Serengeti (skip the text and just see the pictures)

Sunday 1-Jan-2006

Jaison arrived to pick us up at 9:30. He said that he'd had trouble finding gasoline because places were closed due to the holiday. We were happy to drive past the descent road knowing that we didn't have the bumpy descent in our future.

On the way to the Serengeti we saw a huge herd of giraffes - we counted 26. Two hours later we were at the entrance gate to the Serengeti.

A few minutes inside the gate we spotted a cheetah running towards us. It turned out to be chasing a reidbuck, and it chased it right around our vehicle. It was like being in the middle of a National Geographic special! Cheetahs are unable to sustain their speed for long distances because they overheat. Just when the cheetah stopped, three more cheetahs appeared from the grasses and took the reidbuck down with a single pounce.

By this time there was quite a bit of cheetah traffic, and one driver pulled in a tad too close. It disturbed the cheetahs so much that they left the reidbuck and went to rest for a while in the shade. We stuck around and watched for a bit. It was real windy, and one of the Fom pillows that we had been using as a camera stabilizer blew off of the car. It didn't go very far, and not in the direction of the cheetahs so Jaison jumped out of the vehicle real quick to retrieve it. Eventually the other vehicles left and the cheetahs returned to have their meal. They seemed to prefer the midsection, and all had bloody faces after a few minutes. We left when they were up to their shoulders in reidbuck

A bit down the road Jaison stopped the vehicle. It turned out that we had a flat tire (flat #2) and Andy helped Jaison fix it so were weren't out there for too long. And at least we knew that four of the cheetahs in the part had full bellies. Since we were now driving on the spare, I wondered what happened if we got another flat.

A little farther down the road one of the hatches blew off the roof and went flying into the brush. We'd had enough of the vehicle at this point :) Jaison backed up, retrieved the roof, and reattached it. It was only slightly bent. We arrived at the Serengeti Serena lodge a little after 2:30pm.

The manager suggested that we have lunch, since the buffet was just ending. We were a little worried when we walked through the bar and saw (and heard) three kids banging on the band's drum set, but it was better than the picnic areas and we were happy to be done with the boxed lunches. The highlight of lunch was cauliflower fritters.

After lunch we returned to the office and politely asked for a quiet room nowhere near the children. The manager looked confused, so we explained that there were some very noisy children in the bar, and we didn't want our room to be next to theirs. He nodded, put back the key that he was holding, and took another key. We were assigned room #64, which was at the far edge of the property. Oddly, it had three single beds and no view whatsoever. It did have a fan though - like because there was no cross breeze whatsoever and it was hotter inside than outside. I guess I should mention the toilets. We'd encountered them everywhere but for some reason I forgot about it until now. We refer to them as six-strokes, because they all seemed to take six swats at the flusher for it to work. I know, we should be happy that flushing was an option. At this point we really didn't care so we dropped of our stuff and headed for the pool.

The pool area at the Serena was fantastic and we had the whole place to ourselves - an infinity pool with a panoramic view over the plains. The surrounding acacias provided some nice shade, which we needed since the antibiotics made us extra sensitive to the sun (a fact I'd overlooked on the bottle but was reminded of after the 5 hour morning drive with the hatches open). The shady area also had some pretty aggressive biting flies - the repellent only made them stronger. At one point Andy hushed me because he heard something off in the distance - it was a loud buzzing noise and it was getting closer. It turned out to be a HUGE swarm of bees! We ran for the pool and they passed overhead. Freaky.

We attempted to use the internet before dinner, but the connection had been down for several days. The soup options that night were "pumpkin or clear" and there was a good yule log dessert thing. The lodge seemed very crowded, including a National Geographic Expeditions tour group of well over 20.

Monday 2-Jan-2006

We got up around 6, although had been up for hours due to the heat and had heard lion grunts and seen a cape buffalo right outside our room. Why on earth was this room so hot? We nicknamed the tri-bedded hell cave , but later learned from small talk with other guests that it wasn't just our room. We think that our request for "a room far away from children" was somehow translated as "a room that is for children."

There was also some translation difficulty at breakfast. I asked for bottled water (still), and the waiter returned with Perrier and explained that they were out of regular water. Hmm - that's just about impossible, since there are bottles in our room for brushing your teeth. "So you're saying that in the entire lodge here, there is no still water left??" I was already down to just eating bread, don't mess with my water! Another waiter came over, took the Perrier and came back with still water. Allrighty.

We met Jaison at 7:30 for our morning game drive. He said that he had the tire fixed, and also fixed whatever was wrong with the steering, so we shouldn't worry. We headed to the Seronera river area. We saw a huge group of baboons in an acacia tree - they looked like ornaments! We also saw a large hippo out of the water, lions resting in the shade, and another pride of lions in the tall grasses just over the ridge from a group of gazelles. We're sure they would have began the hunt if it weren't for the 20 or so safari vehicles watching them. We also saw a leopard up in a tree - thereby completing the "big 5". And for the second time on the trip we had complete camera envy. A man in the vehicle next to us had what had to have been a 1200mm lens !

We returned to the lodge around noon, likely the dustiest that we had been on the entire trip. We staked out a shady spot by the pool and headed for the lunch buffet. Only thing worth mentioning was a cute display of safari animals made from dough. Not sure if they were editable or what, but they looked festive and cute. At 4pm we headed out for our last game drive. We saw more groups of baboons (running along carrying babies on their back and bellies), warthogs and hoglets, a leopard in tree, plus the usual herds of zebras, wildebeests, cape buffalo, gazelles, etc. We also saw two male lions sleeping in the shade of a tree - Andy stood up on the roof to get a picture of them, which woke them up and for a moment it looked like one of them was going to charge the car. On the way back to the lodge Jaison drove through a forest completely infested with tse tse flies. Aggressive one too. "Yeah, they are really bad here at this time of day." Sheesh! Either give us some warning so we can close the windows and roof hatches or take another route! They were EVERYWHERE - Andy did a good job of swatting at them with his hat (yet ANOTHER feature of the Tilley hate) but when you'd kill one at least four more would appear. We both agreed that it was the ten most uncomfortable minutes of the trip - yuck! At least Jaison was wearing dark colors so they were more attracted to him

We got back to the lodge around 6:30 and headed to the bar to meet the representative from the balloon place. The band was pretty sad, playing African-ized versions of "Hello" by Lionel Ritchie and "Jambalaya". They should have changed "Hello" to "Jambo". We had our balloon briefing, which was essentially "you need to be at the lobby area at 4:45am" and "the weather was rough and it was canceled today", and then dinner (what the heck is clear duck soup??). On our escorted walk back to the room we saw warthogs and some dik diks.

Tuesday 3-Jan-2006

The alarm went off at 4, but of course we were already awake. All night I swore I heard music, but rationalized that it was impossible since we were far from the bar. It turned out to be the staff New Year's Eve party, which ended around 4:30am as we were leaving our room.

As planned, we left before 5am. On the one hour drive to the launch site we saw a lot of animals, including several lions and some bat-eared foxes. We arrived at the launch site around 6am. There were two partially inflated balloons - ours was named Simba (Swahili for "lion") and our pilot was Mohammad. Each basket had eight compartment that held two people each. The baskets are laying on their side, so you climb in sideways and are on your back until takeoff. Mohammad filled the balloon, the basket turned upright, and we lifted off right as the sun rose over the horizon. We flew over the Seronera river area and saw zebras, gazelles, elephants, giraffes, wildebeests, lions and a serval cat! The ride lasted well over an hour and the landing was so smooth that the basket didn't even tip over or drag.

After a champagne toast, we got back in the vehicles to go to the breakfast picnic site. During the 5 minute drive we saw lions and a leopard - it was turning into quite a farewell day. The breakfast setup was pretty ornate - a single long table with linens and china under an acacia tree. We saw some safari vehicle traffic nearby and wondered what they were looking at, and hoped it didn't smell our breakfast. This was the first non-buffet meal that we'd had and it was pretty good for a picnic (eggs, sausage, grilled tomato, mushrooms, fruit, juice, coffee, and tea).

After breakfast we got back in the vehicles and drove to the Seronera Wildlife Lodge to meet Jaison. The Wildlife Lodge was set among some neat huge boulders, and on my way to the bathroom I saw several hyraxes. It was only a five minute drive to the Seronera sir strip. There were three small planes - all different carriers I believe. Andy and Jaison helped the pilot load the bags into various compartments. This was the first leg of our very long trip home.

(click any image to see larger version)

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