1 Boring Old Man

Lake Manyara is a shallow Alkaline Lake in a depression fed by mountain streams, very different from our Kenyan venues. It’s slopes are a forest/jungle – none of the Plains of the Great Rift. Our Lodge was exotic, perched on the escarpment above the Lake. We were halfway through the trip, and all pooped. Long drives are tiring in and of themselves. But long drives on the African roads begin to take a little piece of your soul with every bump and jolt. I think we’d have all taken a day of rest were it offered, but at 6:30 the next morning, we were off to see our third Game Park.

The drive through the forest was refreshing after bounding across the plains. There were lots of more subtle critters.

I hadn’t realized how "caged" I’d felt on the previous drives. This felt more like a stroll through the North Georgia Mountains. There were colonies of Baboons throughout the forest. By now familiar Black-faced Monkeys foraged in the brush while Blue Monkeys looked down from the treetops. There were groups of Banded Mongoose that scurried about in packs. The Nile Monitor Lizards are huge, but seem docile enough. The fresh water crabs dotted the stream by the road and the frogs sat on pads in the pools just like they do here.

The Elephants and Giraffes seemed right at home in the forest, as always, munching their lives away on the greenery.

But all this peace and serenity was not what we were going to be about in Lake Manyara. We didn’t yet know it, but we were on a hunt. There are several rarely seen animals on an African Photographic Safari. We’d already found the endangered Rhinocerous at Masai Mara. The other rare sighting is the Leopard, not because they’re endangered, but because they live in trees and are rarely spotted [pun intended]. The things we’d been told to look for were a tail hanging out of the foliage, or a dead animal in a tree [they take their kill into the tree with them]. When the radio crackled, off we went. It wasn’t hard to see where to look, since there were a number of vehicles with squinting tourists. After moving the Land Cruiser around for a while, we finally got this shot. Not much, but par for the course as Leopard sightings go. It wasn’t great, but it was the best we could do, so off we went for a picnic lunch by the lake.

After lunch, our driver, Abu, started off in one direction, but then turned around saying, "Let’s take another look." When we got there, no one was around, including the Leopard. Then Abu said, "Look!" and pointed down the road where we got this shot of the Leopard entering the forest.

It’s funny to look back on it now. Who really cares about personally seeing and photographing a Leopard [from the front]? But at that moment, the six grown and otherwise mature adults in that van thought this was about the most important thing that had ever happened. I guess it’s the rush that fueled the Big Game hunters of a previous era. Whatever drives such things, we all had Leopard fever. So off we went down the road, aiming cameras at the bush in hopes of another shot. To our delight, the Leopard cooperated by moving in and out of sight for a good distance before climbing and draping himself on a tree – lapsing back to sleep. After we’d gotten our pictures, it was our turn to crackle on the radio, and the assembled Land Cruisers rapidly convened as we drove away.