August 21 - Transit to Serengeti

This day was a very long drive, punctuated by three of the best experiences of the whole trip.
In the morning, we toured a Maasai village (they must rake in the dough for this, at $20 US/pp) and joined them in their warrior dance (basically, it's quasi-rhythmic throat singing and a high-jumping competition; I didn't win). Margaret joined the ladies for their welcome dance. Video's will be posted on You Tube.

By just after 3 pm we had entered the Serengeti. It is clearly the inspiration for the movie 'lion king' complete with the 'pride rock' where the lions like to hang out. We drive out around a popular water whole to see if we can find any lions. We saw two females with about 5 cubs hiding in the tall grass so we decided to stop and watch a while. Then we realized that there was a big male lion, and another female. All of a sudden another male appears out of no where and starts walking towards us, clearly the 'let's go' signal, as two other male lions, his brothers, approximately 5 female lions, and 7 cubs start moving in the grass, and passing our vehicle both in front and in back to congregate on the other side of the road (the cubs stayed hidden in the grass). It was incredible being surrounded by lions!

In the afternoon, just as we were giving up on seeing a cheetah or leopard while transiting the central Serengeti, we came upon a couple trucks who were watching a leopard chew on a gazelle up in a tree (leopard drags his kill up into the tree before eating). We saw the leopard run down the tree just as we approached, and hide in the tall grasses and scrub nearby. We waited and waited, and searched with our binoculars. After about 20 minutes of waiting, a troupe of baboons wandered into the area. They immediately checked out the fresh kill, then spread out in a slowly expanding circle, searching for the leopard, hooting and hollering their status. It took the baboons as long as it took me to find the leopard, about 10 minutes. When they found it, all the big male baboons chased the leopard out and down a creek bed. The leopard was visible and gone in such a flash that nobody captured a picture, though we all saw it flash by. It is very rare to see the baboons team up on a leopard, and our guides were so excited to see this rare occurrence that they jumped up and down in their seats while waving their arms and shouting fragmented exclamations! We watched the baboons track the leopard for another 15 minutes or so (we never saw the leopard again – probably hiding under another bush), before leaving out of necessity to reach our lodge by nightfall (85km distant).

The rest of the drive was beautiful. We drove through grassland and forest, full of zebra, baboon, elephant, giraffe, gazelle, topi, waterbuck, wildebeest, impala, and various birds.

We arrived at our lodge just before 7 pm, it is the Best. Lodge. Ever. Seriously, it's the nicest 'hotel' I have ever stayed in. Imagine from an old Indiana Jones movie, or Tomb Rader movlie the 'rustic' safari tents that they stayed in, complete with lanters, book cases, four poster bed, etc. Our lodge was kind of like that. We had our own chalet in the Serengeti park, two of the walls were canvas with mesh windows. The lights were old english style lanterns with modern light bulbs in them, wood floors, gigantic bathroom with old claw foot style tub, it was incredibly luxiourious (in the middle of the Serengeti, go figure).

After dinner we were walking back to our chalet and we shined our flashlights down the hill towards a noise we had heard. A set of BIG eyes about a foot apart from each other stared sparkled in the dark back up towards us. Fear crept over us as we realized that it was a cape buffalo, and that we had no land cruiser to protect us. We didn't dilly dally as we picked up the pace back to our chalet, but we sure did feel better as the cape buffalo went back to eating bushes with his buddy.