serengeti

Meg and I headed straight to Mwanza from Gorilla trekking. If Mwanza whose nickname is Rock City was in the US it would be a climbing mecca much like Joshua Tree. There were such awesome standalone spires,  amazing cracks and boulders everywhere you looked. Here I was stuck on another bus watching them zip by on the horizon en route to the Serengeti stopover camp. Turns out we had the place to ourselves which was pretty awesome. We stayed in the Simba Suite and were waited on the minute we walked into the restaurant.

The staff even went so far as to catch us before meals to see what we wanted and when we would like to eat. Talk about service! For those unaware this is very rare. Normally when you sit down and order fish for dinner as we did with our awesome guide Geoffrey in Masaka he said "they still have to go fishing and catch the fish" which may have been fairly accurate based on how long we sat there.

Serengeti day 1
Meg and I woke up to a thunderstorm with lightening touching down around our little oasis the morning we were supposed to head into the Serengeti. Serengeti is derived from the Maasai word siringet that means "endless plains". With pools forming around our little hut and the restaurant I was thinking it might also become the endless flooding plains.

As it turns out our little place dried out pretty fast, but unfortunately this was at the expense of Meg's clothes catching all the rain that leaked into our little abode. Secretly thankful it wasn't my clothes I helped Meg wring her clothes out and set them before the fan after the power finally turned back on 20 minutes before our scheduled departure time. We had a few moments of prayer for a dry day after envisioning a wet safari after traveling halfway around the world. Thankfully prayers were answered  and we were off and heading into the Serengeti with our new guide Victor and driver/mechanic Juma.

Juma was a last minute addition of which we were thankful for later. We started cruising in with Meg and I standing up through the removable roof admiring the Zebra, giraffe, baboons, thompson's gazelle and keeping our eyes peeled on the horizon for whatever amazing animal might show up next.

I am in the middle of trying to spot some mystery animal when Meg all of a sudden starts tugging my arm. I look at her and see a look of mild panic on her face as she is looking up at the dash. It is about this time that my nose tells me she is seeing an electrical fire from the front of the car. Glancing forward to take in the situation unfolding in our Landcruiser, I just about get ran over by Meg who is trying to run out the door by me because there is no door on her side. 

Then I do what any good husband would and distract his wife while Victor and Juma take care of the issue at hand after I see its not spreading further. "Babe let me take some pics of you with that cool tree."

Well that only worked for about 5 minutes and then I couldn't get Meg away from the car. Yes there may be smoke and flames coming from the front of the car where the radio used to be, but it will be fine don't worry babe. Juma was disassembling the dash as fast as he could and ripping wires out left and right that were still on fire. What seemed to happen was a short that was sparking set the rest off and a fuse blew in the process. Trying to assure Meg while she was attentively watching was not happening. She kept looking at me and asking if it was fine, what would we do if we were stuck there for the night. I told her that it was electrical and the engine still was running fine, but worse case scenario we would be camping and would have a good story. Based off her expression I could tell Meg clearly wanted nothing to with that kind of a story. Alas the fire was out electrical wires were patched or ripped out and discarded and we started up our not so trusty ride and cruised to our campsite after about an hour delay. Upside is that Victor is a chef as well as a guide so our dinner was awesome and highlights for Meg and I included our daily soup serving. 

I would like to say that the rest of night went smoothly, but the thunderstorms and lightening returned which would be impressive to watch except for the fact that our tent seemed to want Meg and I experience it first hand and dripped on us on the wind driven side until it stopped. All in all that day we saw from what we can remember: the above listed animals, impala, water buffalo, wildebeest and calves, waterbuck, vervet monkey, dik dik, crocodile, hippo, wild dog, secretary bird and tons of others that I can't name and some elephant.

Serengeti day 2

The plus side to rain in the Serengeti is less dust, which is nice when you spend 8 hours standing up out of a Landcruiser. We also had sunny days the whole time and just experienced the lightening/thunderstorms at night. In the morning we got an early start and saw a female lion sunning herself on a rock. Leopard lazily lying in a tree. I have decided they have the easiest life because all they do is sleep in a tree all day until an animal unknowingly walks to get water below the tree and the leopard drops on them for the kill.

We saw some hippos trying to outdo each other on how wide they could open their mouths. 

2 were outside the water and that is just a funny sight when you see them nowhere near water lumbering through the bush. 

Some gazelle also in a little man-squabble.

We counted a giraffe family of 20 as well. 

Jackal - pretty small fox

helping a brother out

We really liked the vervet monkeys.

One of the prettiest Serengeti birds: lilac breasted roller

Pumba!

Hyena... these are some dirty dogs

The highlight of the day was watching a cheetah mother and her 3 cubs who were about 18 months from what we were told on the hunt. Those suckers are patient. They were hunting impala who had one male and about 50 females.

The male was clueless as he continually chased a female in efforts to get after it even though a few females seemed aware of being hunted.  The hunt from where we saw them initially to the finish only traveled about 200 yards. We had sat there for 3.5 hours waiting and decided to do a quick little loop in the area because the cheetahs were still sitting still.

Bad decision. When we returned we had just missed the kill by about 2 minutes. They had just started eating the impala when a hyena who apparently have a nose for blood swooped in grabbed it and trotted off with their hard earned dinner. It was actually a sad sight because the mother was now limping apparently getting a little hurt during the chase, which creates an unknown future for her 3 little ones. The below shot is right after the hyena swooped in.

Looking in the distance at their meal that got taken from them...

Bummed out cheetahs.

sweet shots of little cheetah

We then returned to camp for dinner and with us returned the thunder and lightening. We were super hungry and excited for dinner!We played cards for what seemed like hours waiting for dinner and were still hungry.I thought to myself that there was nothing fast food about Africa. Then dinner and the amazing soup finally came. The other interesting part about camping in the Serengeti is that when the sun goes down the light turns off! Pitch. Black. Oh wait, except for that set of glowing eyes over there, there and yep that pair as well. A little unnerving when nature calls in the middle of the night and apparently lions are known to lie down right next to your tent because they can feel your body heat. I told Meg she was on her own if she had to pee to which she said I was a horrible husband. I assured her I was joking...mostly.

Thankfully Meg never hit code red on the pee scale because she never drank water after 3 pm so she would not have to see all the glowing eyes. This allowed me to not have to show her how much of a wuss I am and make her go out there by herself. The guides said not to worry because your flashlight is your weapon and they would take off when they saw it. Well to clear up any curiosity for you all any eyes that I spotted in the night with my flashlight remained there unwavering so that light bit was a bunch of crap!