Wild Tanzania is a family adventure
FEW wildlife parks in Africa allow you to drift lazily along a calm stretch of water like something out of The African Queen and take in an incredible amount of wildlife from a boat. The Selous Game Reserve, a remote and spectacular wildlife refuge in central Tanzania, is one of them.
Last year, I took a wonderful safari here with my family, and on one of our first afternoons, we glided along a shallow lake in an aluminium-hulled skiff. There’s something serene – and a little sneaky – about seeing animals from the water. You’re not trailing behind them as they step out of the bushes and move toward their watering holes; you’re inside their watering hole.
As we floated along, maybe 100 metres from shore, a distance close enough to observe, but hopefully not disturb, we watched baboons, zebras, giraffes and gazelles head down to the lake for a drink. Palm trees on the water’s edge cast long pillarlike shadows. Behind them stood a wall of thick green bushes and thorn trees that wrapped around the entire lake. A rich silence hung in the air, broken only by the occasional chitter of a kingfisher.
The Selous’s many shallow lakes dramatically stretch and shrink with the rain. We were there just after the rains, and the lakes were swollen and full of life – especially water birds, hippopotamuses and crocodiles. I’ve been all across Africa, and I’ve never seen so many crocs, sunbathing their scaly selves on the beach, slithering around in the sediment-rich, chocolate-milk-coloured water and waiting until the last possible instant to slowly sink away before our skiff bumped into them.
I wish the Selous Game Reserve was as animal-friendly as it feels, but that would be giving you the beauty of the place without the truth. A Unesco World Heritage Site, the Selous also happens to be one of Africa’s largest hunting grounds. I know, it’s hard to believe, but gunning down endangered wildlife, including lions and elephants, is perfectly legal here, as it is in several other African game reserves. Hunters love the Selous for the same reasons I do: its remoteness and abundance of game.
If hunting turns you off, please don’t let that keep you from visiting the Selous. You probably will never come across a hunter. The Selous is enormous, nearly 32,000 square kilometres, bigger than Switzerland, and the designated hunting area within the reserve is separated from the game-viewing side by a big river. In two visits to the Selous that I made last year, I didn’t hear a single gunshot and never saw a single hunter.
About a dozen safari companies spanning the range from rustic to glamorous operate in the Selous, far less than say, in the Masai Mara, which may be one reason the Selous doesn’t draw the khaki-clad masses, at least not yet. We chose the down-to-earth Lake Manze Camp.
Our tent sat in the middle of a copse of trees and bushes, reachable by a dirt path, positioned so close to the lake that while we lay in bed we could hear hippos splashing around. Our three-day safari, which included game drives, accommodation, food, drinks, park fees, tips and getting up close and personal with a pride of lions, cost about $2,500.
Shaun O’Driscoll, a gregarious South African, runs Lake Manze Camp with his wife, Milli. Shaun is opinionated, direct, no-nonsense but also deeply empathic, a man whose mosquito-bitten legs and perma-smile reveal how much he relishes living in the wild.
“You see, we got no gates or fences,” Shaun explained when we arrived, sitting us down in the lodge’s dining area, a big thatched hut. “Anything can come in here. Lions, elephants, buffaloes, hippos, anything. You leave your tent, you look around, ‘ kay? Now, for you young guys,” he looked down at Apollo and Asa, who were watching him raptly. “No running. You got me? No. Run. Ing. You never know what’s hiding in the bush. And the last thing you want to look like is prey.” That night our proximity to nature almost felt reckless. We ate dinner outside under a sky smeared with stars, and after a tasty meal of chicken in ginger sauce, fresh rolls, rice pilaf and chocolate mousse, we walked back to our family tent, which consisted of two rooms separated by a zippered enclosure. The tent was comfortable but utilitarian – a cot each for the boys, a double bed for us, a steel basin sink, a small toilet, a shower and a couple of canvas safari chairs on the porch.
The next day, as our open-sided Land Cruiser rolled through the reserve, I was impressed by how varied the landscape was. Because of all the rivers and lakes, wide swaths of the Selous are impenetrable.
That afternoon we found ourselves in a cool forest. A light rain fell, more like a mist. It softly brushed our skin, tiny droplets sticking to the hairs on our arms. Our falcon-eyed guide, Zacharia, had found some lion spoor near the road and he was tracking it deeper and deeper into the forest. “There!” he finally said, and we all followed where his finger was pointing. Just up ahead a lioness and her three cubs wrestled on a log. We drove even closer, and Zacharia cut the engine. We rolled to a stop just a few feet away. Oblivious to us, the lions pawed each other’s heads, pushed each other off the slippery log, tumbled down and hit the muddy ground and sprang back up, training for the rigours of hunts to come. It was as if they were playing king of the mountain, but there was clearly a point to it.
What made our experience even sweeter was that we were by ourselves. So many times when you’re on safari and spot lions in action, the drivers get on the radio and, the next thing you know, several other trucks come chugging in. Here, we were the only car for kilometres.