Crunch, crunch, crunch. Even with broken, yellow teeth, the hyena’s jaws, capable of biting down at 500 kilograms per square inch, snap cleanly through buffalo bone. The buffalo has been dead for a few days.
Inside an open-topped Land Rover 10 meters away, we excitedly prepare our cameras: DSLRs, mid-grade shooters, mobile phones. We keep our voices down, lest the animals dart off. They don’t seem to mind, preoccupied with their buffalo buffet. The wafting, leathery stench can only be described as…interesting.
We’re in mist-shrouded Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, one of the best places to photograph the wildlife of Africa. Unlike the sprawling, 31,000 square-kilometer Serengeti, this caldera spans just 250 square kilometers, but hosts to over 20,000 large grazers plus hundreds of predators like lions, leopards and jackals.
The word “safari” in Swahili, the trade language of East Africa, means an adventure—and in this continent, wildlife safaris get the lion’s share of tourists.
Our team of Filipinos has been in Africa for nearly two weeks, exploring areas brimming with wildlife—elephants, baboons, even tiny chameleons blending perfectly into the bush. We’ve experienced truly magical moments, many captured by our cameras.
There was an enormous male lion, sleeping just two meters away from our vehicle.
“Don’t worry, it won’t attack. It’s too hot this afternoon and it doesn’t want to overheat,” explained our guide Ray Shirima. Still, we kept the Rover’s doors locked.
In Kenya lay lovely Lake Nakuru, an alkaline lake painted pink by thousands of honking flamingos. On good years, the number can reach millions. When the birds took to the air, the sky became a blur of pink.
In the Serengeti plains emerged a giant, gentle elephant bull, so old its eyes sported cataracts, giant tusks long fallen off.
On safari in Africa, the sights, sounds and scents never cease. One’s photography opportunities are infinite.
“Over there, beside the elands [antilopes],” Shirima points out, back inside Ngorongoro Crater.
I don’t see squat. My teammates, blessed with eagle eyes, see them first—two black rhinos feeding by the banks of Lake Magadi.
For the first time, I consider not taking photos, just recording the sight with my mind. But memory is fleeting, while a picture records details we’ll eventually forget.
I raise my DSLR, Horus, which is held together by duct-tape, and quickly snap pictures of the rhinos which I examine that night inside my safari tent, a heavy canvas between me and what sounded like a hyena or jackal prowling outside at 2 a.m. I didn’t check.
I look at the pictures at home a month later, and see fresh details I initially overlooked.
I’m looking at them right now, imagining what the next safari might bring: herds of desert oryx in the shifting sands of Namibia, enigmatic mountain gorillas in Rwanda, endangered great white sharks off the churning coast of Cape Town.
Those days are still far away. They might never come. But thanks to my trusty camera, I can always go back to Africa through my safari snaps.
Gregg Yan is Best Alternatives founder and executive director.