Despite the two of us sharing Rob’s small pop-up tent we had a surprisingly good night’s sleep on the ground. This was besides the brief interlude, when I was woken up with a hyena foraging and sniffing around my side of the tent – not sure if the bad breath was Grays or the hyenas. I managed a hair wash and a top and tail in 2 cups of water (Al, I hope you are proud of me), Gray sprayed on lots of deo and by 7:30 we were on our game drive. We arrived home hot and exhausted around 4:30 but we have never seen so much game in one day and we have spent many holidays in game parks in Southern Africa.
Shortly after takeoff, we came across a pack of hyena on a kill; there were lots of pups and it awesome to watch the dynamics and interactions of them stealing chunks of flesh from the older hyena and to see how tolerant the older ones were. It was also interesting to note the difference in colour of the hyena, from an almost white one to a very black pup. Next, we stumbled upon a huge pride of lions with some tiny cubs.
From there we explored the kopje areas; they are like islands in a sea of grass. The kopjes are host to numerous rock hyraxes, lions, leopards and we saw Kirk’s DikDik – these are tiny little buck and mate for life.
We than headed off to a marsh-reed area and in the middle, on a mound was a cheetah, clearly interested in something in the reeds below. Eventually it gave up and walked off. Not to be disappointed at missing out on a kill we had also been watching a lion on a termite hill, on the other side of the marsh. We drove around and watched the lioness, draped around the hill, almost fall asleep. Next thing, she shot up and looked around, totally alert. In the distance we saw some Thompsons Gazelle coming down to drink. She unwrapped herself from the mound and stalked into the grass, as she closed in on them, they caught wind of her and sprinted in the opposite direction, she gave chase and popped up out of the grass with one of the little antelope in her mouth. She crossed back across the grassland into the marsh area, judging by the state of her undercarriage, she was off to feed her cubs.
The Serengeti is 14 000sq km of ‘endless’ plains; at the moment the plains are filled with gazelle, interspersed with topi, warthog, a few giraffe, a few herds of impala and other general game. The vast herds of wildebeest and zebra, that we had been hoping to see, had already migrated north, due to lack of rains this season. This spectacular event, where thousands upon thousands of wildebeest travel in a clockwise direction, around the Serengeti, through the Masai Mara in Kenya, in search of water and grazing and return to the area in the rainy season. We were fortunate to get a glimpse of large herds of these animals in Ngorongora but certainly not of the magnitude of the actual migration.
Peter took us to the park restaurant for lunch, it was clearly a hit amongst the local park employees and their families and we were treated to local cuisine of either rice and beef, or pap and beef, followed by fruit. We were the only Muzungus and over lunch had an interesting discussion with Peter about his family. He has two sons that are being educated at the private school in Karatu (I didn’t even know Karatu had a school), as in the government schools they can have up to 250 kids in a class. He also informed us that education of Maasai children (for junior and secondary school) and medical services are free. This is in an attempt to educate the children in a culture where the elders want to hang onto traditional values. I guess this is similar to our Bushmen, except in Tanzania they are dealing with a much larger group of people.
From there we headed off to the tourist centre, where they have a nicely set up information and education centre and a muzungu restaurant but was fun trying out the local cuisine.
After a break and sheltering from the intense heat of the day, we set off on our afternoon game drive. We headed straight into another pride of lion on a kill, cubs and all. About another kilometre further along we saw another lioness, clearly with little cubs, also out hunting. We wound our way along the Serondera River for the rest of the drive and saw loads of hippo, plains filled with Thompson’s gazelle, elephant, buffalo and just to crown it all we spotted a leopard in a tree. We also spent some time watching the olive baboons foraging in the acacia trees; they are a very hairy and stocky baboon. We have now seen golden, yellow and olive baboons on our travels, the closest resembling our baboons in S.A. are the yellow baboon.
It’s not hard to see why this is the most visited game park in the world. Not to seem ungrateful for such an amazing day but the only downside is that at each siting there are at least 5 other vehicles that come roaring in. Undoubtedly, they disturb the animals, especially when the predators are stalking their prey. Apparently, in high season (July and August) there are around 1000 vehicles in the area and then there is chaos.
Back in the campsite, all except one tent had moved off and water had been brought in. We set up our tent and dived into a cold shower, I never knew a cold shower could feel so good. In really good spirits we had a snack dinner and another early night.
Our camp site
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