Klein's Camp

Name ID 780

See also

Turner, Myles My Serengeti Years
Page Number: 033a
Extract Date: 1920

Leslie Simpson at Klein's camp

In about 1920, Leslie Simpson, a retired American mining engineer and part-time hunter, pioneered a route for motor vehicles from Norak via Barikatabu across the Sand River, and following the northern side of the Kuka Range to a place now known as Klein's Camp, (then called Simpson Springs).

Extract ID: 1357

See also

Fosbrooke, Henry Arusha Integrated Regional Development Plan
Page Number: 32
Extract Date: 1930's

Another stimulus to Arusha's development

Paper III. Urban Development & the Growth of Communications

Another stimulus to Arusha's development was its good position as a tourist centre. As early as 1922 a party came by car from Kenya and set of with porters to the Ngorongoro area. Another came in 1923. There are several books and unpublished diaries describing these early safaris. But the more signficant development occurred in the early 1930's when the making of the road over the Ngorongoro and to the Serengeti enabled Ray Ulyate, the proprietor of the New Arusha Hotel, to organise safaris to the Serengeti where lions were attracted by meat to approach closely to vehicles to permit close-up phototography. Foolish tricks were indulged in, such as tugs-of-war with lions holding a lump of meat at the end of a rope, or even being tempted to jump on the backs of open trucks. These practices were controlled when a Game Ranger was posted to Banagi.

There was considerable incursion from Kenya in the pre-war period, both through Arusha and directly to the Serengeti via Clyne's [Klein's] camp, named after an early white hunter.

Extract ID: 3234

See also

Cooke, J One White man in Black Africa
Page Number: 065

A prospector named Arnold Kuenzler

A prospector whom I knew well named Arnold Kuenzler, who was looking for traces kimberlite for Williamson's Diamonds of Mwadui, found these lions [at Klein's Camp] a nuisance and a hindrance in his work. He argued, understandably, that he should be given licence to shoot them when they threatened him, but needless to say this was refused. Arnold survived, so I am sure several lions bit the dust.

Extract ID: 432

See also

Herne, Brian White Hunters: The golden age of African Safaris
Page Number: 354b
Extract Date: 1965

Getting to Nairobi

After jolting across country Cottar's car passed the freshwater spring and wooded oasis known as Kline's Camp, and from the road his client saw the white glow of pressure lanterns in the awful blackness. Somebody was camped in this wilderness among the fig trees. It turned out to be American aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife, on a photographic safari. Lindbergh told Cottar he had an aircraft parked at a nearby airstrip, and he generously offered to fly Glen to Nairobi at first light.

Cottar, now tranquilized with morphia, decided to push on to Nairobi immediately. Pissey hunched over the wheel of the Land Cruiser as its lights followed the graveled road back to Kenya and the Masai Mara game reserve. At Keekorok lodge Cottar's client hoped to find a visiting doctor, but they were out of luck. The safari car turned north again, jolting across washboard as it roared through the cold night. The exhausted party arrived at Nairobi Hospital thirteen hours affer the attack."

Glen's own father had died after a buffalo attack much less severe than his. While Glen was recuperating, and in an unusual moment of earnestness, he told me, "I know my client [Arturo "Art" Acevedo] saved my life with his quick thinking, and getting antibiotic and morphia into me. He's got guts. God bless him! "

Extract ID: 3845

See also

Goring, Barry ON SAFARI: Spot the leopards in Tanzania
Extract Author: Barry Going
Extract Date: 2000 January 8

ON SAFARI: Spot the leopards in Tanzania

I've just spent three hours waiting for a leopard to appear. It was wonderful. This is what safaris should be about: the patient pursuit of quarry, camera in hand, not frantically barrelling around a game reserve ticking off sightings like a beginner. I did all that yesterday.

I was in Tanzania's Ngorongoro crater, a circle 10 miles across left by an imploding volcano billenniums ago. On the rim 500 yards above me I could just make out the Ngorongoro Crater Lodge, a splendidly eccentric designer hotel made up of strings of circular chalets with big chimneys.

The lodge provided me with a van, for just me, Emanuel the driver, and his assistant George. So while other vans resounded to debate about whether to wait for a leopard or go in search of warthogs, we sat down to a picnic lunch - pasta, salad, home-made bread, cakes, fruit, cold drinks - and waited.

We knew the leopard was lying in the long grass in the shade under a tree; his tail occasionally waved lazily to chase flies away. Sooner or later the shade would have to move, and he with it.

In the event he held out quite a while before the sun became too warm. He looked up, yawned, stretched, and finally got to his feet, fit and muscular and indifferent to the cameras, and padded behind the tree to resume his nap.

Leopards are always worth seeing, if you manage it. They are tough, solitary hunters, flourishing from Cape Town to Siberia, and they did not earn their success as a species by being conspicuous. Definitely one to tick off - if you go in for that sort of thing.

There is plenty more to see in and around the crater. The Ngorongoro Conservation Area was split from the Serengeti National Park in 1959. The Masai people, traditionally Pastoralists, were unwilling to be moved away from their grazing land around Ngorongoro to make way for animals, as they had been in the Serengeti, so the land is now used for both. They are not supposed to graze cattle in the crater itself, but the ones I saw had obviously not been told.

Ecologically, the crater has something for all its residents: savannah, woodland, marsh, lake, rainforest. There are no acacia trees, so no giraffes; and no female elephants, because the slopes of the crater wall are too steep to bring babies down. Lusty males living on the crater floor have to climb the hill to make conjugal visits.

But there are black rhinos and black-maned lions, and so many hyenas that, in a role reversal, they are reported to have taken up killing their own meals, which the lions then rob them of.

Pink and white flamingoes stand one-legged in the lakes while jackals wait for them on the shore, where they are reduced to little piles of feathers. Kites and vultures soar on thermals, then spiral down for lunch.

In pools under the noon heat, snorting hippos submerge to nostril level, flicking water over their backs with their tails and occasionally rolling over and waving their stubby legs in the air like puppies.

And all this against a background of golden grass, shady trees, and blue hills still licked by morning mist.

For a less enclosed safari, you can go to the tourist-free Serengeti nearby. I stayed at two of Crater Lodge's counterparts there: tented Grumeti River Camp (the river is so thickly covered with plants that I didn't spot it until a hippo's head poked up), and Klein's Camp, whose rondavels overlook a long valley leading north to Kenya.

These are great places to see the mass migration of millions of wildebeest and zebra north to the Masai Mara every June and back again in November in search of fresh grazing.

The travelling companions make a good double act: zebra eat the tall grass, discouraging the tsetse flies which torment the thin-skinned wildebeest and tourists. The wildebeest then eat the short grass. Zebra have good eyes, wildebeest good noses - and the sixth sense which tells them when to hit the road. This is the cue for the lions, crocodiles and other predators to look for vulnerable migrants.

Sadly for me, the migration always seemed set for yesterday, or tomorrow; I saw hundreds of animals milling around but not migrating. If you must see the migration and can come at short notice, register with the camps and they will let you know when it begins. Live coverage should eventually appear on their website, www.ccafrica.com.

The other place to visit, an hour north-west of Ngorongoro on a bumpy road (Tanzanian pot-holes could double as giraffe traps), is Olduvai Gorge, where the Leakeys and fellow palaeontologists have discovered some of the earliest human remains. Apart from a small but good museum, there is not much to see, but it's a pilgrimage any homesick hominid might make.

And after a dusty day in the gorge or with the wildlife, retreat to the comfort of the Crater Lodge. The rooms are strung along the rim, so you can see the crater from your bed, lavatory or bath.

The duties of Safari, my butler, included not only meeting me on my return with Emanuel, taking my order at dinner, lighting my fire and/or switching on my electric blanket, but also running hot baths and sprinkling them with rose petals.

I was lying back submerged to nostril level when it dawned on me: surly buffalo, pregnant rhino, somnolent lion, lonesome elephant, and of course the leopard: for the first time, I had seen the Big Five in one day. But don't think I go around ticking off lists.

Extract ID: 1472
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