גּוֹבֶה means altitude

Israel famously contains the lowest altitude on earth, the Dead Sea checking in at nearly 1500 feet below sea level.*  But what it lacks in perils of a vertical nature, it makes up for in contested elections and civil strife.  

Having committed some years ago to attend an academic conference in the country during what has now become a quite complicated moment in the nation's history, I nevertheless scheduled in some time to explore around before my professional obligations kicked in.  I wandered across a goodly chunk of the country, which to be honest did not take a very long time because it's not a very big country in tranquil times, and the constricted safe-travel boundaries of the current era further shrink the area available to a visitor.  

But even within this narrowed frame, I found ways to get myself up a little higher, as is my wont.  Mt. Carmel National Park is small but offers a green oasis with some good rock-scrambly trails high above the northern city of Haifa. This escape was among my favorite places in Israel.

I also scaled the storied heights of Masada, which gained ancient fame as a mountaintop fortress.  

The steep Roman Ramp on the west side makes for a more challenging approach than the more meandering Snake Path on the eastern side, but neither side ends up asking much of the lungs: all the ruins of palace, cistern, and dovecote up on its plateau sit at only about 190 feet above sea level--the formidable plunge down the east side is to the shores of the Dead Sea.  

Is it blasphemy to say that my main response, after my exploration of this country, was: "This is what everyone's been fighting over for 4000 years?  This unspectacular cross-breed of New Jersey and Nevada?" There are, of course, many sites of deep historical and spiritual significance to many traditions. The archeology is richly layered, recording centuries of conquest and overrun from one direction or another.  But I suppose I am left with the realization that I don't ascribe meaningfulness to any particular intersection of latitude and longitude, or think that any place is marked as significant because some event happened there.  It seems that I prefer my sublime as a fully scalar phenomenon: just make me feel tiny (as does a good peak or cliff) and I will bow down in worship.  The more human the timescale, the less holy it feels to me and the more like just another roadside attraction.

* In an interesting resonance: I saw at Everest a monument with a rock from the Dead Sea, and now have seen the corresponding monument at the Dead Sea with a rock from Everest.

Tarangire National Park

[Baobab trees store up to 35000 gallons of water in their trunks to weather dry seasons.]

The third National Park of my Tanzanian adventure, Tarangire is distinct from both the vast plains of the Serengeti and the paradisical crater of N'gorogoro, not least because its chief environmental feature is the huge Tarangire River, which defines the park's landscape and sustains its ecosystem.  The river valley draws enormous herds of zebra, giraffe, elephant, and wildebeest, and it provides a rich feeding ground for birds, birds, birds, and more birds. About 550 species of bird make their home in the riparian zone. 

I don't think I saw 550 species of birds, but I did see a lot of them, like this maribou stork fighting with a fisher eagle over some kind of fish, and the aptly named superb starling.

[Soooo many elephants!]

Here's my animal list from this NP:

Plains zebra

Maasai giraffe

Superb starling

Red hornbill

Egyptian goose

Black-headed heron

Waterbok

Harvester termite mound

Elephant

Namacua dove

Lilac roller

Weaver birds and nests

Wattled starling (on backs of zebra)

Ground plover

Warthog

Maribou stork

African fish eagle

Gray-headed kingfisher

Saddle-billed stork

Hyrax

Dik dik

Nile monitor lizard

Lion

Ashy starling

[Mama and baby giraffe]

Three National Parks and countless critters over 4 days:  I think I made the most of my time in the wildlands of Tanzania, and of my first-ever trip to the African continent.  It was like no place I've ever visited before, and I'm so glad to have had the opportunity to wander around Tanzania's literal high points and wide open spaces.  I would go so far as to say that it was worth the stomach bug that jumped on as a last-minute stowaway and accompanied me on my 25-hour travel home.  I welcome all of Tanzania's critters, giant or microscopic.

Serengeti addendum

Forgot to post my list of animals spotted in the Serengeti:

Gray-breasted sand grouse

Serval cat

Yellow-billed stork

Nile crocodile

Impala

Cheetahs eating an impala

Lion

Crested Guinea fowl

Dik dik

Grant's gazelle

Maasai giraffe

Baboon

Hippo pond with a billion hippos

Plains zebra

Wildebeest

African Cape buffalo

Black mambo

Topi

White-headed vulture

Elephant

Thomson's gazelle

Spur-winged goose

Gray heron

Blacksmith plover

White-browed coucal

Agama lizard

Tawny eagle

Marshall eagle

Dark chanting goshawk

Hartebeest

Long-crested eagle

Gray-breastfed spurfowl

Dung beetle

Hyena

White-headed buffalo weaver

Baboon

Go away bird

Warthog

Marshall eagle

Tawny eagle

Scimiter hoopoe

Serval cat

Savannah monkey

Banded mongoose

Hadada ibis

Ox pecker

Eland

White-backed vulture

Variable sunbird

Augur buzzard

All these photos were taken by my incredibly talented safari-mate, Nick.

Channeling my inner Def Leppard

And not just because of the fortuitous pun on "leopard."  I'm thinking of the chorus to their 1987 hit: "And I want / And I need / And I love / Animal."  Because if it's animals you want, need, and love, the Serengeti has got you covered.

[Endless hippos, my absolute fave critter in Africa.]

"Serengeti" means "Endless plains" in Swahili, which pretty much sums it all up.  It's about 6000 square miles of grasslands, with very few roads in very small number intruding into its grassy expanse.  Given the large numbers of visitors to the park each year, I asked my driver about why the government did not improve the roads--single-lane dirt tracks bucked with potholes, seasonal washouts, and spontaneous irruptions.  He told me that the road conditions keep out poachers.  The roads are virtually impassable unless you have one of these purpose-built Land Rovers, with extra-high clearance and snorkels for flash flooding.

[That's me on the left, out the observational pop-top. Man, I'd love one of these rides, but like the poachers, I'm priced out.]

My Subaru definitely couldn't handle the Serengeti.  But one of those Land Rovers runs to over $150,000, far beyond the socioeconomic capacities of the standard poacher.  So potential evil-doers just can't really get in there to be dastardly. 

As with the N'gorogoro Crater, limited human entry means that the place belongs to the animals. And in the Serengeti, there is a more visible predator presence than in the crater.  Lions, cheetahs, and--yes--leopards are everywhere.  People are not permitted to leave their safari vehicles because the lions are just hanging out all over the place.  Staying at the bush camp, a cluster of heavy canvas tents deep in the heart of the park, I was not allowed to walk between my sleeping tent and the dining tent without an armed guard, and the sound of lions roaring haunted the camp all night long.  It was a bit surreal, but also sublime.  

[Thwarted picnic lunch: table already occupied]

[Lions just hanging out in the tree, like big kitties. Or killer fruit.]

I spent 2 days in the Serengeti, and saw, again, a mindblowing array of wildlife.  Would I do it again?  Well, after 2 full days (12 hours+) getting bounced around in the big jeep, unable to exit the vehicle, I think I'd had my fill.  But what a revelatory landscape.  I was so amazed to see in the Serengeti a realm where human interference has been kept to a minimum, allowing the proverbial circle of life to do its thing. 

Africa's Eden

 

During a four-day safari, I was able to visit three separate national parks in northern Tanzania, each one distinct in its landscape and containing different animals.

N’gorogoro Crater, declared a friend of mine before I left for Tanzania, is a miracle, an enduring Eden.  The crater used to be a huge volcano, approximately the same size as Kilimanjaro but a little to the west, alongside the imposing wall of the Great Rift Valley.  When this volcano blew its top 2 to 3 million years ago, it created a fully contained bowl—the crater wall is uninterrupted for the approximately 120 miles of its circumference.  The big bowl is about 20 miles across, and the floor of the bowl is about 2000 feet below the crater rim. 

Because of these natural geological protections, the ecosystem inside the crater flourishes unbothered by the world outside.  Which means it contains a staggering diversity of wildlife. 

Visiting the N’gorogoro Crater presents the intrepid safari-er with so, so many animals that it’s hard to keep track.  It’s not just that there are so many kinds of animals, but that each kind is there in such overwhelming numbers. 

I kept a list of the critters I encountered in the crater:

Baboon

Great white egret

Plains zebra

Wildebeest

Ostrich

Grant's gazelle

White rhino

Thomson's gazelle

African Cape buffalo

Warthog

Red-knobbed coot

Flamingo

Black-winged stilt

Hippo

Guinea fowl

Elephant

Crowned crane

African spoonbill

Pink-backed pelican

Gray heron

Lion

Jackal

Kori bustard

Eland

Cattle egret

Taveta weaver

Fan-tailed widowbird

Hyena 

Just to be clear:  I was in this crater for maybe 5 hours. Incredible.  It was kinda like I was in the biggest zoo in the world except all the animals are roaming around free and I’m encaged in a jeep and they’re gazing at me with mild disinterest.

Stay tuned for another Tanzanian national park, and another stupidly long list of animals sighted.

 

Onward and upward

Kilimanjaro is a big pile of rocks.  Or rather, a big pile of lava.  I was surprised--though I shouldn't have been--at how the high rock-quotient translated into a low critter- and plant-quotient:  not a whole lot grows on the upper slopes of that old volcano.  

My trek took 5 days to ascend to the summit and 2 days to descend.  I think it could have been managed relatively easily in 4 days up, but I will tell you that the company with which I booked my trek really, really discouraged me from doing a 4-day ascent.  After having now completed the adventure, I suspect that has to do with how deceptively accessible the summit is.  There are a generous buttload of people attempting that mountain every day--hundreds on the way up on any given day with one tour provider or another (one must hire a guiding company to climb the mountain).  My group had 14 climbers in it, and we were just one of 5 groups on our climbing schedule just from my touring company (and there were many other touring companies operating on the same schedule).  I would estimate that 300 trekkers per day attempt the summit, maybe up to 400.  What that means is that there are a lot of unprepared, inexperienced folks giving it their best shot, and so the guiding operators try to nudge folks into a schedule that is less likely to end in either failure or medical difficulty.  

Anyway, 5 days up was more than plenty, given that 4 of those 5 days involve walking around the mountain from the west side to the summit approach on the eastern slope.  I actually found these 4 days a little...boring, with the exception of the Barranco Wall, a 1300-foot not-quite-cliff that must be climbed in order to get to the next camp.  This stretch was, by far, my favorite part of the whole week on Kili.  It's basically an unroped 5.3 up which everything must be hauled.  

[Zoom in to see the line of tiny little people on the left side, making their slow zigzag up the face]

Look at these porters, carrying....you know, metal folding tables and 20-gallon jugs of water.  Incredible.

Summit night begins at 11pm.  Summiting consists of ascending 4000 vertical feet in 3 miles, with sand and loose shale underfoot.  It was not too difficult, but it was not fun.  The hardest thing for me was not having any sleep in me at the outset, which made the 3-4am stretch feel like profound physical regret.  I was in the "fast group," and we made the first summit, Stella Point, at about 630am and the second, true summit, Uhuru Peak, at about 730am.  

And yes:  glaciers!  Six glaciers on the top of that old volcano.  I can't at this point remember all their names, but I was very happy to meet them all.

After sand-surfing back down that 4000-foot sandpile, it was another 16 miles to the mountain's base, over two days.  Through a rainforest with monkeys and beautiful flowers and a proper dumping of rain.

I'm glad I did it,  I'm pleased that it was not especially physically taxing for me.  I was the only person in my climbing group that did not take Diamox, and my unaided oxygen levels were in the high 90s the entire trip, my resting heart rate 50-60.  Those are pretty much the numbers I post at home, so altitude seems still to be a friend to my body.  

Would I do it again?  Probably not--it's just not scenic in the way that, say, the Everest region is.  But I'm super happy to have had the chance to go up this big old volcano.  And to have stayed on to safari--about which more in the next post.

A big-ass adventure

Even though my year of constant travel has ended, I'm still allowed to move around the world from time to time.  This summer, the Year of Our Lord 2026, presented me with an unusual stretch of time without responsibilities:  one of my kids is a grown person with a grown person's life and work schedule, and the other spent half of this summer fulfilling a fieldwork requirement for his degree.  Given that I didn't have to haul myself to campus or cook anybody dinner on the regular, I decided to go climb a mountain.

Welcome to Tanzania

TanzaNEEyah?  TanZANyah?  However you pronounce it, this country on the east coast of Africa is a study in contrasts.  It's equatorial, which means it has no shortage of heat.  But it also boasts glacier-rich Mt. Kilimanjaro, the Roof of Africa, which (as one might say) rises like Olympus above the Serengeti. And you know I'll go anywhere for a glacier.

[True story:  today at the august age of 55, I learned that the familiar line from Toto says "Olympus" and not, as I have thought since the song's release in 1982, "a leopress" (which I suppose I understood as a kid to signify a female leopard and which I have cleaved unto until...literally just now when I looked up the song's lyrics to find out how to spell "leopress").]

My next post will detail my climbing of the leopress. But first a few photos to give a sense of Tanzania, which manages--despite its sitting right in the hot middle of the planet--to be temperately tropical.  My first night was spent in Machame Village, which sits at about 4500 feet in elevation (more or less the same as the Salt Lake Valley floor), and it was pleasantly cool, if humid.  The villages that cluster along the lower slopes of Kilimanjaro benefit from its altitude and from the weather the mountain makes, and that allows for comfortable temperatures even as the lush landscape is dense with banana trees, avocado trees, papaya trees, and various palms.  

[Tiny little baby bananas growing inside a big purple banana flower!]

On my first day in the country, I got myself up into the green slopes of the mountain, hiking up to about 7500 feet to Materuni Waterfall:

Apparently, lots of folks swim in the pool at the bottom of these falls, but I did not.  Why?  Because freshwater in this part of Africa is home to these big-ass snails:

[Bigger than my fist, by some decent margin]

I think the technical name is not big-ass snail but Giant African Snail, but these terms seem more or less equivalent to me.  

In any event, these big-ass snails are home to the Schistosoma parasite, which floats off the snail and absorbs itself through the skin of unsuspecting swimmers, causing all manner of internal ruckus.  Nope.  I am content to watch the water fall from dry land, thank you.

The slugs around the waterfall can also claim big-ass status.