Peter Matthiessen

Among many memorable visitors were Charles Lindbergh, Senator Robert Kennedy, HRH Prince Philip on the occasion of Tanzania's Independence in 1963, President Tito, the King and Queen of Denmark, HRH Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, and many writers including William Tryron, Peter Matthiessen, Alan Moorehead, James Mitchener, and Robert Audrey.

In 1961, the Serengeti was my ultimate destination in East Africa; in the winter of 1969 it was my home. We land and refuel at Barafu Kopjes, a beautiful garden of huge pale granite boulders and dry trees, in the clear light, where years ago I accompanied George Schaller on long walks across the plain to learn how primitive humans might have fared in scavenging young, dead, or dying animals. The wind is strong in the black thorn of the acacia, and a band of kestrels, migrated from Europe, fill their rufous wings with sun as they lift from the bare limbs and hold like heralds against the wind on the fierce blue sky.

Then we are aloft again, on a course Northeast toward the Gol Mountains, in a dry country of giraffes and gazelles. Olduvai is a pale scar down to the south, in the shadow of the clouds of the Crater Highlands, and soon the sacred volcano called Ol Doinyo Lengai rises ahead, and in the deep hollow in the land that is Lake Natron, on the Kenya border. We will fly across Natron and the Athi Plain and be in Nairobi in an hour.