Singita Faru Faru Lodge Serengeti National Park

... a great day with a roller coaster of emotions and an amazing experience. We even caught a fair bit of it on video, including the ‘oh ****” moment, as it became known from the commentary I was making at the time.

The icing on the cake the following day was seeing the black rhino, albeit far away, in the Ngorongoro Crater. We are now heading East to Zanzibar for a couple of days exploring and beaching. Hopefully another (shorter!) Blog soon.

... and then as we passed one of them we noticed lions underneath it with cubs. We sat and watched them for a while, the cubs playing while the adults languished lazily in the sun. After a while we moved on and then to Lola’s delight we saw a leopard in a tree. It was hard to see and we couldn’t get any closer, but it was gorgeous and after a while it turned its head towards us. We headed to our ...

... watched him eat the Gazelle(I think). Again, it was cool! I had seen a leopard on my previous Africa visit but never eating anything. So this topped last time. After a few more hours of driving and seeing all the different types of wildlife the Serengeti has to offer, we came up to a pack of lions guarding a freshly killed water buffalo. One of the six or so lions was eating the dead buffalo while the others were ...

... on your tushy (or up against the side of the truck was my option), do it.

TIP: Don't forget to bring:
- Camera
- Spare Battery
- Zoom Lens
- Binoculars
- Water, water, water
- Sunglasses (not just for sun but handy for dust too)
- Sunscreen (you'll spend alot of time out the top of the Jeep, often in the sun)
- Baby wipes (unless you're opting for the lodges with showers...)

... to touch, but not really advisable. He plopped in the grass the way my big Golden Retriever does. He sat up proudly, looking ever so much the king of the jungle.

With that, it started to rain, which all the natives hope is the start of the “short rains”, since things are so dry and so many things are dying. A family of elephants went by, looking much darker than others because of the rain. The immediate blessing ...

... the lodge on line, but haven't had any luck! This was a fun safari because it really does remind you of the movie Lion King.  

One of our coolest spottings on this safari was the Hippo & the Leopard!  We hadn't seen either of those in the other parks!

... see was the annual wildebeeste migration. There are over one million wildebeeste in the Serengeti and as the rainy season comes to an end they form immense herds near the remaining green areas and start to migrate north and west towards the Masai Mara. They migrate back to the Serengeti around August-October. A few of the herds we saw only had a few hundred wildebeeste, but others ...

... glands which make their eyes look ultra-large and rather sad at the same time. They are also dimuniutive in stature, and have a baby-esque look to them even when as full-grown adults. In the afternoon, we had our first glimpse of a lion in the brush about 25 feet away. We could only see her head and we left after waiting for 15 minutes as we were not making any progress. I knew we had to move on and ...

... and on route picked up local support in the way of a Masai security guard. He put down his AK47 assault rifle and we set to work crowded around the opening. Another guide had found an old plastic bottle conveniently shaped like a poop scoop. We tied this onto the end of the tent pole and used another pole to push the items into it. The Masai insisted on performing the operation and after scaring me by pushing the battery charger further down the ...

... pored down as it was the wet season in Tanzania and all of the campsite was flooded apart from our tents which were starting to get water around them as the morning went on. We packed up our tents and drove on through to Ncogorogo crater passing through Manyara we saw people standing in waist deep in water and there house totally flooded, but of course they just got on with it and adapted, that is the beauty of the African people, any where in the west and all hell ...