African Queen

'We are going to East Africa," my husband told me. That would be him, his Nikon, and me. "A safari has been a lifelong dream." You can't very well say, after such an announcement, that you'd prefer Paris. To cut to the chase, I am famously not an outdoor girl. I am not an animal person. To me, what one sees on the Serengeti are handbags and coats walking around. My great white hunter tried to warm me up by saying that one of the lodges we'd be staying at was the legendary "Treetops." If tree houses had stars, this would be a five- star ... tree house. This lodging was known to me because my parents had stayed there. It is also where then-Princess Elizabeth acceded to the British throne upon learning of the death of her father, King George VI. The brochure mentioned sherry on your nightstand and roses in your tub. I tried to think of it as The Four Seasons--if they had situated one in a zoo.Well, my darling's desire was to see big game. Alternative suggestions of visiting my furrier or perhaps a lion preserve in Florida swayed him not at all, and there was nothing to do but put together the African Queen wardrobe. Everything was khaki or camouflage print. I am guessing the camouflage was to trick the animals into thinking I was foliage riding in a Jeep. I also rustled up a suit of mosquito netting to go over my clothes. With my camouflage Tilley hat and its veil of mosquito netting, I could have passed for a beekeeper at any hive in the hemisphere. And I threw in two tiny batteryoperated fans. (I am not crazy about heat, either.) Our touring company's brochure advised safari- goers not to shriek if a lion jumped on the hood of the vehicle and to wear no bright colors. (I had a moment's concern about my hair.) More caveats: Wear no attention-getting jewelry. Permissible were a plain gold wedding band and a cheap watch, which I went right out and bought. Before you could say, "Only twentythree days of taking anti-malarials," we were safari-bound. After a stop in Amsterdam, we flew to Kilimanjaro on a KLM plane called Maria Callas (do not ask me why). Once in Tanzania, we connected with our guide and driver, Hashim; the other couple we would be traveling with; and our wheels away from home, a Land Rover. The roads, we'd been warned, were "difficult." This description was clearly a euphemism for rutted, rocky, jarring, and dusty. The greatly anticipated Treetops, however, did not disappoint, save for the fact that the one I had been thinking of was in Kenya. The wrong Treetops, in Arusha, Tanzania, was nonetheless splendid, with a Masai staff, some in warrior costume. It was there that our first night's sleep was interrupted by a screeching bush baby (a kind of squirrel with lung power); then, a few hours later, by a bird that sounded like my alarm clock; and, at dawn, by the smell of smoke. Ah yes ... smoke ... a reassuring scent if you're living in a wooden, thatched-roof tree house on stilts with a circular staircase of maybe 30 steps down to the ground. Then we remembered: Each accommodation has its wood-powered stove stoked to heat the water. Background music for daytime was a bird that sounded like a car alarm. Oh, and did I mention there were earthquakes the first several days of our trip? Or "tremors, " as the lodge managers preferred to call them. And one erupting volcano, mercifully seen from an airplane. Our accommodation at Treetops was roughly a quarter-mile from the main lodge with its restaurant, living room, and bar. The manager told us that after dinner, in the dark, we must be escorted back, lest we wander off the path and meet a wild animal. He mentioned that this rule had been disobeyed at some neighboring lodges and a few tourists had been "lost." At the Ngorongoro Crater Lodge, we shared the grounds with zebras and Cape buffalo who were roaming around looking for food and water. There are no fences allowed because all the "camps" are on conservation land. The English management trainee suggested we think of the Cape buffalo as "retirees": worn-out old gentlemen who had nothing to do but roam around and graze. The animal parks confirmed to me that paparazzi are everywhere. In this case, about 15 Jeeps and Rovers were parked in a long line, stopped to watch a regal lion. When the vehicle in the lead spots a giraffe/elephant/waterbuck/zebra/ wildebeest/monkey/lion/leopard/mongoose/baboon, the caravan stops and shutters click as if Lindsay Lohan had just stepped out from behind a tree. Because the safari circuit through the animal preserves is quite standard, there is seldom only one Jeep, and I began to think of all the occupants as "The Jeep people." Tidbits I picked up from the Jeep people: A nine-year-old male elephant is expelled from the family "when he starts jumping on his sister," as Hashim put it. Taking a "washroom break" behind your vehicle is known as "a loo with a view." It dawned on me that, truth be told, all these animals are either plain, spotted, or striped. Not to put too fine a point on it, their colors and markings are nothing special. It was then I became a disciple of the Ronald Reagan School of Nature: You've seen one baobab tree, you've seen 'em all. While I was fascinated by the termite mounds everywhere and enthralled by the amazing iridescent colors of the birds we saw, the high point of the trip was cosmetic. On top of various gastrointestinal afflictions and a mysterious infection, I developed a painful rash on my hand. None of the treatments available in the hotel pharmacy worked. When the female half of the couple traveling with us--a former Rockette, no less--overheard me complaining about it, she took action: During a trip to the Tarangire National Park, she broke off a spike of a yucca plant and drizzled the sticky, iodine-colored sap on what I called my leprosy. She said it was pure aloe. The next day, the skin showed improvement, so I spent the rest of the trip looking for yucca plants, breaking off pieces, and feeling very Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. I was a proper Jeep person at last.

By Margo Howard; Margo Howard writes a nationally syndicated advice column, "Dear Margo," which is online at Yahoo! News.