Safari in Kenya and Tanzania and the Fine Line Between Comfort and Experience
Before landing in Nairobi, I have only seen the airplane vomit bag used once. That was on a flight from Mexico after a bender of a wedding weekend with friends. This time, it was on the tarmac after 16 hours of air travel, most of it through the night. Poor Oliver dutifully filled the bag without spilling a drop as we waited for the flight attendant to open the cabin doors. This would have been a bad development under the best of circumstances. However, we were also about to drive eight hours from Nairobi into the Masai Mara National Park. Then, midway through that drive, whatever hit Oliver hit Sydney as well. Both were at a roadside restaurant puking. We were all in a bad way.
That night and the first part of the following day were spent grounded at our lodge as the kids recovered. The cause could have been anything after that much air travel or the previous week in Morocco. The staff at the campground, Mara Eden, were amazing, kind, and patient. The kids actually rebounded pretty well. But we lost a day and a half of game rides, which is a bit like having tickets to the Super Bowl and never leaving the hotel lobby.
Masai Mara National Park is a relatively small protected area in Southwestern Kenya. However, it’s well known by the breadth and depth of the resident wildlife, including lions, cheetahs, leopards, African elephants, zebras, ostrich, hippos, giraffe, dozens of species of antelope, and hundreds of species of birds. But the park is best known as part of the great wildebeest migration which follows the rains from this corner of Kenya, down into Tanzania each year. Over 3 million wildebeest and another 2 million zebra make the daunting trek, famously crossing treacherous rivers along the way and dodging hungry crocodiles and other carnivores gathered with the specific purpose of eating them. If you’ve ever watched a nature documentary about Africa, you know the scene.
Our safari was in two stages, across two countries and three national parks. We spent 2.5 days touring the Masai Mara after the kids recovered, cruising overland and stopping to view all of the aforementioned, and amazing, animals. We watched cheetahs with their heads fully inside the chest cavity of a wildebeest, hungrily devouring its prized organs. We gazed at a great herd of about 30 elephants, including several babies, march across the savannah, consuming trunkfuls of grass with each, lumbering step. And we saw, and smelled, what the kids called “hippo soup,” where up to 100 or more hippos were crammed into a river bend deep enough to hold them all, submerged and cool in the dark, nasty water.
Stage two took us to a border crossing (an adventure in itself) as we left Kenya and entered Tanzania. There we spent four days in the Serengeti National Park as well as the Ngorongoro Crater Nature Reserve. The Serengeti is the Masai Mara’s bigger, more famous sibling, which also hosts the great migration of wildebeests and zebra. Serengeti means “endless plain,” and it’s here that the wildebeests come to calf by the million on fields of rich, green grasses. We were told by our guide that during calving season, the hyenas can be found lying on the ground throughout the park, their bellies bursting from feeding on the afterbirth.
Our days were similar in that we spent them in an overland vehicle on game drives, pausing and observing the world’s most amazing animals as they did their thing. One of those things is mating, which we saw a fair amount of among the various prides of lion. The 11 year-old boy in me giggled every time. You might have seen an instagram post.
An African safari is a trip of a lifetime. And our experience was no exception. However, a few days in, it was clear that this wasn’t going to be a cultural experience. We were ferried about along with other park guests, stopping at curio shops and roadside restaurants meant only for (almost entirely white) tourists. An exclamation point was added when we stopped at a Masai village for a canned, touristy program meant to show us how this proud, nomadic tribe lives. While this was their village and we did get to observe how they actually live, the whole thing was staged in a way that felt inauthentic. Without booking additional time to visit parts of Kenya and Tanzania outside of the parks, we limited our experience to viewing wildlife only. And I regret it.
After our Safari ended, we did get to spend some time wandering around the coastal Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam. This diverse and dynamic city shares as much Arabic and South Asian cultural influence as it does African. And our brief wander to find food and a few essentials proved to be exciting. However, our stay was only a brief one-day transition to Mafia Island, 50 miles off the Tanzanian coast in the Indian Ocean.
I’d never heard of Mafia Island before planning this trip. Many safari itineraries include a stopover in Zanzibar, the better known Tanzanian Island rich in both history and posh, beachside resorts. However, as I researched Zanzibar, I found several blogs about Mafia. This smaller, less developed island is home to about 50,000 residents, a world class marine park that attracts scuba divers from around the world, and the world’s largest population of whale sharks. Done and done.
Mafia delivered. The island is similar in climate to Hawaii, with beautiful beaches and rich soil that produce watermelon, papaya, mango, and bananas. However, it’s also home to a poor population that subsists on fishing, tourism, farming, and local trade. While we stayed in a lovely, gated resort, few local homes have indoor plumbing or electricity. We decided to pierce our bubble a bit and traveled around the island exclusively by tuk tuk or bota bota. Tuk tuks are like a Vespa scooter with a roof, while bota bota is just a fancy word for motorbike, or “border to border” from which the name evolved. Besides being fun to say, these are the most common forms of transport in much of the developing world. While slow, bumpy, and at least a little dangerous, traveling this way felt a lot more authentic than being ferried around in vans with AC and tinted windows.
We also spent a lot of time on the beach, which is where you find locals working on their fishing boats, repairing nets, playing soccer, or just plain lounging. As usual, Oliver made fast friendships with both kids and animals we met along our wanders.
Like our safari experience, our days in Mafia consisted mostly of incredible interactions with wildlife. All four of us took and completed a 3-day beginner scuba diving certification course, which included a couple days of open water dives in the marine park. This was a proud dad moment for as both Sydney and Oliver endured the intellectual and physical rigors that go into scuba diving. And we’ll be certified to dive at future destinations on this world tour.
We also snorkeled and swam with the whale sharks. This was simply an amazing experience. Growing up to 20 meters in length (!), whale sharks are both massive and incredibly gentle creatures. They feed, like whales, by slowly gliding along the ocean’s surface with their gaping mouths catching small fish and plankton. This makes them easy to spot as well as swim beside. Even if I had a camera good enough to capture the moment, it would not do justice to what it was like swimming alongside these huge animals. The whale sharks are why I was sold on Mafia Island over Zanzibar and they did not disappoint.
These wildlife experiences were gifts for me and the family. However, I was awakened to the fact that there are two distinct ways to travel in the developing world. One is the path of luxury, reasonably priced by Western standards if you can afford to get there. This path is nice, and aligned with the comfortable lifestyle to which I’ve become accostomed in my middle age. But this path is rarely integrates well into the people and cultures of these beautiful, but often extremely poor countries. To enjoy this path is to literally put walls and tinted windows between you and these experiences. The second path, sometimes referred to as “dirtbag travel” by backpackers, is more improvisational and budget conscious. Accommodation and local transport is crowded and less nice, and sometimes dangerous. Everything takes longer. This is how Megan and I traveled throughout Africa before kids. It’s high adrenaline travel and a lot of fun. But things can definitely go sideways.
On this journey, we are trying to strike a balance between our own perceived need for comfort and safety against the desire to lean into the many cultural experiences these countries have to offer. Most of our world tour from this point forward, with the exception of planned stops in Japan and New Zealand, will be in developing countries. Riding tuk tuks and buying coconuts from street vendors are small but meaningful steps toward growing confidence and expanding our comfort zone a bit. The occasional stomach bug won’t hold us back. Next time one of us gets sick, however, I hope it’s not into one of those airplane sickness backs.
