Around the world

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Video of a lion

Today we visited the Ngorongoro Crater, a giant volcano’s caldera that over the millennia turned into the savannah in the middle of a rainforest. Because of its’ steep sides animals get trapped inside creating a very densely populated area. We started off the morning with two Serval cats, one being chased by 20 or so guinea fowl. It was quite funny! Then our Ranger took us along the crater’s edge and we came across a lone female lion. She walked right under me (I may have been hanging out the window) and was so close I could have touched her! So so amazing! After that we continued the game drive for many hours seeing all the usual suspects: warthogs, wildebeest, zebra, cape Buffalo, ostrich, hyenas. We also saw an incredible amount of Golden Jackals (now after further research renamed the African Golden Wolf), cute fox sized canines that love to trot around. Surprisingly we saw a fox which I hadn’t even know were in Africa. For the life of me I could not tell the two apart. At one point we came across a lion kill, one female still eating, one male watching, and another male and female passed out about a quarter of a mile away. At one point the vultures were getting too pushy for the lioness and she grabbed one out of the air and slammed it to the ground! She had no interest in eating or even killing it, she just wanted the vultures to back off. After watching her and the male for 20 minutes we suddenly noticed another giant male, just 20 feet from the vehicle! He had been obstructed from view by another vehicle. He was a big big boy! He then walked by our vehicle and stopped at the next one and proceeded to claim that one as his own. The face of the tourists in that vehicle were priceless! Total lion sightings for the day were 10 but the rest were, I know you can guess, napping. At the end of the day we saw a giant bull elephant and finally a rhino from a great distance. This is our last night in Tanzania, last night in Africa, and tomorrow we fly to Athens. It was amazing. We shall sorely miss it.

Well talk about a crazy morning, so many cats! But to start with last night was special, in a very Serengeti kind of way. At about midnight the Cape Buffalo visited our “tent”(it’s hard to call something that glorious and luxurious a tent) and were mooing, alarming, and rubbing along our tent. It was loud!!!! Then the predator must have moved off until about two when the Buffalo lost their minds again. Very in the bush. After checking out in the morning we got a short game drive to the airport and wow was it incredible! We started out with 3 female lions relaxing in the shade right off the bat, and a cute little Rock Hyrax hanging out on a giant boulder. Then we drive a little way and our Ranger spotted some cheetahs. As we got close we saw what an amazing find it was, five cheetah, one mom and four almost full grown cubs. They were all hanging out in the shade, the mom scanning the savannah for predators and prey. After that, a short drive later we saw a leopard lounging in a tree. It was such a large cat, gorgeous coat, happily waiting for some prey. Again, a short ride later, a true rarity, we saw a Serval cat. It looked like a cross between a cheetah and a bobcat, weighing maybe 20lbs. Normally they only hunt at night and wouldn’t be seen on Safari. I forgot to mention in earlier posts that in the Serengeti they only do game drives in the day where as in our lodge in South Africa they only do them at dawn and dusk. It had to do with the regulations in the different parks and public versus private land. Finally on our airport drop off/ game drive we saw a giant pack of mongoose, acting like mere cats and being truly adorable! Our estimated animal totals for the Serengeti:

24 lions

2 leopards

7 cheetah

100 Elephants and giraffe

0 Rhino 😥

200 hippos

2000 zebra

3-4000 wildebeest

And many many more!

Today we went to see the great migration. The migration is herds of wildebeest and zebra following the rains across the plains. In total it’s about 1.2 million wildebeest and 800,000 zebra. We went to see the leading edge on the western side of the Serengeti, clear across the very large park from our lodge. At the start of this trek we saw a family of 9 lions napping, surprise surprise, in the shade of a tree. Then the drive to the migration. Ever wonder what a paint can feels like? I’m sure you all secretly do, and guess what, it sucks! Mind you totally worth it but the rattle/shaking for hours made me appreciate the durability of Safari vehicles and the human body! After our thorough mixing, we started to see the herds. They were spread out across the plains, zebra and wildebeest mixed together like a separated vinagrette. As far as your eye could see were herds out to the horizon. It was incredible, awesome, stupendous, etc. The sheer quantity of large animals boggled the mind and we were only seeing one small part of it. We probably saw 3 to 5 thousand wildebeest and at least 2 thousand zebra. We also saw a small solitary herd of Eland, the largest antelope in the world. After spending quite awhile admiring the herds, we stopped for lunch at a hippo watering hole. There must of been a hundred hippo jammed together in there waiting out the sun. After another paint mix we made it back to normal roads and saw a cheetah waking the savannah, a pair of female lions muzzles red from a kill, a goodnight herd of elephants, and assorted giraffe, warthogs, and birds. It was a good but long Safari day! For dinner though our lodge surprised us with a private romantic dinner lit by lanterns. It was very sweet and yummy food!

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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.

The day after we saw the chimps, it was time to leave Uganda for Tanzania. We got up early, as usual, for our flight from Kasese aerodrome to Entebbe. The air service to these far flung airstrips we’ve been going to is sort of like a shared air taxi service. There’s not really a schedule or a route until the day before when they work out what bookings they have, so it’s all a bit haphazard, though it does sound like its actually reliable. They exclusively use Cessna Carravans in an 11 passenger + 2 pilot configuration. Today we found out that they would take us from Kasese to Kihihi (basically the opposite direction of Entebbe) where they’d drop us off for about an hour while they went to Kisoro and came back to get us. Then we flew from Kihihi to Entebbe.Once there we took a whirlwind tour of the airport guided along by an employee of our next airline, which was sort of a private charter airline using a similar ad-hoc route system. Out and back in again, through security and immigration and customs and such. Then we walked out across the tarmac to our next Cessna Carravan.This time we flew from Entebbe to Kibale, Rwanda. From there, we went to Mwanza, Tanzania for immigration and customs into Tanzania. This was a shocking amount of paperwork for Ebola checking and some additional paperwork for something even though we already had our visas filled out and paid for ahead of time. Though everyone was actually very friendly and chatty.After we were all cleared for immigration (there were just four of us on the plane) we went on the drop off the other two at Kogatende airstrip in the north part of Serengeti park, just this side of Kenya. Finally we were on our way to our airstrip, arriving about 5 pm. We were met by our ranger and taken to our rather amazing “tent” at “camp.” The safari vehicle even came equipped with beers. On our way we saw a small family of jackal cubs right by the road, and a lion!After a week without reliable power and internet, this place was a revelation.