“OKAY, NOW DO THE BLOB,” whispered Mark Thornton, the founder of Mark Thornton Safaris and our guide in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park. His words, barely audible, were the first anyone had spoken in an hour, and they spurred our group of five into action. We linked arms and began moving slowly, rugby-scrum style, so as to appear a nonthreatening part of the landscape (a large bush or perhaps a boulder), toward a trio of spirited male warthogs whose long, foppish manes rippled in the breeze as if in an ’80s hair-band video.

On driving safaris, warthogs are usually bit players to speed past when on the trail of some splashier main attraction. But we were on foot, so there was no speeding past anything. We had been walking since 7 a.m., and the September sun was high in the sky. Stealthily following these warthogs was the very reason we were in the Serengeti. We had earned this sighting. My husband, Alex, and I were at the end of a four-day walking and fly-camping safari with Thornton and his team: Toroye, who is from a small hunter-gatherer community outside the park and has been trekking with Thornton for two decades; Masanga, a ranger appointed by the park (required if you're not using a vehicle); and Kipon and Edward, who drove ahead in a pickup each day and set up camp—simple yet comfortable sleeping tents and solar bag showers—and handled meal prep while the rest of us hiked to the next destination.