THE SERENGETI PLAINS AT MIGRATION TIME

(This is the 2nd of hopefully 3 posts I can send out this evening.  We are off to our special Christmas Eve dinner now as we are 8 hours ahead and 80 degrees warmer than you.)

We left the Crater at around 9am this morning (Wednesday Dec 22^nd) and headed out for the Serengeti Plain, home of the great migration of the zebra and the wildebeest.  By most estimations there are over 1 million zebra and 1.8 million wildebeest involved in the migration.  Since the dry season is coming to an end and we are just entering into the “short” rains, the animals are on the move from the north to the south in their continuous counter-clockwise migration.  But first we had a short stop at Olduvai Gorge, home to some of the 20^th century discoveries of early hominids.  The most famous one discovered in this area was “Lucy”, the 3.6 million old hominid that was discovered in the late 1900s.  Very interesting, but we WANT ANIMALS!!!!

And animals we got.  After a short break for lunch we officially entered into the Serengeti National Park.  Serengeti in Masai means “endless plains” and it sure lived up to its name.  The first animals we encountered were giraffes loitering only about 50 yards or so from the road.  Then we saw thousands upon thousands of zebra and wildebeest as far as the eye could see.  Once again I tried to take some pictures of the mass of animals, but it just never turned out as planned.  What did turn out nicely was a mother lion and her cub which we spotted about 100 or so feet from the side of the road.  The cub looked to be very young and the mother just kept licking the little cub on the head.  (I’m so glad that we got a “good” camera lens before coming on the trip because the pictures turned out so well.  What bums me out is that I didn’t install any type of “photoshop” software on my laptop before we left for the trip so I could enlarge the pictures we are posting.  But if you double click on the photos you can enlarge them yourself to get a better view of the cub.)

Another aside here.  In the days of the big game hunters in Africa, they came up with a list of the “Big 5”.  These were the animals which were aggressive to man and had excellent trophy value due to their hide or other body parts.  The name has carried over to the tourist industry in terms of what animals everyone wants to see.  So, to get to the point, the big 5 are lion, elephant, cape buffalo, black rhino and leopard.  Sometimes people come to Africa and only see 3 or 4 of these animals.  For us it took only 3 days to see all 5.  The first game drive we saw the elephant (you remember, the one with 5 legs); yesterday we saw the lion, cape buffalo and the black rhino, the rarest of them all.  And today we got a glimpse of the leopard lounging in a tree---which is one of their favorite spots to hang.  Again try to enlarge the photo to get a good look at him.  We spent about 10 minutes just looking at him through the binoculars because it was another rare sight.

As we headed to our next hotel we saw some more hippo, antelope and giraffes.  

This hotel is built in the middle of the Serengeti Park and is not permitted to have any fences around it.  All of the rooms are cabin like and built away from the main building, and you are required to have a guide walk you to and from your room after dark.  When we arrived we opened the door to the balcony overlooking the Serengeti Plain; ten minutes later we could hear the lions roaring in the distance.  It is just too hard at times to explain.

Until next time.