More Game Drives

2008-02-14 – 2008-02-15 More Game Drives

Summary

- Serengeti game drive

- Visit to a Masai camp

- Ngorongoro crater game drive

- Lioness vs wildebeest

- Cheetah vs warthogs

On Thursday we left camp at 7am for another game drive in the Serengeti, and it was sunny for a change… plenty of light for taking snaps. The morning started out slow, but we got lucky later on. We missed our chance to see a leopard, which was in a tree… by the time we got there it had gone. However, we saw another 4 cheetahs and 2 more lionesses, one of whom was perched on top of a rock no more than 20 metres from the roadside. By this stage we were usually skipping giraffes and the like as we’d seen so many of them. That afternoon we visited a Masai camp where the Masai’s danced and sang for us and then had us join in. We saw the inside of their very tiny mud huts and even in there for such a shot amount of time, it was bloody hot! We then looked at the Masai school which was a small stick hut where the children were going through the English numbers and alphabet. Our guide at the Masai camp claimed to have killed 6 lions with his spear and knife. He seemed more interested in selling us his wares than acting as a guide or providing us with information. This was the point when I decided the Masai are not as independent and self-providing as I’d be lead to think. If they were, then they’d have no need for our money (US$20 for the trip there and US$20 for any of their wares). We then left the Masai camp to go to our campsite on the Ngorongoro Crater rim. After setting up our tents, I went and had a cold shower before we had dinner and retired ready for an early morning.

After breakfast at 6am on Friday, we went to the Ngorongoro Crater via 4WDs. This is the highlight of our trip thus far, without a doubt. As soon as we entered the crater an elephant was walking alongside the vehicle, 1 or 2 metres from the track. After following him along for a while, we shot off and things were quiet for a while. We saw some wildebeest, more elephants, zebras, etc. At one point another safari vehicle that was turned around on the track (was at 90 degrees to us at the time, went to go straight in front of us, cutting us off… the driver must be blind to have not seen us… ok, well he was probably just stupid. Anyway,  the driver had to slam his brakes, sending everyone forward in a domino effect since most of us were standing up looking out the open roof of the 4WD. Meanwhile my camera with long lens attached has been sent flying off the seat and bouncing along the floor… thankfully the build quality on these things are like that of a tank (hence why they’re so heavy) so no real harm was done, just some minor scratches. Later we came across an abundance of safari vehicles parked alongside the track. We spotted a lioness crouched in the grass about 5 metres from a grazing wildebeest. We watched and waited as the lioness would creep forward a few inches at a time. After about 15 minutes the lioness was within 3 or 4 metres of the wildebeest, when it jumped up and went for the wildebeest. The wildebeest bolted and the chase was on but only lasted a few seconds before the lioness gave up. Disappointing that there wasn’t a kill, but it was still fantastic to watch. From here the game drive just got better. We drove up to a buffalo carcass, which must have been recently killed be lions, where hyenas were ripping at the carcass. One of the hyenas managed to get a buffalo leg and ran off with it. On the other side of the road 3 male lions were off in the distance. These were the first male lions we’d seen but they were a very long way from us and we couldn’t get any closer to them.

We then drove alongside the lake, which was filled with flamingoes and the occasional bathing hippo. We came across a cheetah in the grass and as I was sitting watching it and snapping shots, I saw two heads pop-up. They were cheetah cubs, there turned out to be 3 of them. A pack of warthogs were headed in the cheetah’s direction, so she was crouched ready to go at them and obviously told her cubs to go in the other direction (she was making sounds and the cubs backed away). She ran at the warthogs and it all happened quite fast but resulted with the warthogs running after her. She acted as a decoy to get the hogs away from her cubs. Once the hogs were trotting away, the cheetah called to her cubs who came bounding through the grass back to her. The cheetah passed right alongside us, within a metre of our truck. In the process of getting ready for her chase I must have bumped my camera lens; being a push-pull zoom lens when I bumped it, it shortened its length (zoomed out), so all the shots could have been zoomed in quite a bit more than the ones I took.. nevermind. There was always plenty of action here, whether it be a couple of zebras chasing one another or flamingoes flying through the air or wildebeest calves feeding from their mother, you didn’t know which direction to look at. We headed for the forest region to try our luck spotting a leopard, although the guide had said he hadn’t seen one there for 3 months. No luck spotting leopards, but when we stopped off for lunch there were a bunch of monkeys in the trees. As I was photographing one of them, it came over and sat right beside me, less than a metre away. Meanwhile, an eagle had spotted everyone with lunches and proceeded to swoop down trying to snatch people’s lunches from their hands. Unfortunately it was then time to leave the crater, but I wish we could have stayed for another couple of hours (we were there 4 hours, but each vehicle is limited to a maximum of 6 hours in the crater). On the way back, there was a lot of thick red dust. Everything got covered in red dust.

We met up with our overland truck again and drove back to the Snake Park campsite in Arusha, instead of Masai campsite where the original itinerary had us going. There was a bunch of caged reptiles and snakes to look at here and a Masai Cultural Museum. The exit to the museum comes out at the back where hoards of African women await to try to sell you their wares. After being told there would be hot showers, I headed up to the men’s rooms. My shower was the coldest I’ve had yet, the type that makes you lose your breath as it’s so cold. Apparently I got in the only shower whose heating did not work, which I didn’t find out until after everyone else mentioned their hot showers… Skye was saying her shower was too hot!

By this stage, Skye and I being the only couple on the tour, we’d copped it a bit from other people. Joel would frequently mimick Skye yelling ‘Scooooottt’ at me and her remark from a few days earlier of ‘Scooooooooooottttt, you got mud on my toilet paper!’, at which point everyone had pissed themselves laughing and commented that perhaps it wasn’t mud after all. That night we headed down to the pub for a beer to farewell our fellow travelers before we went our separate ways the following morning. 

Serengeti Campsite

Serengeti Kingfisher

Baby White Vervet

Jackal in the Grass

Lioness on a Rock

Cheerful Cheetah

Knocked Up

Wildebeest Panorama

Who Flung Dung?

Jumping Masai

Home Sweet Home

Ngorongoro Crater Rim Sunset

Ngorongoro Crater Rim Sunset Panorama

The Green Mile

Male Ostrich

Wrestling Wildebeest

Lioness vs Wildebeest

Bitten Off More Than You Can Chew

Grubs Up!

Black Rhino

Swooping Eagle

Cheetah vs Warthogs

My Little Mate (the one who sat down beside me)

Geckos ‘Tanzania Trail’ Tour Group

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