Serengeti National Park

Dave and Annette at the entrance to the Serengeti.
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Got up at 5.15am (early mornings seem to be the norm out here) to go off to the Serengeti National Park. The road up to the entrance is only about twenty minutes by jeep from where we were camping and then something like 30 minutes up to the entrance to the park itself.

The roads soon became mud tracks once we left the main route and subsequently became a major off-roading experience after that due to the rain. Side slipping towards hippos is interesting (not to mention a great title for a song as well).

Killer camp sites in the Serengeti.

Hey, hey we're the monkeys .......
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It's difficult to describe the scale of things out here. Huge wide open plains that go on for mile after mile, then bush and forested areas that just keep on going. We saw herds of wilderbeast running across the plain, zebra all over the place, gazelles, hyena, jackels, hippos.

Given the scale of the place we'd arranged to camp in the Serengeti overnight and got to the camp site at dusk. Probably a good idea as it was a really duff site. Two scruffy squat loos, a water tank, a caged area for cooking in to keep the wild animals off the food and that was about it.

Cute lunch.
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The site did have the advantage of nocturnal visitors and we were warned before going that hyenas, lions and other animals wander through the site at night. We certainly heard lions around but didn't see anything but others in the group swear that lions walked through the site a couple of times during the night.

We weren't the only ones that were nervous. When we got to the site there were some cooks for a more up-market tour already on site and they had pitched their tents inside the caged area. They moved when we needed the space but there were lots of mutterings about 'simba' for the rest of the evening.

Wilderbeast and zebra on the run.
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It's really difficult to describe the Serengeti in words and do it justice but imagine typical wide open African plains, then bush and scrub, all of which go on for miles and you're getting somewhere close. Then imagine that anything that moves is lunch, that anyone with food or toothpaste in their tents is dinner, and anyone going to the loo after dark is potentially supper for the animals in the area, then you start to get the feel.

(Guess who needed to go to the loo twice in the night and needed me to escort her).