Serengeti
Trip Start
Nov 18, 2002
1
116
157
Trip End
Ongoing
Where I stayed
Serengeti National Park,
Tanzania
Monday, May 26, 2008
So after a wild animal packed day yesterday how could we top that we ask ourselves. Our driver was quietly confident we would. After all he had done this many times before. We left Lake Manyara and set off towards the Serengeti National Park. First though we had to drive through the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Here there was more park fees to pay and yet more paper work handled by Salhim. Then our drive took us high into the rain cloud forest that surrounds the Ngorongoro crater most of the day. It was very cool and very damp and we were beginning to think the weather was going to be like this all the way.
We passed many Masai people gathered either in groups just sitting on the road side or tending to their treasured flocks of cows and goats with the odd donkey too which Salhim said we should not call donkey but 4X4 as it is used by the Masai for transportation
A closer look at the trees can be rewarding
. Salhim was a Masai himself but choose at a later stage in his Masai life to go to school and then get a job as a safari guide and not go down the usual route of a nomadic life of herding animals and living in mud huts. His Masai beliefs were still strong but he now wore western clothes and lived with his Masai wife and children in the town of Arusha. He taught us many interesting things about the Masai way of life. He said when he had enough money that he would have another wife one day, as it was normal for Masai men to have more than one wife if they could afford it. He joked a lot about Martin being so tall and slender, similar to the characteristics of the Masai people and that maybe Martin was actually once a Masai himself 'but got lost somewhere on the way' We could tell Salhim was going to be quite a laugh on our trip. Slowly the bumpy stony dusty track road lead us down the other side of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area where a 14,763 sq km of the Serengeti (predominately treeless) plain lay there before us. And wow was it different to what we had experienced before?
Here it was very easy to pick out the animals, well sort of. Salhim spotted the far off ones way before we did. But then he has been doing this job for 8 years. This is what we saw that first few hours in the Serengeti.
Hundreds of Zebra, giraffes, elephants, impala, Thomson's and Grant's gazelle, hartebeests, kudu, eland, African buffalo and as we drove to our lodge there up a tree dozing on a branch with it long tail dangling and head resting on its beautiful paws was a leopard
A stagnant hippo pool
. Wow it was a real life non caged leopard. We were fortunate enough to see one on our last day of our trip to the Primary Rain Forests in the Amazon and now right before us we were witnessing another. It was fantastic (we have met people who have been on three or four safaris and have still never seen one). Salhim called him 'Mr Clean' because always when he/she catches their prey they take it up into the tree to eat it. The main reason being that its harder for other animals to take it from them (such a lions, hyenas and vultures) and also they don't like eating food on the ground as it gets dirty and dusty. They like their food clean hence his nick name for them Mr Clean. News on the short wave radios (which each truck was fitted with) between drivers had got round really quickly and before long there was about 10 trucks of tourists all looking through binoculars as this amazing creature. The leopard is one of the so called BIG 5 together with buffalo, rhino, lion and elephants. One more had been crossed off our list that day. We checked into the Serengeti Wildlife Lodge with big smiles on our faces having had yet another spectacular day. The staff welcomed us with a cool glass of fruit juice and an ice cold flannel to refresh ourselves. How could we top this? We are staying at this lodge for 2 nights. In the evening we had yet more delicious food from a huge buffet again. We retreated to our room suitably 'stuffed' and downloaded the photos onto the laptop and relived all those unique moments again......
Acacia tree
.Next morning was an early and very chilly one. At 6.15am we started our early morning game drive with a few layers of tea-shirt, sweatshirt and fleece jacket and hoods up on our heads, it was very cold. With the roof of the Landcruiser up the layers were definitely needed. Cor! Where we glad we weren't camping !
No sooner had we started when we came across a family of warthogs and then a group of 3 hyenas all looking about for what they could steel from someone else no doubt. We watched them silently for a bit, there is something just so magical about the stillness of the early morning as the sun is just beginning to rise. Then as we drove along Salhim spotted 2 lioness's in the grass. They were not far from us at all. As we were taking photos and watching them another lioness walked along the track towards our truck and then turned and stopped right next to our truck. She was right there within a foot of us. Panting lightly she was looking and listening for the other 2. She was there for about 2 minutes and then she calmly strode off to join the them. What an experience? She just treated the truck like it wasn't there. WOW!
We returned to the Lodge for our full English breakfast which we were really ready for and then at 10am we took off again for a full days game drive with picnic lunch.
Buffalo
During that day again we saw a huge group of elephants (at least 50) and other smaller groups plus loads of single males too, more lioness's and an actual male lion too. He was sleeping under the shade of a tree just like most cats do. In one area we came across a nearly killed Kudu. The 25 or more vultures that were sitting waiting in the tree right next to it gave the game away. They were obliviously waiting for their moment. Part of the animals belly had been opened already. We waited for a while but its owner did not come back in that time. We cruised on a little longer and came across another tree (very close by) with not one but 2 more kills. Salhim said this had been done by the big group of lions but they just weren't hungry enough to eat them all just yet. He said it was very unusual to have so many kills so close to each other too. Later in the day we returned back to see the carcass now surrounded by vultures all taking their turn to feast. We saw a female cheetah again resting in the shade of a tree who unlike the lions (which like to hide in long grass) chooses to live in the areas of very low grass so they can easily spot their prey and give chase.
We saw Kirk's Dik Dik which isn't some sort of alternative live show but an animal similar to a miniature deer. And we also witnessed part of the mass movement of zebra which gather in their hundreds of thousands to migrate to areas of food within the Serengeti and slowly travel further north into the Masai Mara together with the huge migration of Wildebeest
By a small water hole
. To watch and listen to a couple of thousand zebra as they take it in turns to drink from the very few fresh water drinking holes left for them is quite spectacular. It was made all the more exciting as there was a large crocodile in the water too which the zebra were very much aware of. Every so often the whole herd of about 40 zebra would take off mid drink as the crocodile lurched forward to grab its next meal. It was very exciting to watch indeed.After our picnic lunch (which we took in a designated picnic area along with about 40 other safari trucks) we headed for the hippo pool. Well you could smell it ever before you arrived at it. The smell was repulsive and the sight was even worse. There in this huge but rapidly drying up pool must have been well over 50 hippos wallowing in their own poo. They just love it. In fact they love it so much as they poo in the water they swish their little tails frantically so they can spread it over themselves. It is disgusting, really disgusting. Every so often a head would bob up or sink down to enjoy the thick sludge of poo that lay stagnant and stinking on the surface. YUK!
As we had actually got out of the truck to look at this disgusting sight we took a walk along a narrow edge of water which was still part of the pool but was divided by rocks. As we scrambled through the bushes and trees there right in front of us but luckily on the other side of the bank was a 4/5 meter long crocodile
Cheetah in the shade
. According to Salhim he was something over 10 years old and due to grow even bigger still. How it copes living in that stinking water hole we just don't know. We watched it slide into the stinking sludge to cool down and wait for its next meal. Not us thankfully.As the sun was starting to set we turned home for our 2nd night at the lodge. When we arrived back in the car park we collected all our stuff together and stood just a little bit away from the Landcruiser. We were just chatting with Salhim and arranging what time we were to leave the next day when next thing we saw a cheeky 'blue faced monkey' enter our truck through the still open roof. In a split second he had gone through all the pockets in the back of each chair until he found a bag of fairy cakes that we had bought at the beginning of our safari. On finding such treasure he escaped out of the roof again and off into the nearest tall tree. But the local baboons soon noticed that he had bag of goodies and they pursued him up the tree and stole his treasure. Within seconds, down floated the now ripped apart plastic bag followed by about 15 paper cake cases and loads of crumbs of cake. The rest of the troop of baboons came to feast on it all and did not let the blue face monkey anywhere near it. He was making a right noise about that. But they just kept chasing him away. And then a family of banded mongoose came out from their mound close by and joined in the last of the feast.
Comfort and safety
Only the tiny crumbs remained now in what was about 5 minutes of total hilarity. No wonder the hotel warned all guests to keep their balcony doors shut. Who knows what they would have nicked from our room? Our last day in the Serengeti was another early one we saw yet more spotted hyenas, lioness's with their little cuddly cubs too (they were so sweet), zebras, gazelles and all those animals seen on previous days. We returned to look at the carcass where we had seen the vultures the previous day and the ground was now totally clear. There was absolutely nothing left. Salhim said the hyenas had taken the bones. We went to the other area where the 2 carcasses lay and the lions had started to tuck into them. You could tell by all the flies. The odd vulture was hanging about too. The group of lions were now lying within the long grass 'feeling full.' We saw their babies again charging about playing and jumping on each other. It was lovely to watch.
Just as we were leaving the Serengeti we were fortunate to see 3 cheetahs sitting together. They were watching a group of zebras and gazelles but we did not witness them 'going in for the kill' as they say.
We headed out of the Serengeti after having stopped for our picnic lunch. Then it was back on the main dirt track road and off to our last destination of Ngorongoro Conservation Area some 3 hours away.
We arrived at Ngorongoro Wildlife Lodge by about 5.30pm and were greeted with a glass of fresh fruit juice and this time a HOT flannel. Yes, we were back in the cold again. It was now about 16 degrees compared to 30 degrees in the Serengeti!
The lodge is situated right on the crater rim. The views from our room of the crater (collapsed volcano) and its Lake Magadi below were spectacular.
That evening we had yet more delicious food and then retreated to keep warm by the huge log fire burning in the bar area. We even had 2 blankets on our bed that night!!
