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A tale of two safaris - Tanzania 2016 (followed by Rwanda)


Zubbie15

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Thanks @@michael-ibk - I really made a conscious effort to take more landscape photos this time around, my first safari I had almost entirely portraits and I wanted more variety.

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@@Zubbie15 I have just caught up with your TR, you had a great leopard sighting in Ndutu!

 

I've stayed at Tarangire Safari Lodge twice and enjoyed it both times - the view from the ridge top over the park is spectacular and can yield all sorts of surprises. There were a good number of flamingoes at Manyara for you.

 

The crater must be well known for serval, as we had a great sighting on the Sopa road back in 2008, and I've only ever seen one other since.

 

Loved the lion sneeze sequence.

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We continued away from the Gol Kopjes, deciding to take small back roads rather than the main road up to the Seronera area. It seemed like game viewing would be difficult, and in general it was, as the grasses were much higher here (higher than Mussa's head when sitting in the driver's seat). We came across another set of kopjes (I believe the Sametu Kopjes from looking at a map), and came across this lone female cheetah.



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She seemed to be on a mission to head toward the nearest kopje, and soon went up the side and posed for us.



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We were sharing the sighting with another vehicle, and they found a way to get a different angle on her, so we followed them to see what she was doing. It turned out there was a depression in the rock that had accumulated some water, and she was taking a drink.



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I have to say getting these photos was a challenge, I ended up leaning from the back seat up out the open top above the driver's seat, and twisted at the waist 90%. Definitely not the most comfortable position.



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After she finished drinking, she scanned the area, gave us a nice pose, then headed back off on the plains.



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We continued along, seeing a pride of lions sleeping on another kopje, then some elephants and topi, but in general it was quite quiet. Upon reaching the Seronera valley, we took a road along the river bed, scanning for leopards. Well, we didn't need to scan, because there was a leopard, with several vehicles already watching him. He was awake, which was promising, but seemed content to watch the tourists watching him.



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It was quite cloudy, but the sun was peaking out at times, making for some variable light (as seen in the set above); it also gave the occasional spotlight on the leopard.



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We eventually had to leave, as the day was getting late and we needed to get to camp. We made a quick stop to photograph the sunset, and then arrived at camp just as it was getting dark.



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Edited by Zubbie15
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Zubbie

 

Beautiful, evocative pictures. I love the landscapes framing the background of your cheetah shots. This area of the central Serengeti is simply stunning. Thanks for posting.

Edited by AKR1
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The Sametu Kopjes and the marsh in front is technically the Eastern Serengeti, close to the edje of the park. There are some big lion prides here. Looks like a stunning area that I would have thought is not remote and would have many vehicles, but from Zubbies report does not seem to have that much traffic when he was there.

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Thanks for the kind words @@AKR1, and for the further information regarding the Sametu Kopjes. I'm pretty sure that's where we were, based entirely on trying to trace our route from the Gol Kopjes up to the Seronera area, but I never asked so I guess I could be off. In any case, it was a lovely area, and just us and one other vehicle for a good couple of hours, which was great.

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We woke up the next morning to a nice, if somewhat hazy, start to the day.

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We decided, since we'd had a lot of success so far, that we wouldn't be too stressed about what we'd see on this, our last full safari day. I suggested that we head over to the Namiri Plains area, as I'd read such great things about it on here and thought it would be good for if/when we return to the area. Mussa agreed, and seemed to think it would be a good day trip.


We hit the road, and were greeted by this eagle, who was trying to figure us out.

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Continuing along, we came across a cluster of vehicles, with everyone looking over at a tree despite there not being anything obvious visible. Of course, in that case your first thought is "leopard," and indeed after a while we were able to see not one, but two leopards in the tree. They didn't really cooperate well for photos, and quite quickly disappeared into the grass.

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We scanned for them for a while, but no one could find them, so we decided to continue along. Not long after, we came to a traffic jam on the road, and stopped at the end to see what was going on. It turned out there was a male and female (actually, there were two pride males, but we only saw the second at the end) lions mating. We stopped to watch them, and felt we were fortunate when a few minutes later they stood up, walked along until they were right in front of us, and started mating.

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Wink! Having a good time...

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Let's try the other eye..

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Them moving right in front of us seemed like a good thing at first, but they seemed to be at the end of their mating and there was no action for the next half hour. By then, we decided we wanted to leave, since we wanted to have some time in the Namiri area, but we had been boxed in as it seemed just about every vehicle in the area was there. Mussa kept telling the other guides he wanted to leave, and it would have opened up a good viewing location, but both the driver in front and behind us refused to move, assuming the other would steal the space. It was really frustrating, but finally after about 20 minutes we managed to maneuver our way out.

We then headed off toward the Namiri Plains area. It was, unfortunately, very quiet, with only some distant elephants and the occasional antelope. We thought we might have been missing something, but we stopped for lunch in the Research Kopjes area, and met two other vehicles. They'd also not seen anything of note so far, so I guess it was just a slow day overall, but we spent most of the day completely alone, which was a lot of fun. The area was beautiful, and I'd like to take more time to explore it sometime in the future.

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Returning to the Seronera Valley, we found what we assumed (based on location) to be the leopard from the previous evening. He was sound asleep, and pretty far from the road. We were disappointed to see in the grass that a lot of vehicles had apparently decided to go off-roading to get a closer look.

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Continuing along, we came across this Fischer's Lovebird, a beautiful little bird.

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Heading back toward camp as it was getting dark, we came across the "honeymooning" leopards again. Once more, they were far from the road, and only offered brief glimpses as they disappeared into the grass.

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We got back to camp, and started packing our bags as the next day we were heading for Rwanda.

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Boy the leopards really delivered for you! What a great safari!

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@@Zubbie15, the Hyena in the mud just made me laugh. On the other hand, the Cheetah atop the kopje is just a lovely sight. Seems to be a lot of Chheetah around.

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We woke up the next morning, having not had a great sleep as it poured, with thunder and lightning, for quite a while during the night. Because we were packing up and getting ready to travel to Rwanda, we ended up leaving about 15 minutes later than we would have otherwise. This was quite unfortunate, in the end, because the mating leopards were walking along the road that we took for a while, but by the time we got to the area they'd headed off into the grass. They ended up off in a distant tree, where we were able to take a few pictures.



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They didn't spend long in that tree, before they went back down into the grass. They seemed to be heading off in a direction that had several roads, so all the vehicles headed in that direction and spread out along through the area to try to locate them, but with no luck.



We then continued along, deciding to slowly head toward the hippo pool but stopping if anything interesting appeared. We found this Martial Eagle posing for us.



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Soon after, we had a call over the radio that one of our company's sister vehicles was stuck in some mud, and needed to get to the airstrip relatively soon, so we headed back toward them to help. Once we got them out of their problem, we again started toward the hippo pool, see this Black-chested Snake-eagle passing overhead.



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We eventually reached the hippo pool, which was farther away than I remembered, and spent some time watching and photographing the hippos.



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We eventually decided to head back toward the airstrip, giving us a buffer in case we came across one more sighting. We heard some excitement over the radio, and started heading that way. It turned out a pride of lions had taken down a buffalo during the night, and the carcass was right by a road. We got there, but apparently the lions weren't hungry as they'd keep going over to the carcass, sniffing it, and then going back to lie down.



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In any case, we had our lunch boxes here (a "hat trick," having eaten our lunches with cheetahs, leopards and now lions with their kills) before heading to the airstrip. We had to wait for the plane to arrive, with it being more than an hour late, before boarding and feeling sad to be leaving Tanzania. Unfortunately it was quite cloudy and we didn't get a great view during the flight. After a quick stop in Mwanza for exit formalities, we continued along to Kigali to start the second part of our trip.


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Boy the leopards really delivered for you! What a great safari!

 

We were definitely lucky to see 5 leopards @@amybatt, I just wish the mating ones had given us a closer view!

 

@@Zubbie15, the Hyena in the mud just made me laugh. On the other hand, the Cheetah atop the kopje is just a lovely sight. Seems to be a lot of Chheetah around.

 

We ended up seeing 21 different cheetah @@elefromoz, which to me seemed a pretty good number. :) Not a lot of little ones, unfortunately, but I can't complain too much.

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I'm always astounded by the hippos mouth and teeth. I'm not sure why. That big yawn shot reminded me of that.

 

You were quite lucky with both leopards and cheetah. Hell, the whole Tanzania leg of the journey was excellent. For comparison, my one and only leopard sighting in TZ was further away than your mating leopards on the last day, so Mussa really delivered for you!

 

Now that you're moving on to Rwanda, I'm dying with anticipation!! I've been waiting for this!! ;-)

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I'm always astounded by the hippos mouth and teeth. I'm not sure why. That big yawn shot reminded me of that.

 

You were quite lucky with both leopards and cheetah. Hell, the whole Tanzania leg of the journey was excellent. For comparison, my one and only leopard sighting in TZ was further away than your mating leopards on the last day, so Mussa really delivered for you!

 

Now that you're moving on to Rwanda, I'm dying with anticipation!! I've been waiting for this!! ;-)

 

Thanks for reading along @@amybatt. I agree about the hippos, when they yawn like that you can see why they are the biggest killers of people among African wildlife. We certainly did have luck with leopards (5) and cheetahs (21); on our last day Mussa asked us how we compared this trip to the previous one, and we all agreed this was overall better. I have a few more posts to go here, but I'm going to continue with Rwanda first. That topic can be found here: http://safaritalk.net/topic/16776-a-tale-of-two-safaris-part-deux-or-now-i-know-why-theyre-called-mountain-gorillas/

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  • 2 weeks later...

I promised to have a few more posts to finish this report up, so I'll start back on those now that I've finished the Rwanda portion of the report. One thing I've mentioned in this report is that I really tried to take more wide photos to show the animals in the environment. When I got home, I noticed that I took some pictures I really like of (larger) birds in trees that seemed to make a nice group. For example (with a few "cheats"):



Heron over Silale Swamp, Tarangire


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Hammerkop and Kingfisher, Tarangire


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Crane over Tarangire


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Tawny Eagle (not so much an environmental photo, but I liked this one and didn't include it before)


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Hornbill in Manyara


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Bird (look closely!) at dawn in Ndutu


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Vulture Tree, Ndutu


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Cranes in Acacia, Seronera Valley


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Martial Eagle (again, a bit of a cheat)


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Great work @zubbie , is the second last photo in post 142 saddle billed storks?

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Beautiful! I think the Tawny is a juvenile Bateleur.

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Great work @zubbie , is the second last photo in post 142 saddle billed storks?

 

Thanks @@Hads, yes those are saddle-billed storks.

 

Beautiful! I think the Tawny is a juvenile Bateleur.

 

I think you're right Michael, thanks for pointing out the error.

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The other thing I noticed I took a lot of pictures of is what I'll call my "Serengeti big sky" group. This first set is all from the Ndutu/Southern Serengeti region.



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Zubbie,

 

The second last picture above is a quintessential Serengeti "endless plains"shot. The animal numbers, in part due to the perspective of the wide angle lens juxtaposition with the hills on the horizon, gives an impression of Africa at another time. But this now! Lovely shot.

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And some "big sky" images from the Central Serengeti/Seronera region...



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I take TONS of big sky, puffy cloud photos, so I loved and appreciated these last two posts!. Your cheetah really struck a pose for you there too, nice!

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I thought I'd finish this report, rather than listing the various species we saw (31 in total across the two countries, including an unidentified mouse at Tarangire Safari Lodge), by attempting to show a photo of all 21 cheetahs and 5 leopards we saw on our trip. Going through my photos, I apparently didn't photograph all of the cheetahs, but I'll get close...



1. Tarangire


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2. Ndutu.


I apparently didn't take any photos of this cheetah, she was hidden quite deeply in some bushes.



3. Ndutu. Female with a wildebeest kill.


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4. Ndutu, male on the shore of the lake.


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5. Ndutu, female out for a hunt.


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6 and 7. Ndutu. One of two brothers hanging out on the plains (only one was photographable).


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8. Ndutu. One of two brothers who had just taken down two wildebeest.


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9. The other brother.


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10. Ndutu. Female cheetah with two cubs who was on the plains.


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11, 12. One of her cubs. The other was hiding deep in the bushes.


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13. Ndutu. Another female cheetah out on the plains.


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14, 15, 16, 17. Gol Kopjes. Mother and 3 older cubs.


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18, 19, 20. Gol Kopjes. Female with two cubs.


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21. Female, Serengeti.


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And for the leopards...



1. Big old male in Ndutu


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2. Nervous female, also in Ndutu


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3. Male in Seronera Valley


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4, 5. Mating leopards in the Seronera valley


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So that brings this report to an end, thanks all for reading along and the encouraging comments.


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Awesome. Your cheetah #21 is an excellent shot. How lucky to see so many cheetahs AND leopards on one trip!

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So many spots in #108. Great shots of the cats! I would have liked to see the chatty tiger-lover's colorful outfit.

 

I was going to ask you if you counted how many cheetah and leopard you saw. I now see the tally at the end. Very impressive! Along with all the other wonderful photos. A most successful half of the trip.

 

Any idea what the wild dogs might be doing now in Ndutu?

Edited by Atravelynn
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