Tanzania: Animal Laws

Everything is stolen in the Serengeti. Hyenas steal prey from young lionesses, leopards take trophies from hyenas, maned lions from leopards, cheetahs, having no illusions about their neighbors, immediately drag everything of value to trees, and vultures, making an indifferent appearance, patiently wait for predators to lose vigilance to crush the scraps with their beaks. It’s the food that sets savannah in motion. When a premonition of drought spreads in the air, wildebeest take their first steps towards the Kenyan border. So begins the Great Migration, one of the most exciting sights on the planet.

Live African exotics

Safaris in the Serengeti National Park are usually carried out by jeeps. But another option is to go to observe the savannah from a height. The balloon floats smoothly, now and then dropping lower and slowing down so that you can see how lionesses flirt like cats, and hyenas are looking for a suitable antelope for breakfast.

In the northwest, the Grumeti Nature Reserve adjoins the Serengeti, which has its own owner. In size, the private Grumeti is the same as the famous Kenyan Masai Mara, and the Great Migration Trail passes through it. Here you can meet the same animals as in the Serengeti, and much fewer people. There are only four lodges in Grumeti, which are designed for a hundred guests. People are allowed to leave the road here, and in addition to traditional safaris, guides conduct walking tours and organize horse rides.

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Ernest Hemingway was able to give characteristics to cities and countries that were glued tightly. He called Lake Manyara “the most beautiful in Africa” and loved to hunt on its shores. Now, when both the lake and its surroundings have turned into a nature reserve, you can hunt here only for successful selfies: on the one hand a giraffe, on the other a buffalo, and behind your back a flamingo. Sometimes the lake occupies two-thirds of the reserve, but sometimes it shrinks to the shape of a pond in which flamingos stand on thin legs. The water is followed by a strip of savanna, and from it to the crevices of the mountains go tropical thickets, under which underground springs beat. In the Manyara Nature Reserve, the demography is peculiar: there are a lot of species, but few individuals. Elephants are strolling along the lake, waving their ears like flags, hippopotamuses are huddled in archipelagos in the river, dikdiki crumbs are hiding under bushes, young antelopes are measuring their strength, and lions are closely watching them from a height, which have clung to the branches of the baobab

In the footsteps of the leopard

In Tanzania, there is a very special type of travelers — those who came to climb Kilimanjaro. At the beginning of the century, environmentalists predicted that the snow on the summit would melt by 2020, but so far the old extinct volcano is holding its defenses firmly.

“The Maasai tribe calls its western peak “Ngaye-Ngaya”, which means “House of God”. Almost at the very top of the western peak lay the dried-up frozen corpse of a leopard. No one can explain what the leopard needed at such a height,” Hemingway wondered in The Snows of Kilimanjaro. Even an elephant can be found on the local slopes. As you climb to the highest point in Africa, almost all climatic zones change: you start it in shorts, and finish it in down jackets.

Zanzibar

At exactly seven in the morning, a fish market opens in Stone Town, and pre-dawn catch is shipped from boats stuck at low tide. Stone Town is the historical capital of Zanzibar, a tropical archipelago that is called the African Maldives for the snow-white sand and transparent blue-green waves of the Indian Ocean. Previously, Zanzibar was powerful and prosperous, there was a large slave market in Stone Town, and ships of merchants from Asia necessarily docked at the local port. Now traces of Persian, Arabic, Indian, Portuguese and British cultures are layered on top of each other here, like layers of plaster on white dilapidated buildings.

Zanzibar has everything that tourists expect from a tropical island: exotic fruits, jungles, an incredible underwater world and endless beaches. In the northern part, on Nungvi, the tides are less, and the eastern Padge with a flat bottom is ideal for relaxing with children, and kitesurfers still love it for the wind. However, for a special beach about