Beautiful Bokeh

What Leakey Saw

Or, why I brought only dubious antique cameras to one of the best photo opportunities in the world.

I don’t know what cameras the Leakeys carried with them during their research in Tanzania in the 50s, but it is rumoured that Dr. Leakey complained bitterly about faulty bellows ruining his photographs.

Leakey Camp at Olduvai Gorge, mid-50s

Let me begin by explaining ‘what the hell I am thinking’ since that is an inquiry I have received several times about this matter.

I stomped my foot on the ‘real film only’ issue several years ago, just as digital kits started getting good enough to take proper photos and inescapably joined the endless technology race track to which we have all grown accustomed with our computers, televisions and toothbrushes. I am impressed with these technological advances in photography, just as I am impressed with my MacBook and new printer and the sonic toothbrush that keeps my teeth clean. The digital camera thing, however, doesn’t do it for me. I want a box with film in it and a little iris that gets bigger and smaller at my command. I understand this. I don’t understand how autofocus and vibration reduction works; it’s like black magic. I don’t know why suddenly ‘white balance’ is something to pay attention to and getting it right has critical impact on how your images turn out. I am sad that four gigs of memory and 60 shots in ten seconds have made the Decisive Moment irrelevant. In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit to conceding the inconvenience of a wet darkroom. I have a proper lab do all my processing and I handle the post-processing and printing in a digital darkroom with a fancy-pants scanner and printer. It works okay, but I definitely feel the pain of some lost resolution and other, intangible film qualities by finishing digitally. It hurts, but I am lazy.

My ‘film only’ rule evolved into a ‘classic cameras only’ rule, which in turn has fueled the growth of a steadily expanding collection of boxes with film in them. There is much discussion about what makes a camera classic. My benchmark used to be “before WWII”, then “older than I am”. Now it is a vague “anything before 1980 that is not an SLR and does not require batteries” category that permits me to buy nearly any contraption that captures my fancy and doesn’t upset my bank account. A few of them suck. Some take obsolete film that is now prohibitively expensive. I truly love them all.

When we decided to go to Tanzania I knew I would be using my old film cameras. Chris has a fancy-pants Nikon kit with monster lenses and all the aforementioned voodoo technology that enables a photographer to capture the bits of zebra fur clinging to a lion’s tonsils. He is damn good at using this kit and takes beautiful photos; I knew I could count on him to shower us in scores of stunning National Geographic style images. Me? Not so much. My cameras are more the “Hemingway got drunk in Kenya and rolled over on the Kodak again” variety, and I love them for that. I love the grittiness of film and the way sometimes no matter how careful I am the results still aren’t in sharp focus. I love the limitations: Inaccurate or nonexistent rangefinder, few (or two!) apertures, the expense of film and slow, one-at-a-time-then-wind shutter release that makes me take care, think about each shot and wait for the right moment. I love that for some reason, inexplicably, shots taken with my cameras look like they were taken with a vintage camera. Do I get frustrated and miss some awesome shots because I can’t take bursts or because the film winder is hung up or I have done something stupid? All. The. Time. Mostly the something stupid part. Do I also sometimes get some pretty good shots because I’m not carrying a hand cannon and no one notices I am taking their picture, or because they are interested in my crazy antique, or because I am patient and sneaky as hell? Absolutely. The lions don’t give a shit, but it sure can make a difference with the humans. Knowing I have fewer ‘chances’ makes me thoughtful about every time I press the shutter, even for landscapes or trees or stickerbushes or hippos.

When CW was busy fussing with with his giant lens to capture the elephants that would be only specs to my cameras, I got to watch them at my leisure and up close with kickass binoculars; no pressure. Or I could shoot the landscape, the ugly bird on the roof of the truck, and Chris at work with his kit. In fact, I wonder if I maybe got to actually see more stuff than he did.

CW near Lobo Lodge,Serengeti. Agfa Clack.

Hunting grounds, dry lake bed in the Serengeti. Voigtlander Perkeo.

I deviated a little from the cameras I originally planned to take. The Retina was left behind in a huff, and the Clack made the Holga seem redundant. A new acquaintance on Photo.net, Minh Nguyen, generously lent me a 616 Kodak he had converted to 120 format and it was so marvelous that I have sent him my own 616 to convert.

The verdict:

Agfa Clack: Truly a box with film in it. We took both horrid and great photos together, as usual. No regrets.

Serengeti Hippo Pool, Agfa Clack

Voigtlander Perkeo: I really love this camera and it performed as well as I allowed it to. It’s new to me so perhaps we need to get to know each other a little better, and I clearly need to practice my “squint and wing it” method of range finding. The Perkeo is beautiful. Hot, even. I am in love with it but we do not yet understand each other.

Serengeti,Voigtlander Perkeo

Yashica 44: This was a sure thing. It works pretty much just like my YashicaMat but is soooo little and cute and fun to use. Its small size magnifies its stealth capabilities; almost no one notices when you are shooting from the waist. The only drawback is not having a 127 mask for the scanner so it’s a trick to get the negatives digitally archived- someday I’ll fabricate something.

Yashica 44

Converted Kodak 616: Surprise hit! Minh’s loaner arrived the day before our departure. I love these old folders, and Minh’s is much nicer than my (currently useless) 616. This thing makes MONSTER negatives at 6x12cm. Amazing. It was so much fun I am sending my 616 Jiffy to Minh for conversion. It’s not as nice as his, but will be good fun.

Serengeti, Kodak 616 converted to 120 Panorama

-brf

St. Patrick's Day Parade

Usually we hide from anything to do with St. Patrick's day because it's been our experience that most people who celebrate it in the states aren't, in fact,
Irish, and are only looking for an excuse to carouse and drink all day. But the fact that there is a large contingent of people in St. Paul who are of genuine Irish decent made it seem worth checking out the parade.

Naturally there were tons of annoying overgrown frat-boy posers present, but that was more than made up for by the far more interesting "real" Irish who were all letting their green hair down. We also loved that though it was a parade, there were no floats to speak of; in fact, it was mostly just thousands of people walking down the street together for seven blocks. They were all dressed up festively for the occasion but so were the spectators so it was hard to tell sometimes who was in the parade and who wasn't.

Another cool thing about parades that I hadn't thought about was that since the spectators all have cameras and all the paraders were kind of "on exhibition" by definition, it was easy to get candid portraits. No sneaking required.

Days 4-11: Bunda

Much to my relief, my parents, as it turns out, do not live in a tiny grass hut. Seriously, I really had no idea what kind of living conditions to expect, but I definitely was not expecting them to live in a big, nice house with drinkable water, a normal kitchen and two bathrooms (one with a huge tub). I also had no idea their property was basically a large multi-building compound including several cabannas for visiting guests (we got to say in the house proper on a bed my mom had custom made to be long enough to fit me :).

One of the cabanas for guests.

There's also a schoolhouse, where my Mom teaches kids in direct competition to the local school system (where the teachers cane the kids. Eeek). There's a hut specially made for a giant hammock, and various other buildings whose purpose wasn't explained. They have a large staff as well. I'd heard about this, and wasn't quite sure how I felt about it until I saw the real situation. The people who work for my family literally love them, and feel very much part of the family. It was awesome seeing them giving my dad shit in swahili all the time, and laughing at his bad jokes...it's pretty cool. Also very reassuring since it's obvious they'd do anything for them if something bad happened.

The village itself is very safe which was also reassuring, but I did learn that it's not entirely safe late at night and especially on the weekends when people have been drinking. Apparently these are the circumstances which encourage "thieves armed with machetes" behavior. Also to be considered is the villagers' tendency to "collect" things. No one considers it stealing; if a person needs a thing and that thing is just sitting there for the taking, one would be crazy not to take it home, right? As a clearly prudent precautionary measure, the Wiggins compound is surrounded by not one, but two fences, forming a kind of dry moat. But the coolest part is that at night, they let the dogs run around in that perimeter (evidently dogs are a really large deterrent in that part of the world, even the slobbering playful kind like these) and they have a security guy named Sampson who patrols the perimeter all night long armed with a fucking handmade bow and arrow. No kidding. He also has a hellofa badass look about him which, by itself, would probably cause a would-be hammock thief to drop his machete and bolt.

Bunda the village wears it's poverty on it's sleeve for sure, but there are some really big differences between poverty here and poverty I've seen elsewhere. A lot of poor places are filled with really cranky, pissed-off people who just radiate oppression and bitterness. I'm not judging them; I know I'd definitely be like that if I was living in a slum below the poverty line too. For some reason you don't see that in the people in Bunda at all. They are all incredibly easy-going, visibly happy and content, and even though their lives are difficult they honestly seem to really be enjoying them. The children are even happier and seem incredibly optimistic.

Being the only white people in the entire village (aside from my parents) made us beyond conspicuous. It was palpable everywhere we went, way more than what I felt in Japan. It made getting candid shots very difficult, especially since the middle-aged adults (especially the women), aren't at all keen on getting their photo taken. Part of the problem was that we hadn't done our homework and learned enough swahili; definitely a mistake we will correct the next time we go. The kids loved it though, and the older folks were very accommodating and good-natured as long as we were respectful; in fact there is a separate, more gracious greeting in swahili for older people and they clearly appreciated our butchering attempts to use it.

One trick we discovered to get around the candid shot problem was that our favorite bar in town (ironically, the "Yankee Hotel & Bar") had these outdoor booths that were like little thatched-roof huts with small windows so we could sit in there hidden in shade, sipping our Kilimanjaro beers with our new local friend Thomas (not everybody has swahili names), shooting out the little windows. It was like a kind of hunter's blind and worked great!

Brenda shot John shooting some smirky children from our "blind"

We still definitely missed out on tons of opportunities because we didn't know enough swahili. Next time. But even so, we had an incredible time in the village and of course it was fantastic hanging with my family again. They were also meeting Brenda for the first time and that went great, but I knew it would. The best part about the entire trip has to be the fact that they are so obviously happy and loving life there, especially John. I was really nervous when they moved but I feel a lot better now that I've seen it first hand.

Day 3: Serengeti North

The third and final leg of the safari would be the longest, and take us all the way from Lobo Lodge to my parent's front door in Bunda. For some reason, maybe because we'd already seen so much stuff, and partly because we knew we would ultimately be leaving the animal areas and driving to my parent's village, our expectations for photo opps were pretty low. We were wrong. Tons more great areas, lots of yelling for Mashuka to stop, and two incredible highlights: First, we found a "small" herd of elephants (around 50 we think) in a little clearing that made for incredible shooting. I think I shot an entire card in that one spot. Things did get a little scary when a huge bull flared his ears and yelled at us. He looked totally pissed off. Mushaka backed away and explained that he'd had a really bad experience with an pissed off bull charging and ramming the vehicle (!!) so we agreed, time to go.

The second highlight (maybe the highlight of the whole safari) was when he took us to a hippo pool, so called because it's filled with scores of gigantic hippos who never ever leave the pool, except at midnight to come out and eat some grass. In spite of how dangerous the hippos are, it was ironically the one place we were allowed to get out of the rover and walk around (as long as we stayed 5 meters from the pond edge). It's because of the hippo's badassness that made that possible because predators won't go near the pond.

The hippos were incredible. Brenda found a rock >5m from the edge to sit on and I set up my monopod and shot and shot. I think I must have shot 4gig of hippos, no kidding. They were super active, fighting each other, chasing off birds, stomping around in the mud...it was awesome.

When we finally emerged from the Serengeti's north checkpoint, we were alarmed to discover we were now only 20 minutes away from my mom & dad's place. Mashuka started to close the roof, but I told him to leave it up and we rolled into the driveway with me standing up & shooting. My dad loves a good entrance.

Day 2: The Serengeti South

After a nice breakfast we went out to find Mashuka wide-eyed and ready to get going. We packed up and headed north. The plan was that we would enter the Serengeti park itself today and end up at a lodge which is nestled into an enormous boulder. There were many hours of driving between the lodge on the Ngorongoro rim and Lobo Lodge so we settled in for quite a long, bumpy road trip. It would be a while before we even reached the entrance checkpoint to the Serengeti park so we got comfortable, taking in the scenery with the cameras packed up. But suddenly Mashuka took a hard left off the road onto a kind of overgrown trail headed for a forest of some kind. We just trusted him of course...he knows what he's doing. We left the grassy plains and entered a weird little forest filled with alien-looking thorny trees and plants. It had a really cool feeling to it. There were some zebras hanging out in there among all the thorns that we made him stop for. But finally we emerged into a wide open area that was clearly a (mostly) dry lake bed of brilliant white, cracked mud. No road or trail at all now. Mashuka slowed waaaaay down and started scanning the trees, dirt and grass patches for something. We passed skeleton after skeleton. These were somebody's hunting grounds. We took the clue and unpacked the cameras. Finally he stopped the rover, scanned the trees with his binoculars and then pointed. We couldn't see anything. I scanned the general direction with my telephoto and holy shit, there was a lioness up in a tree, digesting a recent meal in the shade.

Mashuka wasn't yet satisfied so we let him do his tracking/spotting thing a while longer and the next thing we knew we were stopped again, and he was pointing at a group of five or six cheetah. Unbelievable. We were staring at a cheetah family violently devouring what we think was once a gazelle, though it looked less like a gazelle and more like a giant pile of bloody gore.

All but two were eating. Mushaka explained that those other two were guards, stationed to scan for scavengers or other predators who might want to horn in. The guards were all-business, scanning left and right while the others ate. It looked like they were watching a tennis match. Finally it was their turn, and one of them grabbed a huge hunk of gore and trotted off to enjoy it in peace.

We could have watched the cheetahs all day but finally Mashuka suggested we get going and he got us back to the original dirt road and we were off again. We didn't pack our cameras back up because we kept seeing stuff and making him stop. Hawks, more zebra, a couple of gigantic vultures fighting over some scraps of a zebra carcass, all kinds of cool stuff.

By the time we reached the southern entrance check point for the Serengeti proper, we'd completely forgotten that we weren't already in it! The checkpoint is a kind of rest-stop; a tiny oasis of civilization at the bottom of a small hill. Mushaka pulled the rover into a long line of other rovers, and trotted off to take care of some paperwork so we took our lunches over to some picnic tables and ate with the other safari tourists. A large, ruddy-faced British man looking a little silly in his full-on "safari outfit" asked us if we'd "had any luck". We weren't sure what he meant. "With animals I mean. Have you seen any exotics at all?" he clarified. "Uh...yeah, tons." we told him. We rattled off some of the morning's highlights and he was dumbfounded and more than a little skeptical. So far all his car had seen was zebra and wildebeests (which it turns out are fucking everywhere btw). I showed him the in-camera previews of some of the shots and his skepticism turned to annoyance & anger directed toward his driver. Once again we were seeing that we were not only lucky to have a vehicle to ourselves, but that my dad had arranged for us to have a truly amazing guide.

The rest of the day we continued trekking north through the park, and it more than lived up to its reputation. Right away we saw a migration of thousands of wildebeests; in fact we had to pass through them, causing some to freak out about being left behind and awkwardly sprint right past the car, too close for my long lens. Then we started seeing so many as-yet-unseen animals (elephants, giraffes, etc) that the more common guys like the zebras & wildebeests got demoted to the point where we stopped asking to stop for them. They were dead to us.

The whole rest of the day we couldn't have averaged more than 10mph because we could never get very far before we'd see some awesome shooting opportunity. At first it was a little awkward jumping up to shoot; brenda and I getting tangled up with each other as we scrambled to get the sandbags in place and to get into shooting position but eventually we found a good system and got into a nice rhythm. Check the slideshow link at the bottom for the results of all that.

One disappointment we had the day before was that we completely missed the evening light due to the sprint to keep from getting locked in the crater (we still wonder what would have happened if we'd been late. Would they seriously have closed the gate and leave us to fend off the lions all night?). But we weren't on a schedule today so we asked Mushaka if we could try to time our arrival at the lodge with sunset. He gave us his patented smile and his patented "noproblem" (he says it like it's one word). It turns out that was a great idea because we ran into some elephants and giraffes in perfect lighting late in the day, and he got us to the hotel 2 minutes before the sunset deadline. Like I said, he rules.

The lodge itself was spectacular. It really was kind of embedded in a gigantic rock formation consisting mostly of a single huge boulder. We were very impressed. Far less impressed though with the character of the typical safari tourist we met. Lots of Brits and Germans, and most of the ones we met were snobby, loud, and outright rude to the lodge staff (who were actually amazing by the way and deserved none of the shit they were being given). I'm used to being embarrassed to be American but this time I was embarrassed to be a white westerner.

Day 1: Ngorongoro Crater

When we set out in the morning with Mushaka, we didn't realize that we'd start seeing AMAZING stuff IMMEDIATELY.

A structure just outside Pete's front gate.

Seriously, we were sitting there in the rover, trying to act cool. But my GOD every single thing we passed was an unbelievable photo opp but I was too embarrassed to start asking our new guide to stop every 10 feet for another photo before we had even left the Arusha area, which I'm sure he didn't even consider remotely insteresting. In fact that's one thing I loved about Mashuka. We could tell right form the start he had a kind of personal mission to get us in front of the best animals Tanzania had to offer, and nothing else mattered.

Eventually we made it to the Ngorongoro Crater itself. This isn't a crater in the normal sense. When I first heard about the "crater," being a sci-fi geek I obviously assumed it was made by some huge asteroid. Its real explanation isn't any less interesting: The crater was formed as a result of a gigantic volcano eruption. What's left is absolutely fascinating. An almost circular ring of a large mountain (which includes a rainforest) surrounds an immense plain, containing both salt water and fresh water lakes and a HUGE amount of animals.

The word "crater" also sort of suggests a big hole in the ground. That's not the case here. Since it's really an enormous hollowed-out-volcano, it's more like a circular mountain surrounding a HUGE flat plain with enough variety of sustenance to sustain a very large assortment of animals: Herbivores and the plants they eat, the carnivores who eat them, etc. All in a huge bowl in which you can drive around safely (as long as you don't get out of the vehicle).

Getting into the crater involves an incredibly dangerous-seeming drive up to the top of the ridge, during which we discovered that the outside of the rim is actually a literal rainforest. Bizarre. Sadly, I have no photos of that because I spent the whole time holding on as tightly as I could to anything resembling a handle inside the land rover. But it turns out that the trip up the rim was nothing compared to the perilous drive down the other side. The "road" we were on made the road to Pete's place seem like an interstate higway. It was during this descent into the crater when Brenda and I realized just how talented Mushaka was with a vehicle. He is the Michael Schumacher of you-will-die-if-you-fuck-up dirt road driving.

Once we got to the bottom we had the entire crater to explore, which we did. Mushaka popped the lid of the rover so we could stand up to take pics, and we went out in search of crater wildlife. We weren't disappointed. It also became very clear very quickly what a huge deal it was to have our own private vehicle/driver. We saw some other vehicles crammed with tourists, none of whom looked like the kind of people with whom we'd want to be crammed (this gets confirmed later in the day). And if we wanted to stop, we could stop. And we wanted to stop a lot. There was no potential for friction with the other passengers, since there were no others.

We spent the rest of the day driving all around at the bottom of the crater shooting all types of animals. There were billions of zebras. Billions of wildebeests.

Mashuka was able to find us some lions, one skulking cheetah, and all sorts of bizarre looking birds. Mushaka seemed very pleased to have been able to find us a Black Rhino to photograph even though it was EXTREMELY far....at the absolute limit of the longest lens I had with me. Brenda had to be satisfied with watching it through binoculars as it was far beyond the reach of any of her antique cameras. The Black Rhinos are extremely rare (there are only 20 left in the world). Unfortunately, the Rhinos are so interesting to people that it wasn't long before there were over a dozen safari vehicles muscling in trying to get close enough for a look. Funny thing is that the rhinos were very far out and most of the other safari vehicles were lousy with rich, snooty Europeans who weren't armed with anything more than regular point-and-shoot digital cameras. I imagine they were pretty disappointed when they got home to look at their rhino photos that turned out to be just tiny specs.

We watched the two graze for a bit, and after a while a brave wildebeest walked straight up to them and tried to stare down the big one, ultimately deciding the best thing to do would be to get the hell out of there. The rhino didn't have to do anything but stand there looking like a bad-ass, which he did very well. I think he can't help it in fact.

The whole time we were inside the crater there was a really strange sense of scale that's hard to communicate. We were never unaware of the fact that we were basically at the bottom of a gigantic natural bowl, but the bowl was so gigantic that not once did it seem like we were in a confined space. The fact that the backdrop to the incredible animal activity was a huge mountain no matter which direction we looked: 360 degrees of mountain backdrop is more bizarre than you can imagine.

We had lunch at a pool where hippos and crocodiles live, and there is huge tree there decorated with wildebeest skulls from the corpses of croc kills. Unfortunately the hippos weren't cooperating with us and not one of them was willing to come out, or even to have the decency to give us a yawn.

The lunch area was also filled with even more bizarre birds who wanted a free meal. Most of them were disgusting looking and very rude.

As we left the lunch area, Mushaka asked us how we felt about what we'd seen in the crater and we gushed about all the awesome animals and scenery, but admitted we were hoping to see an elephant. We'd heard there was a very old elephant in the crater with enormous tusks (my dad had told me about him). Mushaka explained to us that the problem was that the gate at the top of the ridge closed at 6pm and it was already 4, and we were a little more than 2 hours from the top. Not much we could say about that so we held on tight and let him drive furiously toward the road out of the crater. But then out of the blue, just before we started the climb back up to the ridge, the elephant we were talking about just kind of appeared before us. He was AWESOME. We knew we had to keep bookin' so we didn't say anything, but when Mushaka saw him he slammed on the brakes and told us to "go." We knew we had a chance to shoot so we didn't waste any time and shot like crazy.

Mushaka let us shoot the elephant for several minutes before patiently explaining that we really had to go NOW. We popped back down into our seats and held on tight again as he sprinted back up the most dangerous road I've ever been on about twice as fast as he'd driven down it. We passed a couple of other safari vehicles which reassured us that at least we wouldn't be the last out (one had blown it's clutch on the steep slopes). He made it to the gate by 5:58 and we all whooped and pumped our fists in triumph. Mushaka is a very humble guy but he couldn't help seeming secretly proud of what he'd pulled off. Seriously, he rules.

Once at the top, it was only a few minutes before we were at our lodge which was positioned right on the rim of the crater. We had dinner but only a couple drinks because we were so exhausted, partly from the day's activity, and partly from jet lag probably. We drifted off wondering what the next phase had in store for us....two long days of travel straight through the Serengeti proper.

Tanzania: The Arrival

It was dark when we landed at Kilimanjaro airport. I was hoping to get a glimpse of the famous mountain on the way down so I was a little disappointed but Brenda and I were both so very relieved to be finally done with the traveling (at least the boring part) that nothing mattered very much and we felt great.

No jetway! We got off the huge Airbus by walking down a vintage mobile staircase like the Beatles and Elvis used to do. Sweet! The warm air felt amazing. It was below zero when we left home in Minneapolis. The electricity in the whole airport went off twice while we stood in a daze waiting for our luggage to show up, and each time that happened all the other passengers yelled “WHOOOOOO!” really loudly for some reason. No idea what was up with that. Maybe they were all punch drunk from travel too but it added yet another layer of surreality to the already strange fact that the power in an international airport kept failing. And that we were in fucking Africa.

To be embarrassingly honest, I actually had a bit of anxiety about the fact that our one and only ‘plan’ was to ‘meet my dad’s friend Pete at the airport’ with no backup plan. No Plan B. My parents live 3 days north of the airport (by Landrover, through the entire length of the Serengeti....you can’t exactly take a cab). Add to that the fact that I’ve never had good luck calling them by cell phone and that there’s very little English spoken there, and you get a situation where Plan A better fucking work.

Turns out that Pete (we knew what he looked like from the pics we found on the web) wasn’t there in person but thankfully we finally noticed a serene beautiful smooth-skinned man with a sign that read “Chris Brenda Pete O’Neal” in very neat lettering. So we approached him and he smiled a big “everything’s fine, come with me” smile and loaded our luggage into a van of some unknown brand with the logo of Pete’s place on the doors. As far as we could tell, the driver spoke absolutely no English, and we were tired anyway so we didn’t talk much even to each other on the bumpy drive over unpaved “roads” from the airport. It was unbelievably dark. There is almost no light pollution even from the nearby town of Arusha and no streetlights whatsoever, so everything we saw was illuminated either by the moon or by the creepy flickery fluorescent lights of decayed gas stations or unidentifiable structures as they passed by the window. A couple of times, our driver would leave the road and roll up to an unbelievably scary building that we feared might be “Pete’s Place” but each time, he just said a few words to someone and then got back on the road. Whew.

Finally, we were waaaaay off the main “road” and bumping our way along what has to be the worst road I’ve ever been on in my life at about 5mph (it was that bad). It was completely black outside. Nothing but trees and we could barely even see those. But after a while, from out of nowhere, a huge colorfully painted wall appeared. The van stopped and the driver honked; we perked right up. The wall opened somehow, evidently it housed a gate that was invisible until it opened, and when we slowly entered, we saw a half dozen people bearing torches and they started signing loudly and dancing and leading the slow-moving van as we entered what was clearly some kind of huge compound. They were dancing and singing for us. Wild! The surreality had reached a new level. Finally the van stopped and we were ushered out and it was clear we were not to fuss with our baggage, but were instead intended to join the parade of torch dancers as they continued deeper into the compound. We followed them grinning like kids until finally the man who we instantly recognized as Pete O’Neal emerged from the shadows, walked up with a huge gold-thoothed smile, shook our hands and welcomed us.

Before the trip, we’d learned a lot about Pete. We knew all about his exotic past, that he had been a Black Panther in the 70s, that rather than face the inflated charges of what should have been a minor offense, he chose to flee the US to Africa where he’s lived in “exile” ever since.

Pete in his former life in the 70s

We knew what he looked like now from pictures online and the video clips we’d seen of the documentary that was made about him. We still weren’t prepared for the larger-than-life character who greeted us with the torch dancers. He was simultaneously refined, intimidating, charming, soothing, and with no more than a handshake and a few welcoming words he made us feel like we belonged there. We instantly wanted to be his friends.

The torch-dancing welcome walk turned out to be merely the prelude to a full-on high-octane African dance production that had been arranged just for us (I suspect my dad had a hand in it). We sat in a bar with no walls and a thatched roof, drinking whisky and watching the dancers and drummers go berserk just a few feet in front of us. We watched them and petted Pete’s dog Blacky (who has a dredlocked tail) until we could barely stay awake.

Then we were shown to our room which was a lot more comfortable than we expected. Pete sometimes plays host to celebrities (Jude Law & Sean Penn...hope he’s ok with me naming names) and perhaps that’s why he’s gone to some effort to make sure his cabanas are extremely comfortable by westerner standards.

The next morning we walked around the grounds, gawked & took some photos of the compound and Pete himself since we hadn’t really had a chance the night before. Everything was pretty interesting, from the dinner bell to Pete’s tiny hut that he had built for his giant boa constrictor. By the way, if this sounds like an interesting place to visit, he's in the business of playing HQ to people going on safari, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, etc. Here's his website.

The whole place was shockingly colorful since pretty much every surface was covered in vibrant murals. The compound was larger than we realized. There’s even a recording studio.

Pete’s staff prepared an incredible breakfast, which we ate with all the other guests who were staying at Pete’s place at the time. Among them was a group of young students who were about to attempt to climb Mt. Meru that day, an African American family, and a couple of older white Americans who turned out to be friends of my dad: they handed me my mom’s phone so I could make cheap calls to my dad if anything happened. Awesome. We explained to them that Dad had arranged for a driver to pick us up from Pete’s and basically drive us completely through the Serengeti and drop us off at my Dad’s. Door-to-door service. When they discovered our driver was Mashuka, (who evidently had given them a Safari once) they grew very excited and told us we had the best driver there is but that the only problem was that he knows almost no English so a lot of hand signals and gesturing would be required.

It didn’t take long after Mashuka drove up for us to realize that his English was excellent. The problem most likely was that Mashuka couldn’t understand them and their thick southern accents. In fact, despite his thick accent, Mashuka was incredibly easy to commuicate with and was obviously an incredibly cool guy with an incredibly cool job. We loaded our shit into his bad-ass rover and off we went, heading north towards the Ngorongoro crater.