(Practically) Fought off a Cheetah with my bare hands!

Safari....What an amazing experience.  I am really glad I had the opportunity to go to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and to the Serengeti to see some of the most beautiful animals in the world, including my favourite...The Cheetah!

So before I get to the story, I will start from the beginning.  Three of us went on safari, Jory did not come as he was on one two years ago and saw a lion kill a Gazelle and decided that he could never top that, and plus most of the safari si just driving around looking for shit, so another four days on safari for him was not necessary.  After being on one, I can honestly say it was an incredible experience...and I also never need to do another one. I wish I could post some pictures here, but they will all have to come at the end when I am home...but they will!!

Myself, Amanda and Aunty Heidi set out for our 4 day trip from Moshi.  We passed through Arusha, where we are now, and dropped Jory off at the hotel.  From the outside, it looks like a piece of crap hotel on an unpaved road (although almost every non-main road in Tanzania, and some main roads too, are not paved, so that shouldn't say much) on the outside, inside it is actually fairly nice.  When we got back Jory let us know that the hotel, and all of Arusha, has not had power for the majority of the time.  That is another story that I will talk about in my wrap up two posts from now.

Anyways, we were on our way.  Stop one was Ngorongoro Conservation Area.  Since this is not a natioanl park like the Serengeti, The Maasai people are allowed to live here and maintain their traditional way of life.  However they are not allowed to increase their population inside the NCA.  So as more people are born and families grow, a certain amount of people are required to leave the NCA to keep the wildlife-human ration stable.  They also have cattle and goats which graze the land, so that also needs to be kept in mind.  We headed out on a bumpy dirt road to our campsite.  The Ngorongoro lies around a giant crater which is the remnanats of a volcano which collapsed in on itself around 5-10 million years ago.  We learnt all this and more at the Oldevai Gorge Museum which is where humanity may have started (scientifically...religiously it started between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia{Iraq}).  There were some really old footprints dating back to Lucy's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(Australopithecus)) time which denotes the oldest living relic of humans walking upright with a big toe parallel to their foot, as opposed to that like a monkey or ape, and with an arched foot...which also means they walked upright.  Old news...haha nice pun...

Moving along...We set up our tent on the edge of our crater (ps-anytime I say we i.e. 'we set up our tent' really means that the driver and our cook did this for us) which was about 2000 meters above the crater insides, and then we (like that) drove down into the crater.  We were really excited to see some of these incredible animals that at the first sighting of a zebra...WOOO-HOOO...we made him stop and zoom the camera as far as it would go to take some pictures.  Zebra's are really cool, it is true, but they are also absolutely everywhere!  So much everywhere that that night they were walking through our campsite.  And in the Serengeti they are just everywhere also.  So one of those things which are awesome...and then not as awesome because you see them all over the place.  By the end, we were waiting to see if we could find a hungry lion to chase, catch and eat one of these beautiful creatures of near myth...for Canadians and such...

So, in the crater we saw Zebra's, Grant Gazelles, Buffalo, Warthogs, Wildebeast, Zebra's, Grant Gazelle's, Buffalo, Warthogs, Wildebeast and some Giraffe's and repeat.  They were really great to see and not at all afraid of the cars, since they have pretty much grown up with them.  So they will actually just stand in the road until the car drives up to them, and then they hop away.  Also in the crater we saw some lazy lions who were so full and lazy that they were lying out in the sun with their paws on their belies sleeping, mere meters from a buffalo, and not moving.  To be fair, nothing hunts in the middle of the day.  It is too hot.  Animals hunt in the morning and evening when it is cool, and seek out the shade during the day when it is hot.  Ands it was hot.  The crater is the only place to see Rhino's, which I was eagerly hoping for, but alas we did not spot any.  They were hidden.  In the Serengeti we are not allowed to go see them since they are endangered and being protected there.

The next morning we woke up and left Ngorongoro, stopping on our way out at the museum.  But you heard about that already, just a little out of order.  Deal with it.  We drove into the Serengeti, and as soon as you pass the edge between the two their are no more Maasai people, as they are not allowed into the Serengeti National Park.  They stay in the NCA.  Serengeti is not a desert though, it is a plains.  So during the wet season, which ended about a month ago, it rains quite a lot (although this year not as much as normal...I inquired a little, and people basically blame it on global warming/climate change, but zero people really care enough to do anything about it despite how they see it affecting their biggest tourist attraction and such an important part of the zoological world) and now the grasses are drying up, the water is starting to dry up as we get into the hot season.

That night we went to sleep early as we wanted to get up early to see what we could see, knowing that the best time of the day to see animals and to see them in action is that time.  We got up, had an early breakfast, and left the camp around 6.25 as the fog was burning off and you could start to see things.  We drove out and first went to visit the watering hole where we had seen some lions the night before (we went out the night before, I forgot to mention it, and we saw some lions eyeing some zebra's by the watering hole.  The zebra's weren't fooled though, and stayed a safe distance away.  But what a sight!  The lions had moved on though, and nothing was there.  We continued on.  We found some other cars hanging around, and it turns out there was a lazy leopard in a tree.  Leopards like to climb trees and hang out there, and in fact when they kill things they bring them up trees so no one else can eat them!  That's smart.  Took some pictures.  (it is about this point in every blog where I begin to realize I am running out of time...therefore it starts to get more and more brief...)

We also saw an elephant herd crossing the road.  About 13 of them, of all ages, crossing the road in front of us.  Also amazing!  I love elephants.  The next day they stared us down...we were in a car and they didn't want us near the babies.  After we saw the elphants, we drove to the cheetah area.  This was probably one of the most amazing things I have ever seen with my own eyes.  I have a progression of pictures where we see two cheetahs, brothers, hanging out looking for gazelle to eat.  Yumm.  I am hungry for them too.  They are standing on an anthill to get a good view of the area.  They start to walk directly at us, to cross the road and see what is on the other side.  AMAZING!  THEY ARE COMING RIGHT THIS WAY AND WE ARE GETTING SUCH GREAT PICS!  The first brother, he wanders 1 foot in front of the car and passes by.  The second brother walks in front, and stops to look at us.  He checks out the front tire, looks up at us and then...HE JUMPS ON THE HOOD OF THE CAR!!!  And staers down the driver!  Now, the Land Rover we were in has a roof that pushes open so we can stand up and get some great views and shot of the animals.  I am a little nervous that the cheetah, now on the hood, might get a bit more curious and jump onto the roof to look down at us...with no barrier...so I stand up, and quickly pull the roof down shut...and we all breathe a little easier.  The driver starts the car to see if the cheetah will jump off, but instead he growls and bares his teeth.  Big, sharp, white, chompy teeth.  But soon after, he gets bored of us and jumps off and runs away to meet his brother...whew!! Amazing.  There were some cars on the other side, dfacing us, who had some SLR cameras and we gave them our emails so that they can email us the shots they got...which they said were incredible!

(5 minutes left and they wont extend my time....rushing...)

Some other things we saw...
Elephants chasing a herd of lions away.  Elephants big...lions run away.
The same herd of lions after they had caught and killed a zebra....eating the zebra.  At first we saw about 6 lions eating the zebra, then we came back and saw one of the cubs nibbling away the left over.  Yumm...
We saw the same cheetahs again the next day hungting gazelle, but they didnt' catch any.
Hippo pool with maybe 30 hippos being lazy and stinky.
Giraffe eating a tree...maybe 2 feet away from us.  We saw many many giraffes.

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Baboons on the road.  Crocodiles, Owl, vultures, heartebeasts.

Basically, the story is that a cheetah jumped up on our car, and I fought it off with bravery, cunning and speed.  I outwitted a cheetah, and (practically) fought it off with my bare hands.  I even have the scars (no I don't) to prove it!

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Thanks for reading!  Next we go to Peace Matunda orphanage and will write again after!!

Sincerely,

Elliot S. Weinstein