Safari Days 1 and 2

Sorry if this post is a little picture heavy, there was just so many things to see! You'll have to click on the pictures of animals to see them bigger.

So Friday morning we set out in two safari jeeps (half of us were going for four days and another half for three days).

We drove out of Arusha, past Lake Manyara, into the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. We stopped to take a look out over the Ngorongoro Crater, which we weren't visiting until later in the safari.

We passed zebras and flamingos, along with antelope, gazelles, ostrich and a whole lot of other "common" animals ...

...before we entered the Serengeti (means "endless plain") and saw our first cool animal sitting in the grass - a cheetah.

So we sat and watched the cheetah for a while, willing it to come closer. It did, then laid back down in the grass where we couldn't see it. So, the excitement was over, we shouted, "Twende!" (Let's go), we started the jeep, and ... we had a flat tire. And yes, the cheetah was still there. I'm just glad I wasn't the one changing the tire.

On a safari, the mission is to see the "Big Five," - lion, elephant, buffalo, leopard, and rhino. So, we had seen over 15 animals so far, but none of the big five. Just as we had noticed this, we saw a pack of elephants up ahead.

We stopped the car and were all watching them walk by when someone realized that behind us was an elephant (really close) and a buffalo right next to it.

Two of the big five in one picture - quite an acheivement. After that, elephants were old news. We proceeded on toward the sunset to our campsite in the middle of the Serengeti, where we pitched tents and had a gourmet meal (no kidding - a great meal by any standards), while being wary of the gleaming hyena eyes moving around our campsite.

Then, we went to bed, packed like sardines.

Surprisingly, we all slept well, despite the hyenas. We woke up to a quick breakfast and set back out across the Serengeti to continue our hunt for the big five.

We passed multitudes of buffalo (now a very boring sight), vervet monkeys, giraffes, and some more of the same animals we had already seen, before coming across our third of the big five.










Our third of the big five were lions. Now, we would have been happy seeing a single lion just sitting in the grass, but we got to see a whole pack of lions (two males, three females, and a ton of cubs) destroying a buffalo. You could even hear them tearing the meat off the bones.

Of course, this made us hungry, so we returned to camp for another amazing meal.

Then we set back out across the Serengeti toward the Ngorongoro crater rim, where we would camp for the night.

The Ngorongoro Crater is basically the top of a volcano. You drive up into the mountains and at the top there is a big crater formed from an old volcanic eruption. We camped at Simba (lion) Campsite on the rim of the crater. I never knew I could be so damn cold on a safari in Africa. I was just heading back to the jeep to get another sweatshirt, when our guide, Chui (leopard), told me to be very very still. An elephant had walked right into the campsite. So, he told me not to move, but took a picture anyway.

So, it was the end of a long day in the sun, and I hadn't showered since we'd left Arusha. Tired as we were, cameras were our number one priority so we stayed up late waiting to charge them in one of the 5 outlets servicing the whole campground. Then, we fell asleep praying we wouldn't get stampeded by elephants.

Oh and here's a picture of my dirty feet.