Monday, June 29: Serengeti Cats and Patience

Today was a full day Safari from 8am until 6:30pm.  It was a day to search for the cats and go to some remote areas that require a full day of driving.  One thing I can tell you is that paved roads have been long gone for about 5 days now.  We are on dirt roads all the time.  It is hard to imagine the days of smooth driving anymore.  The park has a few main dirt roads that they maintain.  Then there are several other paths that are not maintained but get you to other areas of the park.  However, the driver is not allowed to make their own new path. 

Today did not disappoint.  However, we learned quickly how large the Serengeti really is.  It can be an exercise in patience.  We would drive over an hour sometimes without seeing anything substantial.  However, patience would be rewarded each time with a spectacular find.  Josh is very interested in animal pack behavior for the various species.  He spends a lot of time talking with our tour guide about how the lion hierarchy works and the elephants, etc.  Our tour guide is very patient with him (and us) and makes sure all our questions are answered.  He is a very seasoned guide and a former game warden at several of their national parks so he knows his stuff very well.  Josh was especially interested when he found out that elephant females announce that they are in heat to elephant bulls miles away. 

Today was partly to mostly cloudy and in the upper 70s.  The clouds really make it feel nice out.  It ended up raining near one of the mountains later in the afternoon and it started raining at our lodge at dinner time (7:30pm) and is still raining now a few hours later.  This is unusual since this is the beginning of the dry season.  Their rainy season ended about 3-4 weeks ago.   One thing that’s unusual is that our lodge is in the middle of the park without any protective barriers.  So, the lodge has to work hard to keep the wildlife from drinking from the swimming pool in the middle of the dry season.  Also, since there are no barriers, animals can roam freely on the lodge grounds.  So after dark, you are not allowed to walk around the lodge grounds without an escort.  So, we have to call for an escort to/from our room to get to/from dinner.  So far we haven’t seen any large animals – just a few smaller ones.  Although I heard some elephants came fairly close the other night.

The animals here are used to vehicles so most don’t really mind them – like the lions.  We can drive right up to them and they look up and then flop back down to rest.  The zebras and wildebeests are skittish and insist on cutting off the vehicle whenever possible – a skill Josh has apparently passed on to the local animals here.  There are much fewer insects than we expected.  Maybe it’s the time of year we are here.  But there are almost no mosquitoes and other insects.  Except the Tse Tse flies that are in one section of the park.  Those guys can bite so we have to swat them away quickly – even the driver was swatting them away a lot. 

Ok, onto the animals.  It was a big day for cats, especially lions.  (no cheetahs today unfortunately) We saw 3 prides of lions.  One in the trees.  One on some rocks.  And one cooling off in some mud.  We were parked right under the tree so we were right next to them.  And we were also able to pull up right next to them in the mud.  Like I said earlier, they don’t mind the vehicles so we can get really close to them.  We were very fortunate to see two of the lion cubs climb the tree to get to their parents. 

The big goal today was to see the elusive and solitary leopard.  And sure enough we ended up seeing him later in the day.  However, with all of the vehicles there trying to get a view of him, it was difficult to get a good shot.  But Karen ended up getting some good ones.  The leopard actually crossed the road and went in between some of the vehicles without any worries. 

Josh was very excited that we were able to get very close to Elephants as well.  The best was at the end of the day when an Elephant walked right in front of our vehicle and stopped in the road to munch on some bushes.  I was able to get some video of them but I can’t upload them until I get back.

Some other animals and birds we saw were:  Impala, Dik Diks, Topi, Hartebeast, Warthogs, Crocodiles, Egyptian Goose, White backed Vultures, Bateleur Eagle, HAmmerkop (hammerhead stork with a huge nest!), Hippos (one crossing the road!), Giraffes, Wildebeests (duh), Terrapins, Ostrich, Rock Hyrax, Servals, Elands, and Buffaloes.

Enjoy the pictures.  Karen had a tough time trying to narrow down all of the shots today.

Open Wide!

Hippo Crossing

Starling

Father and cub

Hey mom! MOM!

Elephant Crossing

Finally saw the most elusive cat - the leopard

and the even more elusive leopard back end...

Some fighting among brothers

Family time

 

A big bull

If I can just reach that branch...

He was really that close!

Rainbow over the Serengeti

Josh digging the ride

Sunday, June 28. Oldepai to Serengeti

This morning we were treated to a beautiful sunrise as we bid good bye to the Ngorongoro Crater. The air was crisp and the reflection of light on the lake was something we will all remember for a long time. We decided we wanted to get right on the road, so we packed up breakfast for the 150km trip to Serengeti National Park. Normally a trip of this distance would take a couple of hours tops. That would be if you were on paved roads and didn’t have to wait for wildlife to cross in front of you… We however, haven’t seen a paved road in a few days, so we settled in for yet another “African Massage” on the washboarded dirt roads of Tanzania. Sometimes it isn’t even the bumps, it’s the incredible noise, as if the road is trying to shake the car apart! Luckily the trip was broken up with a visit to the Oldepai Gorge, where the Louis and Mary Leakey made many famous fossil discoveries of early man.

The first thing I learned is that we have been taught wrong – it isn’t Oldevai as we were taught, it is actually Oldepai. The German who worked in the area, misunderstood the word and it’s been that way ever since. The site had a two room museum with one room dedicated to the Laetoli footprints discovered by the Leakeys. These are hominid footprints that are 2-3 million years old (can’t remember off the top of my head) that were preserved in volcanic ash. The actual site has been reburied to protect it, but there is a cast of some of clearest prints in the museum. The other room dealt with the stratigraphy and various hominid remains that have been found there, most notably, Australopithecus bosisei (A. robustus) who is about 1.7 million yeas old and Homo habilis, who is roughly the same age. They are found in the same fossil layer, but were separate species along the same line of evolution. After a short talk from our local archaeologist guide, we drove out to the site where Mary Leakey discovered H. boisei. For most people, this isn’t terrible interesting, but for me it was very exciting to be in a place where the line of human evolution can be traced from Austrolapithecus all the way to H. erectus and beyond.

Back in the car everyone was feeling pretty nappy, but you can really nod off when you are being bounced over hill and dale. After a while, we arrived at the gates of Serengeti National Park. I continue to say it, but the landscape surprises me at all turns. Due to the fact that there was rain a couple of day ago, the landscape was green, if not lush. Certainly not the arid landscape that I was expecting. The plain is vast and flat, but throughout there are many rock outcrops, or kopjes, that are home to many species of animals. We thought that we had seen a lot of animals at Ngorongoro, but the number of animals here is staggering. There are vast herds of zebra and wildebeest.

I don’t really want to go into a laundry list of what we saw, so I am posting more pictures than normal that I hope will tell the story. Even the route to our lodge was a game drive! The highlights include a sizeable herd of elephants drinking around a pond maybe 50 feet from the road. After seeing an almost incomprehensible amount zebra (and waiting for some of them to cross the road!) we took a detour to an area with several trees. Imagine our surprise when upon further inspection we saw a small pride of lionesses napping among the branches! At points some of them would look up and gaze in the direction of the zebra, but they must not have been too concerned that they would miss a meal, because none ever made a move to get up.  A short distance later we got a real treat – a pair of male cheetahs were crossing the road to settle down and gaze over a small group of zebra. It is amazing to me how predator and prey coexist together. The zebra were very much aware of the cheetah, but were seemingly unconcerned. Speaking of zebra, we drove to another watering hole were the number of zebra was staggering. They just kept coming, there was no end to them. We couldn’t help but laugh at the beauty and absurdity of it all. Further along we reached the wooded plains and began to see giraffe, impala and other animals until we reached out lodge.

That was not the end of the safari fun however! After a quick lunch it was back to the car to check out a hippo pond. We thought it would be like what we saw back at the crater, with lots of hippos laying peacefully nestled in together and on top of each other. There were still lots of hippos (more even!), but there were anything but calm. There was constant movement – tails swishing the water, ears flapping and lots of bellowing and blowing of bubbles. Here are there little fights would break out with the mandatory display of teeth – a lot of this was done by youngers hippos, testing out their mettle.

On our way back to the lodge we were treated to a sunset just as memorable as the sunrise we work up to. The lodge is really quite special. Again, the goal is to blend into the landscape so each block of rooms looks like a two story round hut. The other special thing is that this isn’t within the walls of the compound, we are right in the park. So much so, that once it is dark you are required to call for a guard to take you anywhere on the property. It is not uncommon for a lion or panther to pass through and they would like to keep their guests in one piece J

It has been a great day and we can’t wait for whatever adventures tomorrow will bring! 

Sunrise in the Ngorongoro Crater

Looking into the Oldepai Gorge

If there is a tree to climb, Josh will find it!

Just hanging out...

Zebra watching...

Holy zebras Batman!

Zebra Crossing!

Saturday, June 27: Ngorongoro Crater

We are staying at the Serena Lodge at the Ngorongoro Crater.  It is one of a kind and we are loving it.  The hotel is perched up on top of the crater, so we are at 7500 feet.  It is a 2000 foot drop outside of our lodge to the bottom!  The views from the balcony are spectacular.  The entire lodge is very well decorated and looks like an African themed lodge.  The rooms are well done but the best part was the added touch of heated water bottles/pads for each of us at night.  They come during turn-down service and stick in these heated pads under our sheets.  That’s a new perk we haven’t had before!  It’s chilly here at night (down to the low 50s maybe upper 40s) so those come in real handy.  Ours stayed warm almost until morning. 

We had a very early departure (6am) to get out into the park while the animals were still very active.  It took about 30 minutes to drive down into the crater and then we spent the entire day until 5pm driving around looking for animals.  The crater has a few freshwater springs that flow into the middle.  In the middle is a small and shallow lake.  The crater is very large and we only covered about 25% of it, according to our guide.  We got to see all the big animals we wanted to see.  The only challenge were the rhinos which we only got to see from a great distance.  The tour vans have to stay within the marked roads so we cannot get close to the animals if they are far away from those roads.  The most common animals are the wildebeests, the gazelle and the zebra.  There must be thousands of wildebeests.  They were everywhere.  It took a bit to get good shots of the elephants and the lions.  There were several hippo watering holes where we got to see them up close.  The hyenas were scattered around and some were too lazy to even move out of the way of the car!  (we had to drive around one that wouldn’t move!)  There are thousands of flamingos around the lake but there are no roads that get close enough to get a great shot – so you can only see the pink from a distance.  We had packed breakfast and lunchboxes with us.  This was the safari we were expecting.  It’s a major step up from the Manyara drive and apparently this is nothing compared to the Serengeti drive we will do starting tomorrow.

We can give more details about this game drive later.  I figure the best thing for the blog is to show some pictures since that’s all people likely want to see anyway.  Plus, it’s late and we need to get up early for tomorrow’s drive to the Serengeti.  Enjoy.  

Cape Buffalo

All smiles at the Hippo Pond 

Zebra Tailgating Mom

Hyena laziness

Wildebeast (one of thousands)

Inside Crater

At Hippo Pond (see background)

Hippo Yawn

Lion!

Elephant family

Many Elephants

Pano View of Hippo Pond

Hippos Close Up