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The smells of the African bush can be just as powerful as the sights – wild, untampered with and fresh from nature’s butchery. Eau de dead zebra is one. At the very moment my olfactory glands detect it, my eyes clock the beast’s dainty black and white striped leg lying unhinged two metres away from the bloodied carcass.
Needless to say, this is not Werribee Zoo. I’m on safari in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park where the unvarnished blood and gore of the real-life animal world is at least as intriguing as the picture-postcard variety.
I’m here with my teenage son Digby and we stare – no binoculars needed – at the spectral scene both repelled and riveted by the poor dead zebra and the feeding frenzy surrounding it. Our marvellous Maasai guide Patita Maya, who has seen this and more a thousand times, kicks into educator mode, explaining that our striped friend was probably stalked and killed by a lion that morning. He tells us this single kill provides meat for a week for a lion, along with sustenance for the rest of the food chain.
“After the lion moved on, the hyenas had their share of flesh, and then the jackals would have snuck in for a bone or two,” he says.
Now, having spotted them circling in the distance from our safari vehicle, we have front-row seats to the cacophony of enormous griffon vultures picking at the zebra’s rib cage and fighting over the remaining stringy pink sinew, their gangly beaks clacking against bone, their wings, like graduation gowns, desperately pumping the air.
Patita says that by tomorrow the skeleton will be picked white.
Digby and I are on a one-on-one, mum-son adventure that was supposed to happen in 2020 but didn’t for obvious reasons. In the time since, Digby has turned 14 and the parameters for our safari have changed.
As Africa travel consultancy Safari Guru points out, kids aged six to nine “are suited to shorter game drives, interactive activities, and visits to wildlife centres”. Kids aged 10 to 14 “are ready for more involved experiences, such as tracking wildlife, learning about local cultures, photography”. Any older and it’s all about “full-length game drives, night safaris, and adrenaline-fuelled adventures”.
Game-on.
Our four-night safari is hosted by luxury safari company andBeyond, whose WILDchild program aims to connect younger guests meaningfully with nature and local people through bespoke itineraries. We are based at Klein’s Camp, a 10,000-hectare wildlife concession in a remote corner of Serengeti National Park near the Kenyan border.
It is more than 1000 kilometres from Dar es Salaam’s Kilimanjaro International Airport – a 20-hour drive – so we fast-track like most tourists in a small plane. After two pit stops, it touches down on dusty yellow Kogatende Airstrip, an airport that consists of a tin-roofed waiting room, water tank and a couple of picnic tables.
An abundance of wildlife is assumed in Serengeti National Park, even in the off-season before the famed Great Wildebeest Migration passes through, but we’re not expecting to see it so soon. Near the airstrip, baboons sit nonchalantly in trees, uninterested in our arrival. On our hour-long journey to the lodge, we pass blue-legged topi and herds of impala with their distinctive striped horns. It’s a good start.
Klein’s Camp lodge is perched on the Kuta Hills, overlooking the rolling grasslands and trees either side of Grumeti River. Its 10 cottages have stone walls and pointy thatched rooftops that blend harmoniously with the landscape. Our family suite – two cottages with an interconnecting walkway – is classic safari-style, with wooden floors, rugs and framed botanical prints.
Covetable polished wood travel trunks sit at the end of mosquito-net swaddled king beds, and the antique drinks cabinet twinkles with cut-glass tumblers and aged bottles of whiskey. With tipple in hand, guests can sit at the writing desk and put pen to parchment, or step outside to the porch for views across the Serengeti escarpment.
Animals big and small are known to roam around the lodge, so in the evenings we are escorted to dinner by a tall, thin beanie-wearing Maasai man whose wooden metal-tipped spear knocks assertively on the paving stones as he strides before us.
The bar, lounge and dining area are combined in a magnificent circular room with the earthy decor of wood and leather furniture, animal hides and a central copper-fluted wood fire. We read, play the East African board game Mancala and peer through the telescope to see zebra and buffalo grazing below. For dinner, we are treated to hearty meals at a table that sits cosily close to the fire.
Gratifyingly with a teenager in tow, jet lag aids our early rising, and by the time the morning light hits the acacia trees, washing the savannah in treacly gold, we are in the safari vehicle, rugged up and ready to go. Patita is behind the wheel and his spotter rides on a seat protruding from the bonnet.
They are a well-honed team, clued-up on every animal, from the golden wing sunbirds and hyenas that cross our path to the huge male African elephants ambling through the grasslands and the families of Maasai giraffes with their distinctive oak leaf markings.
Digby dutifully checks each of the animals off in a field guide, his compact long-lens camera doubling as binoculars. Patita, meanwhile, is constantly scanning for animals, stopping the safari vehicle to inspect footprints and animal scats and other signs of life. Through his keen eye we spot the vultures and our dead zebra friend, along with another standout – the placental remains of a freshly birthed elephant. The enormous, grape-red stain soaking into the dusty road has already been seen to by jackals. Next to it, the grassy bank has been flattened where the mother has nudged her newborn up and away to the security of the trees.
On day two we have yet another bloody animal encounter, this one at the village of the local Maasai community. The Maasai are a semi-nomadic, pastoralist tribe from Northern Tanzania and Kenya who still adhere to many aspects of traditional culture, including the practice of drinking cow blood.
We watch wide-eyed as Maasai men rope the beast’s legs, wrestling it to the ground before shooting an arrow into its bulging neck artery. The spurting blood is captured in a gourd bottle (and the bleeding staunched) before being poured into cups of frothy fresh cow’s milk and shared among the gleeful kids. We learn that this is a weekly treat for them, and an important dietary requirement given that the Maasai eat a limited amount of meat.
Afterwards, we are invited into one of the Maasai houses, or boma, which have flat rooftops and walls crafted from mud and cow dung. Inside, a small ray of light reveals simple cow skin bedding, a dirt floor and the glowing cheeks of a woman who cooks us a milky tea concoction over hot coals. Digby sits there with her, taking it all in.
On day three we leave the concession in search of the local lion pride. Along a straight road, we see the broad muscular backs of three lionesses, their golden coats shiny in the full sun. Further ahead, the males are stealing solo sleep in the penumbral shade, away from the rough and tumble of their cubs.
It is magazine-cover material, but it doesn’t beat the bloody thrill of our final day. A leopard has been spotted in the concession, so we venture off-road through the grassy savannah and along the river bank in search. The alarm comes from a troop of velvet monkeys whose panicky call from the top of the canopy alerts us to the leopard’s whereabouts.
And there it is, a magnificent feline creature, high up in the tree and lying languorously along a branch that looks close to breaking under the weight. Not far away: its freshly killed prey. Digby zooms in to see an impala-like steenbok, its crumpled, bloodied body hanging limply in the branches.
It’s gory and utterly captivating, another real-life animal encounter that you rarely have with a teen, and you just don’t get in a zoo.
The details
Stay + play
andBeyond cottages from $US1050 ($1613) a person, per night, including all meals, refreshments, laundry, game drives and guided bush walks. Community visits, wellness treatments and hot air balloon safaris cost extra.
For younger children, the WILDchild program includes taking part in a Maasai obstacle course that combines spear throwing, shooting bows and making a fire the Maasai way. Older children can choose from ranger-led nature walks and culinary activities.
See andbeyond.com
Fly
Flights from Melbourne and Sydney to Dar es Salaam’s Kilimanjaro International Airport in Tanzania operate daily (with a stop in the Middle East) on airlines including Emirates (emirates.com) and Qatar (qatarairways.com). From here, airlines including Coastal Air (coastal.co.tz), operate scheduled flights to Kogatende airstrip.
The writer was a guest of andBeyond.
