Day 35 - Lake Victoria & The Serengeti

I woke the next morning around 6am. I'm not sure why because we didn't need to be anywhere. Maybe the string of early starts had messed with my body clock. Not to worry though as I took the opportunity to watch the sun come up.

We had an early morning visitor to the meals hut. A Grey-headed Kingfisher (below).

After watching the sun came up I went back to bed for an hour or so. We were to have some much needed down time for the first half of the day. Kerri & I had been in the move for 5 weeks by this time & the last 3 weeks had been pretty hectic. As much as I was excited to see the Serengeti, there wasn't much point in the heat of the day.

Half the group took the option to go fishing in a local boat (above) & visit the local market while our Canadian friends, Catherine & Peter, kicked back with us at camp under the trees beside Lake Victoria.

Pete & I wrote in our respective travel diaries while the ladies read their books. I also set about doing some much needed camera maintenance.

As we sat & relaxed many varieties of birds surrounded us. Birds in the Mara had taken a back seat to the cats & other mammals over the last few days. Today it was their turn.

I managed to photograph about 15 different species of bird in the space of a few hours including the Cordon-bleu Finch (above) & the African Open Bill Stork (below).

There was also a hammerkop (below) that had managed to catch a little catfish & was struggling to eat the spiny treat without ending up with a beak full of barbs.

This pied kingfisher was looking intently at the water from one of the bigger trees on the bank of the lake.

It would sit in a tree or on a log & watch the water before hovering above a shoal of fish & diving into the water to catch one. It was catching a fish on about every second attempt.

Our relaxing morning had recharged the batteries & we were starting to get excited about going to the famous Serengeti. After lunch we were on the move again.

The Serengeti's West Gate was only 20 minutes from the camp. We'd seen the entrance (above) from the road the previous day. Most of the tourist traffic comes into the Serengeti from the Southern gate so most of the drive for the day would be across a section of the park with very few people & hopefully lots of animals.

It took quite a while for the park permits to be issued so we filled in time by fine tuning our cameras on anything we could find. A mother & child from the village just outside the park were visiting the ranger station.

Another local mum was at the ranger station with her little one as well, but I think she lived much closer than the village.

The permits finally appeared so with the pop tops up & cameras at the ready we were off to explore the world famous Serengeti. We quickly found out that the Serengeti, like the Mara, has endless grass plains but is much flatter than its Kenyan counterpart. The grass was green from the resent (but late) start of the rains in the Northern half of the park. We could already see many of the migrating animals already spreading out across this vast grasslands.

A pair of ground hornbills were very different to any birds we'd seen so far. They don't fly much but can if necessary to escape predators or cross waterways.

The Serengeti doesn't have the extensive waterways as is the Mara but there are a couple of larger rivers that drain the park into Lake Victoria to the west. As for other water hazards we'd seen, the Serengeti rivers were croc & hippo infested. This one looks safe & free of bities but we saw at least three Nile Crocodiles in the stretch of river above. And that's the ones we could see.

GIRAFFES! There were so many Giraffes! We'd seen a few in the Mara, but nothing like the Serengeti. It seemed that anywhere there were acacias there were giraffes feeding on them.

They're such unusual looking animals but also incredibly graceful. Giraffes can run quite quickly, but rarely need to. They move slowly because even the big cats leave them alone thanks to their ability to stomp on any dangerous predator with their long legs.

Even the youngsters are relatively safe, well protected by their doting mothers.

Drinking for a giraffe is where the gracefulness ends (below). With those long legs what choice do they have?

The giraffes were slightly interested in us but by no means threatened which meant we were able to get up close & personal.

The interesting little character below is a Lilac-breasted Roller. They're so colourful & very cheeky. We saw quite a few in Tanzania.

After the multiple giraffe sightings a couple of bull elephants broke the pattern not to mention a number of defenseless trees. We hadn't been this close to wild elephants before and they are quite intimidating with only thin glass & steel between us & them. Fortunately they didn't seem to bothered by us.

Oh Look! More giraffes! Who would have thought. More importantly there were storm clouds building & there were few isolated showers over the plains. Something to watch & be wary of.

Not to be out done by the tall & the just plain big, the usual migration suspects were pretty well everywhere we went. The zebra & wildebeest looked much less agitated as though they had come home. A couple of male impala were at ease enough to have a fight. The males without a harem live in small bachelor groups like the one below.

Seemingly in the middle of nowhere there was a tortoise wandering across the road. Luis stopped the car so Moses could move it off the road & away from danger. No sooner than the tortoise was set down off the road & out of danger, than he turned around & headed straight back to the road. That's gratitude for you....

Oh and there was another giraffe.....

Not far from our campsite there is a tree lined creek dotted with small waterholes like the one below, dominated by hippos. We were pretty close to them at times & I can tell you they smell terrible!

You would think that Egyptian Geese (below) were a bit far from home in Tanzania. Most geese like to migrate, so I guess it isn't that much of a stretch for them to be a few countries flight away.

A small herd of elephants suddenly burst through the bushes & out into the open. They had a very young calf with them. I'm not an expert in elephants but I'd say this little one would be no more than a couple of months old.

They're such gentle creatures considering their size & a reputation for having bad temper.

I mentioned lion jams in a previous posting. There's only one animal that attracts more attention & more cars than a lion pride......

Panthera Pardus. The Leopard! The final tick for the Big Five, the three big cats & the three spotted cats.

Like the rest of the big cats so far, our first leopard was sleeping. These secretive animals are the most nocturnal of the African big cats. It was late in the day so she wasn't totally settled, particularly with all the vehicles close by.

Then she stood up & stretched. The cameras went crazy. It was at that point we saw that she was heavily pregnant. That distended belly had little to do with being well fed.

And then she settled down again still facing away from us. Leopards are a much more difficult photographic subject than the other cats.

They're still magnificent animals.

Eventually she did get up and face us if only for a precious few seconds. The fading light didn't help us get good photos, but they weren't too bad in the end.

She walked gracefully down the fallen tree and disappeared into the tall grass. What a great way to finish off the day's Safari. The Serengeti had delivered and we'd only just started.

We were all very chatty over dinner & beside the camp fire that night. Unfortunately the rest of the night didn't go so well. There was a problem with the water supply to the toilet block and with a couple of tours staying in the same place it became disgusting to the point of dangerously unhygienic very quickly. The wild animals close to camp made it near impossible to "use the bushes". It was a tough night for most of us.