rank and power. The jackals and a pack hyena wait for leftovers; the lions chasing them off when they jump the gun and try to help themselves earlier than the lions agree to share. Then, the pride of lions settle down in the shade of trees for a post breakfast nap.

By the time we'd witnessed this scene, the majority of passengers were thrilled with our decision to trek so far inland, our eyes wide and searching through the binoculars poised at our face - all but Pete. “Oh, I bet those lions were made in China, too! They are animatronics robots set to a schedule to be here first thing in the morning, aren't they, Machine?"

Machine chuckles.

“You called ahead and ordered them in, didn't you?" But even Pete's Skeptic's Inquiry was delivered with the cheer of one so taken with the quality of animatronics, it almost wouldn't have mattered.

Machine chuckles again, "Ready?”

We confirm we are ready, and he shoves the Land Cruiser into 1st gear.  We spend the day meandering the rutted dirt roads between Machine's promises “next we might see...” and the satisfaction felt for each box ticked.

“Oh, Machine! I don’t believe it.” Pete says. “Maybe they aren't animatronic, but I think there are handlers just over there.  You call them in and they let the animals out of their holds. Isn't that right?” Pete presses on.

Machine just chuckles at him again.

We were all starting to suspect foul play until we perch atop a bluff overlooking the valley of the crater, straining our eyes for the elusive and very difficult to find rhinoceros.

 "There he is!" Machine says. Machine gives us directions by which we swing our binoculars wide to see.

“Do you see it?" Machine asks.

“No....”

“He's very far away, by that stand of trees. Now, do you see it?”

“No....no...?" zooming in as far as my binoculars take me I say, “oh, maybe...” I see a speck that might be shaped like a rhinoceros. Or, might just be a rhinoceros shaped rock.

“Machine, could you call your people and order that rhinoceros to be let loose just a bit closer?” Pete requests. We eat our lunch staring out at rhinoceros rock.

After lunch, we follow the twisting dirt roads out to the marshes next to the big lake where we watch pink flamingos flutter around among zebras and wildebeests.

“So many Wildebeests!” we marvel.

Machine huffs at us. “This is nothing, wait until you get to the Northern Serangeti.”

We had just settled into the rhythm of a wandering lollop when a shift in the texture of the grass blowing sideways in the wind catches my eye. I throw my binoculars up and see in the distance a rare black maned male lion.

“Black Maned LION!" He stands and stretches just like Katherine Hepburn would do, tipping his hips skyward and stretching his toes before his lowered face. Then, he is on the move. Machine speeds up and we bounce over rocks and bumps to reach the lion before he walks too far away. 

“Nice big Kitty!"

As the sun falls lower in the sky, we are still poised through our looking glasses, our enthusiasm little waned over the twelve-hour day. “We must go, we aren't allowed to stay in the park past dark,” Machine says. Looking at the crater walls in the distance, it was easy to see Machine had waited until the very last minute to stopper the flow of our fun. "Ready?” he asks.

Reluctant but resigned, we say "ready," and with this Machine lays his foot to the pedal in manner of a rally car driver. Floating through turns, launching across bumps and lumps, we speed across the crater floor, wheels touching dirt only when strictly necessary.  All four of us scrabble around to latch our seatbelts across our hips before we take flight out of our seats and through the open roof hatch. Leslie's eyes are wide and she white knuckles the arm rests either side of the chair she occupies. The engine of the cruiser roars, and Machine gears it forward to accelerate all the further until we hit 50 miles per hour, throwing dust in our wake. I marvel at the mechanics of a vehicle that can take this type of speed on this type of terrain, until we slide to a halt to let a herd of elephants come through. We creep along at the elephants pace, only to turn the corner and follow their train into the driveway of our hotel for the night. A wild zebra stood in the yard chewing the soft landscape grass.

It’s cold at this elevation, and each of our rooms come with a fire stove and a basket of wood. Emergency whistles hang next to a sign that explains you should not leave your room alone for any reason, lest you be eaten by one of a variety of predators that stalk through these parts. You may, with due haste, make your way through the corridor and over to the dining hall, so long as you make no major detours on the way.

Machine joins us for dinner. “Did you have a good day?” he asks.

“Yes, but what about giraffes?" Jen reminded him.

“Tomorrow, tomorrow!” he assured her.

“Put a call in tonight, order the giraffes!" Jen says.

Then Pete jumps in to ask the question we were all wondering: “I have to ask, is Machine your real name?"

Machine laughs and explains, “No, in a prior life I was a car mechanic. I gained a reputation for changing tires faster than anyone else.  They called me “Machine,” and I hated it! But, the more I resisted it the more everyone called me that, until it spread all through the city I lived in and everyone started calling me Machine. My mother asked me, ‘why is everyone calling you Machine? Your name is Joseph!' I tried to explain, but she still hates it."

"Ah, so your mother still calls you Joseph?”

Machine nods, “Yes, she still calls me Joseph. But, everyone else calls me Machine."

“All right, then.” Pete says.

We'd just finished our cabbage soup course when I realized I had to abandon my post and return to the room to suffer what seems to be the requisite bout of food poisoning that accompanies any once in a lifetime experience I place on my schedule. When Leslie returns from dinner, I'm huddled under a pile of blankets with the fire stove warming the room. “It must really be bad,” she says. “you left behind half your beer."

I groan. Woe. Woe is me.

We make a call to our Doctor-On-Call, Leslie's childhood physician and father of a friend, to gauge whether I'm two or only three steps from death's door. He told me I'm probably still three steps away, but delivered news even worse than that: “At the risk this is acute pancreatitis, no, and I mean absolutely no. more. Alcohol. until you can get closer to medical care." Humph.  See if I call him again! I fell asleep to enjoy an hour and a half's slumber before our 5:30 a.m. wakeup call at which I arrived, not bright eye-ed and bushy tailed by any means, but at least alive and kicking. I nibble toast and one scrambled egg for breakfast.  Then, our friends pour the shell of my spirit into the back seat of the Land Cruiser, giving me the chair best for reclining. And, we are off. 

“Which big cat do I get to see today?” I ask Machine.

** If the Buffalo Sentence is driving you crazy, here is a cheat to try to understand exaction what is going on: “Buffalo buffalo (the animals called "buffalo" from the city of Buffalo) [that] Buffalo buffalo buffalo (that the animals from the city bully) buffalo Buffalo buffalo (are bullying these animals from that city).”

Safari Adventure Posts to be continued…