Travel: Camera with Cross Hairs

IN East Africa, that magical land of the Masai, the Mau Mau and the Macombers, February is the middle of summer--and summer is safari season. To many Americans, the word safari (Swahili for journey) still conjures up a vision of Stewart Granger beating bravely through the bush, trailed by the wealthy, red-faced "Bwana Mkubwa" (Big Boss), his bored, flirtatious wife and a long line of naked natives with rifles, cook pots and bathtubs balanced on their heads. A more accurate vision is apt to be somewhat less theatrical. Outside Nairobi's new circular Hilton Hotel (the "Tiltin' Hilton"), a gaggle of middleaged, middle-class Americans clamber into a zebra-striped minibus. Whisked off to a government-operated park, they spend the day shooting everything that moves--with cameras. On the way back, they stop to shop for souvenirs: Masai warriors' spears (forged in Birmingham, England) and "elephant hair" bracelets (actually made of plastic) that are supposed to guard the wearer against attack by a frenzied pachyderm. That is safari, 1970 style, the newest travel mania.

Hunters of the Ernest Hemingway persuasion, of course, can still arrange an old-fashioned "Big Five" (lion, leopard, elephant, rhinoceros, Cape buffalo) trophy hunt, provided they have the patience and the price. East Africa's top white hunters are so busy that they are already taking advance reservations for 1973. Most shooting safaris last a minimum of 21 days, and they are exorbitantly expensive. In Kenya, the daily charge per person for four clients with two professional hunters is $422. That fee does not include clothing, game licenses ($300 for a single rhino, plus an extra $600 if the specimen shot turns out to be a female), rental of weapons, ammunition. National Parks entry fees, liquor, tips to the African gunbearers, cooks, guides and skinners, or taxidermy charges. Total bill for a 21-day hunt: about $12,000.

Spear-Carrying Bushmen. Small wonder that the camera safari has become so popular. A number of U.S. tour firms are now packaging and promoting all-expense camera safaris, and about 20,000 American tourists will go on safari this year in the East African nations of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, staying an average of 21 days and spending $650 (exclusive of air fare) on the trip. Not only are the economics attractive, the experience is mind-boggling --because everything in East Africa seems to be a superlative.

Residents of the area boast that the original Garden of Eden was located there, and few visitors would dispute the claim. There is the shockingly clear blue sky, the bright orange moon, the mauve mountains and burnt-umber plains--to say nothing of the teeming wildlife. "The more U.S. cities get clogged up and polluted, the more people want to lose themselves in wilderness --in something that makes sense," says Chris Pollet, a former professional hunter who works as a tour consultant for Winchester Adventures. "A camera safari is the best therapy for city dwellers" --and for single ladies from Sacramento. They sit on the hotel veranda, sipping martinis while feeding canapes to begging baboons and spraying each other with Bug-Off. Alex Lewyt, of the vacuum cleaner family, is about to take his fourth camera safari. "The minute you land in Nairobi, all your senses undergo a change," he says. "It's what a low-pressure LSD trip must be like. It's fantastic to watch the Abercrombie & Fitch types rubbing shoulders with spear-carrying bushmen."

A typical camera safari starts in the gleaming, modern metropolis of Nairobi (pop. 477,600). In the Nairobi National Park, just seven miles from the center of town, cheetahs blithely hitch rides on the roofs of passing cars and lions stare dully at the screen of a neighboring drive-in movie. Next stop might be Aberdare National Park and the Treetops Hotel, 65 miles north of Nairobi. A sort of "hide," or hunting blind, with beds, Treetops is built on stilts and overlooks a water hole and a salt lick --gathering places each sunset for elephants, black rhinos, giant forest hogs and several species of antelope, including the rare and elusive bongo.

Rapacious Fish. Roughly the size of California and Oklahoma combined, Kenya boasts a dozen other prime hunting areas for buffs with cross hairs on their cameras. At Tsavo National Park, famed for its 20,000 elephants, overnight visitors sleep (at $21 a night) in a tent camp. On the Masai Mara Game Reserve, proud Masai tribesmen--bodies covered with red ocher clay, scarlet cloaks knotted over one shoulder--compete with golden-maned lions for photographers' attention. Although East African natives often refuse at first to pose for cameras--on the ground that their souls may become trapped in the little black box--the barest flash of green turns superstition into cooperation.

At Lake Rudolf, on the Ethiopian border, the big attraction is fishing; its waters are home to the Nile perch, a rapacious--and delicious--fish that can weigh more than 200 lbs. and has been known to attack a hook baited with nothing more attractive than an old tennis shoe. The lake is also inhabited by more than 150 separate species of wildfowl.

The compleat East African camera safari must include side trips to Kenya's neighbors, Tanzania and Uganda. For sheer profusion of wildlife, no place in the world can match Tanzania's Serengeti National Park, with its 350,000 wildebeests and 150,000 zebras. Ngorongoro Crater, 32 miles to the southeast, is an enormous extinct volcanic crater (10 miles across, 2,000 ft. deep), and supports large numbers of wild canines. In Uganda, there are such natural attractions as Murchison Falls National Park, famed for its cataract and crocodiles, and the pygmies of the Ituri Forest.

Mauled Hunter. New low, jet airline fares ($754 round trip between Nairobi and New York) and East Africa's deliberately high license fees and strict hunting limits have combined to make the camera safari an attractive, middle-class substitute for the aristocratic trophy hunt. "People coming to Africa with just cameras don't want trophies on their walls,"says Patrick Hemingway, 40, the novelist's son and a onetime professional hunter turned ecologist. "On photo safaris people can take pictures of the same animal over and over again, while they can only hunt and kill it once." Other white hunters seem to be coming around to Hemingway's point of view. In a Dar es Salaam waterfront hotel last week, Don Rundgren, 28, exhibited a badly scarred chin and right arm--mauled by a leopard that had been wounded by an inept hunting client. "I'm all for camera safaris," he said. "People shoot straighter with a camera than with a gun."

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