Thousands of wildebeest have migrated from Tanzania's Serengeti to the Masai Mara National Reserve in southwestern Kenya, a massive migration that will last from July to October. Visual China / Figure
When the first rays of the morning sun hit the Serengeti National Park, groups of wild animals began to feed, and Zhao Junning and his party in Tanzania were on their safari in East Africa.
Immersed in the view, they did not expect that a car accident a few hours later would completely disrupt their itinerary, and they were greeted by nearly three days of waiting and repeated negotiations with the travel agency.
At half past four p.m. local time on July 28, 2024, Zhao Junning and his party of 18 teammates, plus a Chinese team leader and a local tour guide, had just finished their tour and were on their way back to the hotel. A companion car lost control and rolled over in the process of overtaking, killing a Chinese tourist and injuring five others.
"The deceased was a female Chinese tourist who was sitting in the last row of the vehicle with her daughter. My daughter was also injured in the accident and is now out of life-threatening condition. Zhao Junning, who was traveling with him, told Southern Weekend.
Tanzania is located in eastern Africa, bordering Kenya in the north, rich in tourism resources, and the three major lakes in Africa, Lake Victoria, Lake Tanganyika and Lake Malawi, are all on the border with Tanzania. The Serengeti National Park, on the border between Tanzania and Kenya, is home to lions, cheetahs, zebras, antelopes and many other wildlife. Every year from July to October, herds of wildebeest and zebra cross the river, becoming one of nature's wonders and attracting visitors from all over the world.
But in the vast grasslands, there are also various risks. "Every year, vehicles roll over here." Lin Rong, who has been working in Tanzania for more than four years, told Southern Weekend.
However, the car accident was only the first hurdle encountered by Zhao Junning and his party. Due to the high fear of the next safety hazards, coupled with the fact that many minors in the same group witnessed the bloody scene of the car accident, Zhao Junning and others proposed to terminate the trip early, but they were repeatedly ridiculed by the travel agency.
"Compared with the increasingly perfect tourist rights protection mechanism in China, the rights and interests of tourists traveling abroad with groups are often in a state of 'unsettled'. Especially in the aftermath of a security incident in a foreign country, tourists are on the vulnerable side and tourism services have more control. Only the intervention of official institutions such as embassies can improve tourists' voice and ability to negotiate. Bai Zi, who specializes in tourism research, analyzed to a reporter from Southern Weekend.
Overtaking causes a rollover
At around 4:30 p.m. local time on July 28, 2024, Zhao Junning and his entourage, who had just finished a day in the Serengeti National Park, returned to the hotel in three vehicles.
Hearing only a loud "bang", several tourists sitting in car No. 3 saw their fellow car No. 2 overturned on its side.
Pictures sent by Zhao Junning to Southern Weekend show that the road where the incident occurred was a potholed loess road with a width of only about three meters, and two deep rut marks on the road were clearly visible.
Pictures of the scene of the car accident. Photo courtesy of the interviewee
In fact, this is not the first time that car No. 2 has had an accident. At noon that day, due to careless driving, car No. 2 was stuck in a quagmire, and it took two hours for the drivers of the three cars to pull the car out. The incident occurred close to the hotel, and it was already two o'clock in the afternoon, only two hours from the end of the original planned trip, Zhao Junning had suggested that the afternoon trip should be abandoned, and the drivers could continue to tow the car, but the team leader refused.
After the rollover accident, the driver of the vehicle involved quickly climbed out of the car intact and ran more than ten meters away in a panic and kept crying. The other passengers in car No. 3 rushed out to save people, while the tour guide and six other tourists in car No. 1 turned off the radio system while driving, and had already returned to the hotel first, until the three children in car No. 3 were sent back to the hotel, they did not know that there had been a car accident.
Zhao Junning recalled that there were a total of six female passengers and a Tanzanian driver in the No. 2 car, and there was no tour guide or team leader. Four older ladies suffered minor injuries, one of them climbed out of the car on his own, while the other three passengers had a bloody face and two others suffered varying degrees of damage to their ribs and shoulders. "They can move around on their own, they just don't dare to touch the wounds."
The most seriously injured were a mother and daughter, whose mother was crushed under the back seat and was not rescued until the end.
The vehicle that overturned was a converted Toyota Land Cruiser, and the body was so heavy that it could not be lifted without large machinery. The place where the incident occurred is in a no-signal area with inconvenient transportation, and it is impossible to get in touch with the outside world. Hearing the radio call for help, several black men rushed to lift the car a little bit with a jack to save the mother.
"She was crushed under a chair and unable to move, and when she was rescued, she was unconscious." Zhao Junning said that at that time, the German doctor and team leader of another tour group had instructed everyone to take turns to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
Zhao Junning clearly remembers that when the car accident just happened, the mother was still very conscious, and she kept asking for help and trying to confirm whether her daughter was safe. In order to arouse her will to survive, during the rescue process, Zhao Junning and fellow tourists kept asking her daughter to call her mother.
The six injured passengers were taken to an ambulance station in the Serengeti National Park. On the way, taking advantage of the gap between the signals, Zhao Junning, who was isolated and helpless, dialed the phone of the Chinese Embassy in Tanzania and reported the casualties. The embassy consul formed a group to coordinate the emergency rescue.
There is only one doctor and one nurse at the ambulance station in the park, and the medical conditions are very simple, so you can only do a preliminary examination, and then carry out simple wound dressing and painkiller injections. Doctors at the ambulance station told Zhao Junning that his mother, who was seriously injured, had no vital signs when she was arrived.
"The three cars in the company were all in poor condition, basically either without seat belts, or not working properly, and the bumps were very bad, and overtaking in this situation was extremely dangerous." Zhao Junning said.
According to his speculation, it may have been due to the fact that several ladies in car No. 2 had taken too long to take pictures, which caused the dissatisfaction of the team leader sitting in car No. 3, and she kept urging the driver of car No. 3, who should have been behind the palace, to drive past car No. 2 during the day's journey.
On 29 July, five of the injured were airlifted to the capital, Nairobi, for further treatment.
On July 31, a staff member in charge of receiving the tour group told Southern Weekend that according to the information from the hospital, all the injured are out of danger, three of the injured tourists have returned to China on the same day, and another tourist has undergone surgery on his shoulder and is waiting for the test report to see if he can take a flight back to China.
Recalling the scene when the car accident happened, Zhao Junning, who was already waiting at the airport to return to China, still felt palpitations, "I have been to more than 100 countries, and this is the first time I have encountered such a dangerous moment. When I rubbed the blood off my hands with dirt, I almost collapsed at that moment, but no one cared about it, and I had no choice but to carry it. ”
Individual group
Zhao Junning reported a 12-day tour of Kenya and Tanzania, and the selling point of the tour group was to watch the great migration of animals, namely the Serengeti plus Masai Mara savannah safari. Visitors can ride in a vehicle and see and photograph wildlife up close. The tour fee for 12 days per person is about 47,000 yuan.
"June to October is the peak tourist season in Kenya and Tanzania, especially in July and August, with the children's summer vacation, plus it is a good season to see animals, many Chinese travel to Kenya." Lin Rong's local agency receives more than 1,000 Chinese tourists every year, and the cost ranges from 30,000 yuan to 150,000 yuan, depending on the hotel and the number of people in the group.
"Apart from South Africa, Kenya is one of the most complete African countries in terms of tourism market and reception capacity. Many roads are built directly to the entrance of the scenic spot, but because the asphalt road is not allowed to be built in the scenic area, it is still a washboard-type dirt road. Zhu Meimei, who is engaged in ground reception in Kenya, told Southern Weekend.
With 6 days to go until the end of the trip, the tourists have no intention of continuing the unfinished journey. However, the request to end the trip early was ruthlessly rejected by the travel agency.
The Tourism Law stipulates that after an emergency or tourism safety accident occurs, the tour operator shall immediately take necessary rescue and disposal measures, fulfill the reporting obligation in accordance with the law, and make proper arrangements for tourists. However, for more than 20 hours after the incident, Zhao Junning and his entourage never waited for the comfort and greetings of the travel agency, nor did they receive information about the itinerary.
"We kept asking to talk to the leaders of Utrust Travel, but they didn't contact us from the beginning." Zhao Junning couldn't understand the indifference of the travel agency.
On the evening of July 29, Zhao Junning and his entourage, who had been waiting in the hotel for a day, met with the representative of the local receiving agency, and the company agreed to arrange for all employees to end their trips and return to China in advance, but the precondition was that they must sign the "Voluntary Abandonment of Travel Commitment" and give up complaints and claims.
"We have to agree that this is the only condition that will allow us to leave Tanzania, otherwise we will continue to be stuck here." Zhao Junning said.
"After a safety accident, in addition to rescuing the casualties as soon as possible, the travel agency should also give the fellow passengers due humanistic care and psychological assistance in a timely manner, try to meet the demands of tourists, and wait for specific travel disputes to return to China." However, Baizi also said that it depends on the strength of the travel agency.
The next day, after taking all the tourists to the Isebania border checkpoint between Kenya and Tanzania, the tour operator reversed course and asked the group to continue their tour of the grasslands in the Masai Mara in Kenya.
"The travel agency asked the tour members to bear the cost of the air ticket back to their home country on the grounds of changing the itinerary." A staff member of the Chinese Embassy in Kenya told Zhao Junning.
In Zhao Junning's view, this is not a matter of money, but a matter of responsibility and credibility of travel agencies, "when such a big thing happens, they don't talk about humanity at all, and they have always been concerned about money."
During the three or four hours he was stranded at the border, Zhao Junning contacted the embassies of Kenya and Tanzania and the Consular Protection Center of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and received a lot of help from them. In order to protect everyone's safety, the travel agency, coordinated by the Embassy in Kenya, arranged for tourists to stay in nearby hotels.
However, in the eyes of practitioners, travel agencies also have their own considerations.
There are two main forms of tour groups on the market, one is an independent group, that is, a group or individual requires a travel agency to design a travel route for it, provide independent chartered cars, use tour guides independently, and book hotels, so as to form a travel team. And Zhao Junning and others participated in the group of individual passengers.
"With so many tourists, it is impossible for one travel agency to send a group to Kenya after receiving all the tourists, and many travel agencies have handed over the individual tourists they have received to Beijing Zhongxin International Travel Agency, and then the travel agency is responsible for centralized management and unified arrangement of tour guides and tour leaders." Yang Chong, the receptionist of the post and telecommunications international travel agency that signed the contract with Zhao Junning, told Southern Weekend.
Yang Chong said in frustration that after the accident, she had been communicating with Zhongxin Travel Agency to try to find a solution to the problem.
"Group grouping of individual tourists is a regular practice for domestic travel agencies." Lin Rong said that Africa is a relatively niche tourist destination, and the cost is relatively high, most domestic travel agencies can not do independent groups, and individual tourists have become the most important form of group tours.
The advantage of FIT is that it is flexible, there are many travel dates to choose from, and travel agencies can book rooms in advance and are not prone to losing money on empty rooms. However, due to the interests of all parties involved, once a problem arises, it is easy for all parties to quarrel.
"Stopping the trip in advance means a loss, the previously booked group ticket may not be able to be changed, there is a high probability that the ticket will be reissued, and the subsequent trip fee travel agency has paid in advance and cannot be refunded. Tourists are definitely not willing to pay for air tickets, and it is unjust for me to pay for them. Yang Chong said.
"If the customer asks to stop the trip early, either several domestic travel agencies will lose money themselves, or they will negotiate with the local agency on how to bear the cost loss." Lin Rong stressed that this is a problem between travel agencies and local agencies, and should not affect customers.
On July 31, after several rounds of consultations, Zhao Junning and his entourage finally got on the plane back to China, but the joy of returning home could not hide the disappointment of this trip.
"The travel agency has gone back on its word, and everyone is exhausted, and we could have gone to the Masai Mara to see the world's most spectacular animal migration, but now we have to miss it." Zhao Junning said.
On September 23, 2022 local time, in Tanzania, a herd of wildebeest and zebras stood on the grass in the Serengeti National Park, and three zebras were crossing the road. Visual China / Figure
Romance and risk go hand in hand
The tour operator arranged the itinerary from Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, south to Amboseli National Park and Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest peak, then across the Namanga border into Tanzania, visiting Ngorongoro Crater and Serengeti National Park, and then all the way north to the Maasai Mara in Kenya and finally back to Nairobi.
Zhao Junning walked the golden route of African travel, drawing a perfect circle clockwise along Kenya and Tanzania.
"It's a very classic route. Direct flights from China to Kenya are available, and there are more flights, and the cost is relatively cheaper. In addition, Amboseli National Park in Kenya is the best vantage point of Mount Kilimanjaro, offering classic images of snow-capped peaks and herds of elephants. Lin Rong explained.
But this golden route, full of wild beauty, is always romantic and risky.
On July 25, 2024, six Chinese tourists were involved in a traffic accident while traveling from Amboseli National Park in Kenya to Emali, three of them died of their injuries while receiving treatment, and the other three were taken to the capital Nairobi Aga Khan Hospital after initial treatment.
Kenya police spokeswoman Resila · Onyango said preliminary investigations showed that the cause of the accident was that the left rear wheel of the vehicle detached from the axle, causing the driver to lose control of the vehicle and the vehicle to overturn after deviating from the road.
A number of people in the tourism industry in Kenya and Tanzania told Southern Weekend that in order to protect the natural ecology, the interior of the national park is all dirt roads, and the road surface is not wide, almost just enough to make the wrong car, the speed should not be too fast, and the car should not be rashly overtaken.
"Every year in April and May, there is a lot of rainfall in Tanzania, and cars walking around leave deep ravines on the road. When tourists walk on it in a car, the sports watch can shake out the number of steps. When I was leading the group, I was doing 20,000 steps a day, but I was actually in the car all the time. Lin Rong quipped.
In order to ensure driving safety, before each group trip, Lin Rong will repeatedly check the condition of the car to see if it is necessary to change the tires and remind the driver to pay attention to slow driving.
However, Lin Rong said that Tanzania will have strict requirements for group drivers, "If the driver frequently overturns, or allows tourists to put their hands out of the window during the tour and cause accidents, they will not be able to enter the Serengeti National Park for half a year."
In addition, Tanzania is one of the top 10 countries with the highest number of malaria cases and deaths, accounting for 4% of all malaria deaths worldwide in 2021, according to the World Health Organization. Malaria prevention is a top priority when traveling to Tanzania.
"The local government will ask for vaccinations. In addition, even if the customer does not buy it, we will help you buy insurance in advance. Before the trip, special notices will be sent to tourists. Kevin, head of "Orangutan Africa Travel", told Southern Weekend.
In order to reduce the risk of malaria infection as much as possible, Lin Rong generally rejects tourists with lower budgets, "If the budget is too low, there is no way to stay in a hotel with a private bathroom, and the risk of contracting malaria is relatively higher." ”
As for how to ensure the safety of travel in Tanzania, Lin Rong gave advice based on years of experience.
"First of all, tourists should try to avoid cars starting with 'A and B' and choose cars starting with 'D and E' as much as possible. The first vehicle licences in Tanzania were 'A' and then issued in the order 'B, C, D, E'. Most of the cars starting with 'A and B' are more than 15 years old, and no matter how they are modified, they are not very safe to ride. Second, don't sit too full on the car, if you pile up your luggage on the roof, the center of gravity of the vehicle is unstable, and it is easy to roll over on dirt roads. Third, the itinerary should not be too dense and too rushed, if the intensity is very high every day, the driver is prone to fatigue driving, and may also blindly overtake in order to hurry. ”
(At the request of the interviewer, Lin Rong and Zhao Junning are pseudonyms in the article)
Southern Weekly reporter Wang Hang and Southern Weekly intern Li Yuxin
Editor-in-charge: Yao Yijiang