leopard asleep in tree.
We departed from our tented lodge bright and early, we had to meet up with 2 other passengers on the road somewhere. However, on the way, things kept happening animal-wise, and we were almost an hour late!
We came across a big cheetah enjoying his kill, and were so close to him that we could hear him ripping the flesh etc. I’m not usually in favour of killing animals or anything, but here it is a giant circle of life. It’s incredible how everything in nature works so well together. For instance, you will often seen zebra and wildebeest together, and this is because 1)zebra are more intuitive (smart??) and will notice predators (lions etc) a lot quicker than the wildebeest can and 2)zebra eat the top layer of grass, and the wildebeest eat the next layer down, they don’t eat grass as high as the zebra.
We then saw a lion with his morning kill, he was a mean guy and wasn’t appreciative of our snapping photos and coming close. He dragged his kill away a few times until we drove off.
Our guide has been amazing, we hope to return to Africa and hire him on our own. If anyone wants recommendations re: Africa, we would be happy to give them our thoughts.
We picked up the 2 new people and went off the Izebania crossing between Kenya and Tanzania. It is utter chaos there! Trucks, people peddling goods, etc. We crossed over into Tanzania without much ado, and discovered that…… Tanzania has roads!! And they are driveable! They are good! They actually spend money on them! What a huge difference. In Kenya the roads are abysmal, if they are dirt, they are extremely bumpy and horrible (reminding us of the Kimberley roads in WA) and if they are paved, you can’t even drive on the paved part due to huge potholes every, say, 2 metres. No joke, they are terrible.
We are so lucky again – the 2 passengers we picked up were only going as far as the border crossing with us, they had their own tour vehicle to pick them up on the other side! So we are alone again for this tour.
Also, the scenery has changed, much greener. It actually rained during the drive. Lots of agriculture and farmlands. Lots of kopjes (big piles of rock) and hills. The people look more ‘African’ to me, what I mean is when I imagine Africa I see women wearing scarves around their heads and bright coloured cloth dresses. Here, they look like that! All the women carry stuff on their heads: water, wood, big bags of stuff.
Note to Shane’s fellow photographers: Shane has now taken 58Gb of images on this safari alone…….every night it takes him a couple of hours to download them onto our laptop and burn to DVD. It’s a pain in the ass. Especially as I need the laptop as well, to make blog notes to later upload to my blog site (whenever I can get internet access that works!!). Maybe we should have brought 2 laptops with satellite wireless internet connections…..ha ha……
Afternoon game drive in the Serengeti – we saw hippos, hyenas, lioness and lion, giraffes, elephants, buffalo, the list goes on an on. Excellent afternoon, and we checked into the Serena Serengeti Resort, which is just gorgeous. They have internet here! And it works! Although at home our internet is about 10 times faster, so it took about an hour to upload all the blog stuff from when we left Nairobi. The internet has been really annoying, but really, we’re having so much fun, it doesn’t really matter. It cost us $5US for 15 minutes of internet time, extremely slow too. We are going to take advantage of it while we are here!!!!
Wednesday morning……………went on a spectacular game drive with Abdul, our new driver (he is from Arusha/Kilimanjaro, 4-months newlywed, and quite young. His English is not as good as Magic’s unfortunately)………………….the drive started off slow, but then we spotted a lioness with her kill ( a zebra). We watched her for ages, she was absolutely stuffed, after the chase and kill, and dragging the zebra to a safer spot, she was exhausted. We watched her for about half an hour. Eventually it got too hot and sunny for her, and she went into the bushes to lie down, meanwhile still having a close view of the kill.
Then, we came across another leopard!! This time lying in the branch of a tree. We, and about another dozen tour vehicles, were enthralled. We ended up staying over 2 hours, just watching and observing. Got some great shots, both images and with my video camera. It was very enjoyable game viewing!!!
Abdul is teaching us words in Swahili, and then we are wowing the bar and restaurant staff with our knowledge. They really appreciate our efforts, amidst much laughter. Most of the guests in this hotel are what you would call, snooty, for lack of a better word. So most of the guest don't even try to communicate with the staff, only to ask/demand for drinks/towels/etc. Leopard in Swahili is ‘chui’.
In the arvo we left for another game drive, to see the hippos (they were fun, but noisy). It absolutely POURED with rain along the drive, it was fantastic. They love the rain here. Except later we saw rather bedraggled birds and animals, they looked very cute.
Tomorrow onto NgoroNgoro Crater, with a huge concentration of animals in the crater. Should be fun!!
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