https://zarrf.smugmug.com/Travel/Tanzania/i-N3LxDHZ/A
Elephant charging our vehicle
Today we started our safaris in the Serengeti. We got to sleep in, till 6, woohoo, and then started our game drive at 7:30. Serengeti means open plains which is very much evident. Slowly undulating plains sparsely filled with trees and shrubs dominate this landscape. Right off the bat we saw some Cape Buffalo running and found two lions cuddling in the bush. There was a female and a male, a rare sighting to see them that closer together. After that we ran across a juvenile male lion hanging out on top of a termite mound making the local Impala and warthogs nervous. We then came across a bull elephant who wasn’t terribly happy with us and charged. That was exciting/scary/amazing! Throughout the day we saw lone hyena males, looking so cute, many many Giraffe, all giving us the stink eye, gazelles of various types in the thousands, birds like crazy, vervet monkeys, baboons, zebra, mongoose, 30 or 40 hippos sleeping in a giant mud puddle together, jackals and of course the cats. We saw 13 lions in various stages of napping. Nine of them had just killed a zebra and were in a food coma. One leopard we watched cross the plain and then climb a tree. And the coolest was a cheetah that had just killed an Impala. It was feasting as fast as it could while also keeping a lookout for other predators. Lions, leopards, and hyenas will steal a cheetah’s food but a cheetah will only eat what it had just killed. All in all, a spectacular day, we really loved it. Tomorrow we’re going to drive to the other side of the Serengeti in the hopes of seeing the great migration. We hadn’t planned on seeing it here but because of climate change it had come earlier and from a different direction. Finishing our day, we sit reading on our porch, watching the baboons, Impala, and giraffe go by.