Sorry, No Safari

When telling friends and family that I was preparing to travel in East Africa, most people expressed their life long desires to go on safari. These individuals envisioned themselves cruising through the Serengeti or Kruger National Park, animated to witness the big five without the prisonesque quality of city zoo holdings. I adore animals just as much as the next heart-possessor, I am simply unwilling to walk so close to that wild side.

Maybe I’d have entertained the idea had it not cost $250 USD for a day trip from Maputo to Kruger, merely a few hours drive from the Mozambican capital. Had I been able to haggle the price, then sure, I would have thought about it.But then I recalled those times when, whoops, some visitors and park employees were a little bit eaten by mother nature’s impressive predators whilst sarariing. That was enough for me to put my Meticais back in my bra and be like ‘oh, hell no’.

Hey, you should have seen how I freaked out when the baboon escaped at the National Park zoo in Nairobi. Okay, maybe “escaped” is an over-statement to express that baboons are free to roam the park, but are encouraged to stay in a human-free section of the park. This “encouragement” resulted in a two story separation between the ground and the visitors, where animal fans could walk above the habitats and peer down at the furry inhabitants. Still, the intelligent little buggers manage to skip the electric wires and climb to the garbage cans to snack on discarded treats. When I saw this monstrous ape coming in my direction, I flipped a footed u-turn and ran in the opposite direction, but it wasn’t like I had any where to hide so it was rather pointless. By the time I was assured this fuzzy guy wasn’t going to do me any harm, he’d gone back to the pack, ruining my Nikon moment.

That same day, the cheetah and leopard were no where to be seen, although they were more fenced off in a section of the zoo. Their cages were humungous with ample room to escape, in my opinion. Shoot, if Tatiana the tiger broke free in San Francisco then certainly these clever felines could circumvent their little caged situations and hightail it up country. This occurred to me when exiting the park as two visitors complained about the awoled cats, the employee stated, “Well, I’m sure they’re around here, somewhere.”Most people survive their safaris. And I bet that such an excursion would make a fabulous photo album on facebook. Maybe it was the story I read about a women on safari in Zambia who pissed off a herd of elephants and had to run for her life as 50 enraged tuskers charged behind her. Perhaps it was the animal attack footage on youtube that deterred me. Or maybe I am just being cheap. But honestly, why waste so much money on safari when I could go shopping with all those buckaroos.