The Serengeti

After about an hour's drive from Olduvai Gorge we arrived at the Park gates for the Serengeti National Park. I have to confess to being very excited about this as it had been a dream of mine to go to the Serengeti ever since I was a child and read Willard Price's African Adventure.

We stopped here for lunch while Dale organised our park fees. It had a good observation point where you could see across the plains of the Serengeti. The word Serengeti translates to "endless plains" which, given the view we had, was very appropriate!! Some quick facts: the Serengeti has 1.5 million Wildebeest (although the migrate to Masai Mara in Kenya), 1 million Zebra, half a million Thompson's Gazelle, 3,000 Lions and only 6 Rhinos.

Our first afternoon's drive in the Serengeti wasn't particularly eventful until we got to see the animal we had really been waiting to see: two adult Lionesses. They were basking in the sun looking for all the world like overgrown domestic cats. We stood up in the hatch and watched them for a while before suddenly the elder of the two (you could tell by the number of scars) got up and started padding towards the landrover quickly followed by the other. Naturally we were bricking ourselves at this point as the 2m jump to get up and into the landrover wouldn't have been a stretch at all for them, but thankfully they just wanted to use the shade of the car. We stayed there for ages watching them before we dragged ourselves away.

We were staying at the Seranera campsite which used to be the Park headquarters but they moved them to Ikema campsite outside the Park. That is a bit irrelevant but there you go.  There is still a thriving community at Serenara though. It is also populated by crane, monkeys, baboons, hyenas and hyrax. I have to bore you with my little fact but the Hyrax (look in the picture section) is related to the Elephant. Well I found it interesting anyway....

The campsite was called Nyani which means Baboon in Swahili and was a lot warmer than the Ngorongoro campsite but the toilets were foul.

Although Lions had apparently been very noisy during the night and came through the campsite (apparently drinking the water) but I had a great night sleep which was good as we had a 6:30 start.

The Serengeti was still up and vibrant at that hour and the colours from the sunrise over the Serengeti was fantastic!! We saw two Cheetahs - both quite young. We ended up stopped in their line of running and one went either side of us before meeting up the other side and playfully gamboling together. It was a fantastic moment. They came very close to us too.

The rest of the morning was just as spectacular.We found a herd of Elephants including a few little uns tagging along. We also saw several herds of Giraffe and a few lionesses hiding by some rocks. We also joined about seven other vehicles watching ten lionesses who got so pissed off they moved off and hid.

Our afternoon drive was in search of the last of the big five: a Leopard. Our first find of the afternoon, however, was a herd of Impala. These are small antelopes with a real spring. Dale beeped his horn to make them jump. Probably wasn't meant to do that but it was funny. Apparently the male has a harem of females and spends most of his time fighting off other males. Sounds too much like hard work. We did find a Leopard but he was sat in a tree asleep and was very hard to actually make out. However, on our way back to the campsite we had our best view of the whole safari and, almost unbelievably, all to ourselves. Dale stopped by a tree and pointed to just under it. At first we couldn't see anything. Then all these heads popped up. We had found a herd of lionesses and cubs. They were all very cute and in a playful mood. The Lionesses were mainly sleeping. The Alpha female was some way away nursing a bloody stump for a tail. A few of the lionesses had radio collars.

We only just made it back to the campsite for the deadline of 6 (no vehicles are allowed out in the park during the night). We were suprised to see that Shirley had arrived with her new group. It sounded like a good group from what she told us.

Our final morning in the Serengeti was yet another beautiful one although we were told by Dale that the night had been an eventful one with Hyenas visiting the campsite and scaring several of the other guides who thought that they were Lions. It was a fairly uneventful last morning. We did get to see a Leopard, who crossed our path but scarpered fairly quickly before we could get a good picture. This was the same with an elderly male Lion who proved similarly alusive. In order to pass the time Dale told us a few facts (he was forever studying a book) such as Giraffes are one of the few animals that can see in colour and Dik-Diks don't need to drink water (they get it all from their food).

We began the slow journey back to Arusha via a quick stop at the Serengeti visitors centre which wasn't too impressive. The Twingi campsite at Lake Manyara was a lot more impressive that the Serengeti or Ngorongoro facilities and included a shower. However, the wall that surrounded the campsite had broken glass embedded in it which wasn't a nice site!