Friday, July 19, 2013

Serengeti Day Two

The day started early with a 0600 wakeup and a 0630 departure for an early morning game drive. The first stop was for a gorgeous sunrise over the Savannah through the Acacia trees. Then we had a pond about an acre in size that had at least 100 Hippos in it. We saw loads of Elephants out working on their morning breakfast. A real treat was a mother Leopard in an Acatia tree with two fairly large cubs. They will probably be learning to hunt soon. We watched her come down out of the tree and head off into the tall grass to hunt some nearby Gazelles. After a bit, the Gazelles dashed off, and she didn't get one, but she may have wounded one because a Hyena dashed in and seemed to down something. Difficult to tell what happened in tall grass. A couple minutes later we saw the three Leopards come out of the grass, Mom lounged around a bit while the cubs chased each other, then we lost them in the high grass again. We thought they might be gong back up their tree, but in fact they went up another one nearby and I was able to get some additional footage there too. We also had a large pride of Lions, at least a dozen very near the 4x4.

We we left Serengeti around noon and made it back to Arusha around 6:00 PM, so we had another long day. Tomorrow will be a long one too as we start to head down to Dar es Salaam. We should make it a little over halfway and get to Dar the following afternoon.

Here are a few photos from Ngorongoro Crater and Serengeti:

Serengeti Sunrise
AcaciaSunrise

Cheetah and cubs
Cheetahs

Leopards
Leopards in tree

Lions on watch
Serengeti Lions

Catnap after a big meal
Lion's Cat Nap

Hyena
Hyena

Elephants
Elephants

Serengeti Sunset
SerengetiSunset

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