#serenaserengeti

We got up early this morning for safari and had a quick breakfast. We learned that Tanzania’s president died last night and the people didn’t even know he was ill. The staff were in shock. The new president is a woman and she will be the first female president of any East African country. We met Godson and headed off on our safari.

The Serengeti is a national park. That means that no people are allowed to live in it (other than for specific purposes like research). The Masai were relocated into the Ngorongoro crater. The park is over 5,000 square miles and is the largest park we’ve been to. We visited the eastern part of the park today. Apparently animals are less concentrated here, but we were able to see a number of animals, including a lot of the animals we’ve seen before (but no rhinos). Among the cooler things was three prides of lions: one sleeping after feasting on a fresh zebra kill, one sitting on top of a 100 foot tall rock and one sitting near an elephant. We also saw a large crocodile for the first time, a leopard sitting in a tree with a baby hyena kill draped across one of the branches, an extremely large dazzle of zebras (we estimate between 500 and 1,000), an elephant female with broken tusks, which grazed 10 feet in front of us, and several groups of common ostriches. We also saw a reedbuck for the first time.

The Serengeti appeared to be slightly busier than the other parks / conservancies we’ve been to. As we went to a more remote part of the park, we ended up in a group of three safari vehicles. It was helpful to be together as we were able to benefit from three separate guides and it provided security if any of the vehicles had a breakdown or other issue. The area we went to was extremely dusty. We were told we couldn’t go off road, but we still managed to do so a few times, particularly to see the lions and the leopard.

We stopped for a late lunch beneath the lions that were lounging on the rock, under their watchful gaze. J enjoyed the box lunch. Hers was a roast chicken leg, hard boiled eggs and veggies. Chef had also included a very large avocado, which was difficult to eat in the car with a plastic spoon. S had veggie pizza and fruit.

After lunch, we headed back toward the lodge as we had travelled far away from it and so we could make it back before dark. This was a very long day safari (we were gone for nearly 10 hours). We managed to grab a drink at the bar and get through some admin before dinner.

For dinner, we both had soup, the lentil curry and fruit. We retired to the outdoor seating area of the bar again to watch the dik-diks and listen to hyenas whooping. Tonight the dik-diks were less active and simply sitting on the grass watching out for leopards (and hyenas).