SAFARI

Well, I did my little tourist gig (most touristy thing that I have ever done) at a safari zone in Northern Benin - Pendjari. It was a good experience, but suffice it to say that my type of tourism doesn’t exactly coincide with the typical connotation, the African connotation, or park regulations. Getting to the park was a story in and of itself as we got caught up in Kara before leaving 4 hours after the planned time. My version of the driving instructions was literally drive East, cross the boarder into Benin, keep driving East until you hit a really big road and then turn left (and drive until you see more animals than people) and the driver wanted me to print off a map (which not surprisingly, didn’t give much more information than that – that only took about 5 minutes, there were also some top-secret monk emails that had been forgotten about until we were about 5 miles from the boarder and had to turn around and take care of). We also spent the night in some shantitown about 100 km away from the park due to the lost time and the fact that roads in that part of Benin are highly unsafe at night (I was told that armed men set up false road blocks and then rob you for everything you’ve got once you stop). That night I also had to convince our driver that we should leave before 5 am because we were so far away from the park. My argument was something along the lines of if we leave when you want to get up, the animals will be taking their afternoon naps by the time we get there and we wont see anything. He reluctantly obliged, although we didn’t end up hitting the road until close to 6 am. We reached the park a little after 8h15 and finally made it into the park around 8h30.

The roads in the park were somewhat of a surprise as the park was currently using the dry season to level out some of the main paths. The last time I checked bulldozers, dump trucks, and levelers weren’t on the safari zone picture list. It didn’t have a true safari feel, from the imagined form, for the first hour or so until we got a little more off of the beaten path; at which point I stopped feeling like I was driving through the animal ‘safari’ of the Henry Doorly Zoo. The park was also having controlled burns to clear out some of the dead brush and that happened to be in the area where some of the major attractions can be seen. Naturally the animals were nowhere to be found.

In any case I spent every minute in the park scanning the brush for any sign of movement with my camera at the ready. We didn’t see anything for close to an hour as the first part of the park is the hunting zone and the wildlife has all but cleared out. Our guide picked out a predetermined route that seemed pretty standard, although I was slightly disappointed not to have had any say in the matter as we were basically paying him to sit in the car and tell us what we weren’t allowed to do (get out, honk your horn, drive too fast etc). After a little while we started seeing some animals. And this is when the cultural differences kicked in. Me, wanting to capture NatGeo quality photos from the passenger side of a van, was not too pleased with the speed with which we would drive and pass by potential award winning shots! Maybe I was overplaying it a little bit, but the point is clear: for someone not with a camera, when the animals aren’t doing much but grazing or standing there, all you have to do is look at them for a second, snap a quick keepsake and then move on. I managed to snap at least one decent photo of each animal we saw, but I sure was frustrated at the time. But they did come around a little bit when we saw the hippos, which none of them had ever seen before.

Overall I was satisfied with the experience (even though the major attractions; lions, elephants, leopards, hyenas, didn’t bother to make an appearance – partially due to our tardiness) and realized that I can’t get everything right on the first try. And for the way in which we went about the safari and the considerably small amount of money spent on it, I probably came out on top in the end (we paid 10,000 CFA for two double rooms at a hostel for the night and the hotels in and around the safari zone were upwards of 30,000 CFA per head – it’s not too expensive if you’ve got the money, which most of the visitors, upper-middle aged and older white folk, did) I also came to the realization that my pictures couldn’t have gotten much better under the circumstances as I wasn’t allowed to get out of the car in the first place, so my old school zoom and picture setter-upper wasn’t working for me. But I think I fared pretty well. The pictures are to the right, so I’ll let you be the judge of that.

In reflecting on the experience on the car ride home I came to the conclusion that unless you’re willing to fork out the money or happen to be in a position like mine, you’re probably better off going to the zoo. Not that I would deter anyone from ever going on a safari, because I would do just the opposite. It is an amazing experience seeing the animals in the wild, without the cages or glass in between you and them, even if the shot isn’t that great. It’s only that if you’re going to do it you might as well pull out all the stops. Go big or go home as they say.

Here is a quick list of the animals I saw in no particular order, but they are in French so you’ll have to translate some of them: hippopotami, buffle, hippotrague, waterbuck, cobe de buffane, bubale, babouin, vervet (not photographed), phacochére (Pumba), aigle pecheur, crocodile, ombrette, martin-pecheur (not photographed), and a few random birds.

Lastly, I found Rafiki! And as ironic as it would seem, I could only get a shot of his but.