The Masai people are everywhere…driving their cattle and goats, selling jewelry, walking in the village and living in their boma’s (villages). Both men and women wear elaborate jewelry, short hair and colorful clothes. They are polygamous…most men have multiple wives and many children. Our guide told us that one Masai man had 8 wives, 25 children and 45 grandchildren!
The road coming into Serengeti National Park, arguably the most famous National Park in the world. Note the dust coming off of each car….it is like that every time you pass someone! No air conditioning….so windows open. Hard on the lungs and your laundry (especially when you pack light like we do.)
At this point we hit the “Big Five”….we had seen lion, buffalo, elephant, rhino and leopard all by day two. We could go home now….Doesn’t the leopard look comfy? They even drag their pray up into the trees.
This was our highlight of the entire safari. We had tracked a group of lioness as they made their way through the grass. This female then began stalking….and came right by our truck…heading for a group of giraffe. James said that lion rarely hunt giraffe…but she was going to give it a go…alone. While she was stalking we noted that the people in the truck ahead of us were staring at our truck. The second lion had moved forward and was sitting RIGHT behind our truck…with us all innocently looking in the other direction! We could have pet her as she passed by us. The first lion did chase the giraffe….but to no success! (Thank goodness…) Oh, and we caught it all on video!
Our camp for three nights. Incredible….at one point we could see giraffe, elephant, zebra, baboon and buffalo all from where we sat. No fences around us. At night we had all kinds of animals sniffing the canvas of our tent…and lions roaring in the background. Our tent was pretty luxurious…king bed, pit toilet and bucket shower all included. Each night we sat around the campfire naming the various animal sounds we could hear. We also had the pleasure of meeting a great couple from Syracuse, NY to share our adventure with!
Baby giraffe on the camp driveway. The giraffe are very curious, and we could usually get pretty close.
Lion cubs! There was a huge pride of lions on a bluff overlooking a watering hole. We saw them nearly every day. They were the same lions we saw stalking the giraffe. A pride is one big family…lots of snuggling and face rubbing going on.
I think this was taken with night vision...as it was after dark. Another leopard…we were lucky with the cats. We watched this one climb down from the tippy top of the tree and eventually get on the ground. We hoped he would hunt…but instead he got face to face with a hyena! Lots of growling and hissing….and the hyena eventually slunk away.
James said we would be lucky to see one cheetah, we saw SEVEN. We watched these two walk across the grass, scaring all the zebra and gazelle half to death. They then plopped down in the shade to wait for an unsuspecting animal to come from upwind. Sure enough…a herd of gazelle came merrily through the meadow. The cheetah gave the gazelle quite a chase….but ended halfheartedly. James thinks they weren’t very hungry, but typical of cats they can’t let the ball of yarn go by without a swat!
The Serengeti ecosystem is defined by the annual migration of over 1,500,000 million wildebeest, zebras and associated predators. We were lucky enough to witness the very beginning of this migration in this area. Difficult to see in this picture…but those are wildebeest running across the road….and it looked like the line never ended! On to Lake Manyara!
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