GB residents return from African safari
FROM STAFF REPORTS Gulf Breeze News news@gulfbreezenews.com

Picture courtesy of Patty Lou Kattner Craig Vigodsky, Fred Vigodsky, and Max Kattner get ready in their land rover for their next safari drive in the Serengeti.

For the average American, the wildlife of Africa is only experienced through controlled exhibits at a zoological park. However, one group of Gulf Breeze and Pensacola residents recently returned from an African safari where they experienced the world's second largest continent first hand with Pat Quinn, the man who built the Gulf Breeze Zoo. It was Quinn's 56th trip to Africa.

The American sightseers visited Tanzania, Africa where Quinn was joined by his wife Donna, Jim and Nell Potter, Marvin and Susan Moses, Max and Patty Kattner, Fred Vigodsky and His children Craig Vigodsky and Holly and Steven Jurnovoy; and Vigodsky's two grandsons Josh and Andrew Jurnovoy.

Their adventure spanned nearly two weeks and included guided tours, charter flights and primitive accommodations that took the group to Ngare Sero Mountain Lodge, Tarangire National Park, Ngorongoro Crater and the northern Serengeti.

Picture courtesy of Patty Lou Kattner A herd of elephants walks by in the northern Serengeti National Park, in Tanzania, Africa.

The group flew out of Pensacola June 7 and arrived in Amsterdam the next day. On June 9 the group traveled from Europe to a lodge near Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. After an evening there, the group was flown to Tarangire National Park.

"This park is home to birds, zebras, elephants giraffes and wildebeests," Patty Kattner said of Tarangire. "Several land rovers were waiting to take us on our first game drive and photo safari. The land rovers were like army tanks, and handled the rough roads and wild animals well. The vehicles all had open tops, so everyone could stand up or sit down as they chose. When the roads were smoother, most everyone sat on top of the vehicles in the warm sunshine. We saw giraffes, zebras, gazelles, baboons and were even chased by an elephant that took a real liking to Fred Vigodsky the first day."

However, touring through the African wilderness wasn't enough for this hardy group of travelers, as the group stayed in tents with portable toilets and were limited to one bucket of water for showers while in the park.

"You just don't get the same feeling of being right with the animals if you stay in a lodge," said the group's tour guide, Roger Corfield, an Englishman who once operated a coffee plantation in Kenya and has been leading tours to Africa for 25 years.

"We were given instructions on our five-minute showers," Kattner said. "Turn the knob on, soap up and then turn the water off. When finished soaping up, the water is turned back on for about three minutes."

Despite the rustic accommodations, Kattner said their African hosts were very friendly and hospitable.

"While we were at this camp the Maasai tribe men served as our guardians. They wore full African attire and would walk us to the tents in the evenings with their spears and help us up and down the rocks," Kattner said.

Corfield said the Maasai walk nearly 30 miles to help out at the safari camps and wear shoes fashioned from recycled motorcycle tires.

The group then traveled on to Ngorongoro Crater where they saw lions, buffaloes, elephants, zebras, flamingos and hippos.

"The crater is actually a caldera, which is a collapsed volcano," Kattner said. "This is the largest caldera in the world. There are over 30,000 animals inside of this crater, which is about 12 miles across."

From there, the group traveled to Serengeti National Park, which covers over 5,700 square miles, and is inhabited by over two million animals, Kattner said.

"The trip to Africa showed us a part of the world that is still remote and untamed in Tanzania, Africa," Kattner said.

Patty Lou Kattner contributed to this report.