Serengeti Safari

I dont even know how to describe the Serengeti. I will try, but will obviously leave a lot out just because it was such an amazing experience.

First, I was with my newly engaged besties, Kimberly and Sean. Second, we had an amazingly knowledgeable and patient guide, Ayubu (from Destination Tanzania safari's http://www.detasa.com/). Lastly, the Serengeti is just a mind-blowing place.



We started off our first day with a drive through the Ngora Ngora crater. The Ngora Ngora crate is the world's largest unflooded, intact calderas. That this means is that it is a huge gaping hole in the group that is like a zoo of wildlife. We saw the normal "cockroaches of safari" like zebra, giraffe, elephants and misc deer-like animals that all look alike after awhile. But we also saw a lot of ostriches. And they are horny bastards...the men always chasing after the women and we saw at least 3 different matings until we lost interest. We saw some lions too. Whoop-ti-do. The highlight of our Ngora Ngora wildlife viewing was our first cheetah. Granted, the cheetah was very far away but we wouldnt let Ayubu move until we all watched it for awhile and took lots of photos. Ayuba made the (very accurate) comment, "This is why they made a delete button on your camera." Sure enough, later in the safari we saw many more cheetah's closer and with more action to put this little one to shame. Thus, I wont put the piss-poor photo up here.

That night, we got way spoiled and stayed at this sick lodge, The Plantation House.

Next was the long awaited Serengeti!



We rode through the endless plains (which is, uh, what Serengeti kinda means in Swahili) and saw giraffe on the side of the road, and Masaii herding their cattle in between sending text messages on their cell phones. Sure, they might only consume milk and cow's blood, but you better believe they are updating their facebook status while they do so.

The next few days were a whirlwind of laughs, animals, and looking for cell phone reception. Here are some photo-highlights:

Seeing 3 baby cubs with their mother and another wicked stepmother




Offroading to see this lioness lounging in the tree. Look how close we got to her!



Endangered Rhino




Spotting leopards two times (pun totally intended) We also saw cheetahs a lot, which are my personal favorite. But they are more common than the elusive leopard, and the leopard is part of the Big 5 so everyone votes for them for Homecoming Queen. Interesting fact: Leopard and cheetah have small variances in their behavior and biology. The biggiest difference I could gather, though, was that cheetah's habitat is the tall grass, and leopard's spend more of their non-hunting time in trees. And, of course, the poor cheetah sits at home on a Friday night. I bought into this whole leopard craze and of course dont have many good cheetah pics. But seriously, the leopard and cheetah do kinda look alike so you can pretend that it is the same animal for blog-reading-at-work purposes.


Offroading to see this recent zebra kill and the feast by the lion while the lionesses hung back








We saw all Big 5 in one day (Elephants, Buffalo, Rhino, Lion and Leopard) and were beside ourselves with our luck. Then, things got even better. We had enough flexibility in our safari itinerary so that Ayubu managed a way for us to see the Great Migration of the Wildebeests. (Apparently when he picked me up from the airport, I mentioned a desire to see this, and he subconsciously recognized the Grasso Charm and dared not to disappoint.)

The wildebeest itself isn't that spectacular of an animal...it is kind of a shaggy moose-buffalo. But what makes them so fascinating is that they have a great migration where they move in HUGE groups across the Serengeti. I am sure you have seen National Geographic documentaries of this sort. But it really is like the TV shows. They gallop in these gynormous herds. Although, to be candid, we did learn and see, that they sometimes take off at full speed in totally the wrong direction.

But what is MOST amazing about watching the Great Migration of the Wildebeests is watching them cross the dangerous Mara River. And we were lucky enough to see it. What happens is that the group wanders up to the river and hangs out for hours trying to get the nerve to cross. It kind of looks like a group of freshman trying to get into a Fraternity party. Then one wildebeest takes the plunge while the hundreds or thousands of others watch him (or her! after all, this is 2011) swim across the river. If this wildebeest makes it without drowning or getting eaten by a crocodile, then it is full speed ahead. Every wildebeest as far as the eye can see starts jumping into the river (but strangely they pay attention to the pool rules and pretty much enter in single file). Most make it, and they continue galloping with the herd. We took some cool video, but alas wifi speeds may make this impossible until further notice.




The last day of our safari (and Kimberly and Sean's last day in Africa) was supposed to be a quiet game drive en route to the Lobo airstrip for our flight back to Arusha. We had had spectacular experiences the day before - sightings of all big 5, offroading, and watching the Great Migration of wildebeests crossing the Mara River. We expected a very quiet last day in Africa for Kimberly and Sean. Sean woke up and the first thing he said was,"We get to leave Africa today." It had become quite a joke that everything ridiculous that happened, good and bad, got the Shakira inspired comment, "This is Africa."

Our amazing safari guide, Ayubu, had left early that morning to drive the 10 hours back to Arusha because some clients had special requested him. So we lugged all of our bags for the hour long drive to the airstrip with Francis, the other Destination Tanzania guide so we could fly to Arusha.

Fifteen minutes into the drive, though, he breaks down and cannot change the fuel tank. Luckily a different company was behind us and they miraculously have enough room for all of us and our bags. In the spirit of "telling the universe what we want," we requested seeing more cubs.

En route to the airstrip, we see 2 lionesses and 3 male cubs with a wildebeest and watch them until they cross in front of us. We were on a roll, so requested that the universe dish us up a live kill. Five minutes later, we spot 3 cheetah chasing down a jackal into a ditch. What luck! Then our luck ended.

While waiting 45 minutes for our flight on the airstrip, our plane finally arrived. With a flat tire. Actually it was obviously a spare they had been using, so there was so spare.



So we have to wait for a replacement plane from Arusha. Not so bad, should be maybe just a 1-2 hour delay. Except they needed to find a pilot too. At that point, Francis had showed up and we moved all of our stuff into or onto his Land Rover. We had seen such excellent wildlife that we agreed it would be anti-climatic to go on another game drive, and Francis felt obligated to help a different driver having car problems (I guess in the spirit of paying it forward, as a different guide had helped him earlier that day). With our luggage on the hood of the car, Francis announces we are going to hit the guy from behind in hopes of getting him moving. When we were just about to bump the car, OUR car breaks down. We finally manage to get our car started so we can hit the other car, and we start pushing him forward. ONTO the active airstrip. We do so repeatedly, with our luggage on the trunk, and are even undeterred by an airplane swopping down and landing. I managed to get a video of this, complete with our broken down airplane only feet away. It's all we can do. After all, this is africa.

Photographs 33.3333% compliments of Kimberly Burdorf