Six Kansans on a Tanzania safari

[plambers]

I can't believe all you saw on your walking safari. I assume it was thrilling/terrifying! we encountered 3 cape buffalo on ours. they kept approaching us and only turned away after the second cock of the ranger's rifle. 

 

love this report...

[CDL111]

To see the elephants on the kopje was initially a puzzle until l read  about them knowing where there was water. Looks like the ground hornbill has a skink.

[mapumbo]

2 hours ago, plambers said:

I can't believe all you saw on your walking safari. I assume it was thrilling/terrifying! we encountered 3 cape buffalo on ours. they kept approaching us and only turned away after the second cock of the ranger's rifle. 

 

love this report...

 

@plambersThank you for following along.  Some of our group was a little more nervous than others.  I guess you have to depend that your ranger knows what he is doing.  We did have plenty of really nice sightings.  The suspense of the coming darkness and the tall grass took away from some of the enjoyment though.

[mapumbo]

4 hours ago, kilopascal said:

Really loved these last posts. Especially the elephants on kopjes.

 

Thank you, I'm glad you are enjoying the TR.  At times it seemed like maybe we were missing out on some sightings by being in these areas where no one was traveling.  But in hindsight, the luxury of  having several unusual animal behavior experiences all by ourselves was all worth it by visiting some of the off season areas.  Those vast plains of Namiri, Ndutu and Kusini looked like they should have been crawling with cheetah.  There were Thomson gazelle everywhere we went in those areas.  The cheetah were probably around but we just missed them.

[mapumbo]

1 hour ago, CDL111 said:

To see the elephants on the kopje was initially a puzzle until l read  about them knowing where there was water. Looks like the ground hornbill has a skink.

@CDL111 Good eye on the skink ID.   I'm not sure how much water they could have gotten up there but we could see that they definitely were drinking.

[kilopascal]

6 minutes ago, mapumbo said:

There were Thomson gazelle everywhere we went in those areas.  The cheetah were probably around but we just missed them.

Yep.  Despite all the cheetah sightings on my 9 days in Ndutu, there was one day where we came up with absolutely nothing but some hyena and a whole lot of gazelles.  As we all know those days happen on safari.  I agree with you, those unique sightings without a gaggle of other cars are wonderful.

[CDL111]

We were in Kenya October 2018 and our guide brought to our attention to a ground hornbill with a skink. Reading people’s reports brings back memories even though we were in a different country.

 

At present slowly but surely reading  old trip reports on southern Tanzania after your suggestion, as a possible trip for 2020.

[mapumbo]

After leaving the elephants on the rocks we come across a very calm giraffe near the road.  He is chewing his cud and posing for pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

We drive along a small lake and see flamingos feeding and then see a handsome Defassa Waterbuck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HARTEBEESTS

 

 

 

A vervet monkey on the edge of the road giving us front and rear views.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mapumbo]

AS we get closer to the central Serengeti we are near a river and start seeing some of the inhabitants of this terrain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We then come to our camp for the next two nights near the Seronera headquarters, Ang'ata Serengeti.

 

[mapumbo]

The next morning we were scheduled for our usual routine...up early for breakfast and leave before sunup, with our box lunch in the car.

 

We hadn't gone five minutes from camp when we came on a huge pile of lions on the side of the road.  It was fairly cool that morning and it looked like they were all huddled up for warmth.  There was a mature male, a young nearly adult male, 3 or 4 adult females and cubs of varying age.  12 lions in all.  The light was not good yet but they were so close to the vehicle that we could still have great viewing and fair photos.  The two males got up shortly after we pulled up but the rest stayed in their huddle.  The young lion follows a flock of guinea fowl into the grass.  The old male disappears into the tall grass.  

 

Suddenly we see the young male after something behind the rest of the pride.  The youngsters and mothers jump to their feet and walk in that direction and give their full attention.  They decide that their breakfast was not going to be served to them in bed and most return to the spot where they were resting and settle down again.

 

Again, we were mostly by ourselves on this sighting.  Another vehicle comes by but stops only briefly and then moves on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mapumbo]

The sun is coming up and we are at least going to have a clear start to the morning.  The young lion might have been after a baboon since nearby was a tree with many baboons in it and others on the ground.

 

 

 

 

 

We make our way through the central Seronera area.  The balloons are launching for their morning flight.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Across the way we see several vehicles stopped and we can see several lion moving near them.  There are at least three lionesses and two small cubs.

 

We are heading out of the busy central area and plan to make our way back to the Namiri Plains and to the far east border of the Serengeti by the Barafu Kopjes (oh yeah, more kopjes).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[CDL111]

Two prides within the first hour?, good start to the day.

[mapumbo]

4 hours ago, CDL111 said:

Two prides within the first hour?, good start to the day.

 

That's right.  We were starting to add up the totals on lions.  Another type of cat soon to come.

[mapumbo]

So we are headed from Seronera towards the Namiri Plains on what quickly appears to be a much less traveled road this time of year.  Suddenly George calls out "serval in the road".  Sure enough, walking right down the road TOWARD us is a very calm serval.  We stop and let it approach us.  It walks in the road almost to the car and then moves over into the grass on the edge of the road and just stops right next to us and sits down.  How nice is that?  We watch it for quite some time.  It appears to be listening or watching something nearby and we hope it is going to jump on some prey but nothing happens.  While we are watching the serval, a hyena comes onto the road about a hundred yards in front of us.  We hope he keeps his distance so he doesn't disturb the serval.  He spots a gazelle and takes off after it but loses sight of it in the tall grass.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mapumbo]

We head on east and see a line of elephant in the distance and take in the vast open area.  We come up on a large male lion near the road by himself.  He is soaking up the sun and is having a tough time keeping his eyes open.  Sometimes his head will slowly drop and his eyes will go shut and then he will wake up again and look alert.  What he is doing out in the open with nothing nearby is hard to tell, but we can enjoy him just the same.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mapumbo]

We end up almost to the eastern border of the Serengeti Park in the Barafu Kopjes.  We start seeing jackals running in all directions from the kopjes.  There are at least a half dozen maybe more, they are running in so many directions it is hard to keep track of them.  We see one is chasing another, he actually knocks him over at one point.  They run for at least a half mile till we lose sight of them.

 

After this it is lunch time so George looks for a spot where we can enjoy a 360 degree view of the wide open plains.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mapumbo]

We slowly head back to the Seronera area and have the opportunity to view many different species.  One nice group of very calm elephants walked right next to our vehicle.  They had several really small babies but they were not at all aggressive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We ended up seeing another small group of lions to total up to 25 for the day.  We arrived back at Ang'ata Camp at dusk after a long but interesting day in the Serengeti.

[mapumbo]

The next day we were ready to head north to the Mara River.  We did an early morning drive around Seronera since we had to wait for the headquarters to open in order to get a permit to go north, also George needed to fuel up the vehicle.  We did get a sighting of a leopard moving through the grass.

 

 

Two giraffe fighting.

 

 

 

 

 

As we got further north we began seeing huge herds of zebra.  Then further on we were in to the migratory herds of wildebeest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mapumbo]

We spotted a couple of lionesses stalking some gazelle but the grass was too short and they were spotted themselves by the gazelle.  

 

There were several vehicles parked down the way with something in sight.  We had purposely avoided any large vehicle gatherings most of the time up to this point.  Mama Ndege asked "should we go see what they are looking at?"  It looked like there weren't as many cars there any more so I said, Yea, let's go check it out.  Just as we pulled up we could see a beautiful maned male lion and female and at that moment he walked over and mated with her.  Our timing was good for this event.  I don't think our other four friends had ever seen lions mating.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mapumbo]

We arrived at our destination for the day, the Mara River and our camp for the next four nights, Njozi Camp.  This is a mobile camp owned by The Wild Source.  It turned out to be our favorite camp of all due to the bush feel, the friendly staff, the good food that was served family style so you could take as little or as much as you liked.  This camp is moved down to the Ndutu area in the rainy season during the wildebeest calving.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[CDL111]

There's close and really close with the elephants. In Botswana the guides always kept to what they considered to be a safe distance. 

[monalisa]

Incredible additions! Having the elephants come so close to your vehicle and being amongst them like that must have taken your breath away. Amazing.

And lucky you with the cerval sighting!!

[mapumbo]

2 hours ago, CDL111 said:

There's close and really close with the elephants. In Botswana the guides always kept to what they considered to be a safe distance. 

 

21 minutes ago, monalisa said:

Incredible additions! Having the elephants come so close to your vehicle and being amongst them like that must have taken your breath away. Amazing.

And lucky you with the cerval sighting!!

 

 

I think the guides know the territory as far as which elephants they can trust to stay a safe distance away.  When we were in Meru Park in Kenya last time those elephants were very testy.  A lot depends on their life experience, whether they have been hunted or harassed.

[mapumbo]

So we are in the northern Serengeti next to the Mara River.  I really did not have a good idea of what to expect on how the river crossings develop and what the strategy was to watch one.

I actually had an initial mind set that a crossing was not going to be a huge priority.  If we saw one OK if not we would be content in exploring the area for other things.  We had really not discussed this with George.  Given the technique we had been accustomed to so far on this safari I did not think he would get us involved in a mass vehicle viewing unless we requested it.

 

The morning started out with George driving down to the river.  Immediately we saw a good sized herd of wildebeests gathering on the southern side of the river where we were staying.  George suggested we cross the Mara Bridge over to the Lamai Wedge side to see what happens.   If you have ever been in that area, the Mara Bridge is really not what the traditional description of a bridge would be.  In our county we have similar structures, but we call them low water crossings.  This is a cement slab in the water where the surface is above the normal water level with tubes for the water to go under the cement, but when the water level rises it covers the bridge anywhere from a few inches to several feet.  Anyway the river was well below the surface of the bridge.

 

We arrive on the other side near the crossing that  appeared to be the one the wildebeests might attempt to cross.  There are about 10 different places in the area where they cross.  It had been raining more than usual, I think, for this time of year on both sides of the river so the animals had  been crossing back and forth with no real true migration pattern.

 

So we set up from the river bank, I would guess about 75 yards away, so that we wouldn't hinder the wildebeests decision to cross.  Everyone does the same.  As time went on more vehicles gathered on both sides of the river anticipating an eventual crossing.  There were at least 30 on the opposite side of the river from us and nearly as many on our side.  We waited about 4 hours for something to happen.  Our travel mates were beginning to wonder how long we were going to hold out for something to happen and the same thought was going through my mind.  Occasionally one or two would approach the rivers edge and look like they were going to make the plunge but something would startle them and they would back away.  We were talking to them, urging them to just do it.

 

George had advised that you never know what they will do.  He said though that once one touches the water they will all go.  Well,, without any real indication that anything had changed, suddenly a few started into the water and the rest began to follow.  At this point all the vehicles rushed to the rivers edge to get the photo op their occupants were wanting.  For some reason on the other side from us, many of the people were exiting the cars and going right to the rivers edge obstructing the access trails where the rest of the herd was wanting to follow.

 

I estimated there were about 2000 to 3000 head of wildebeests in this group.  I had tried to keep a rough count as they were trailing down to the staging area.  A few hundred made the crossing but due to the interference of the cars and people on foot the rest of the herd aborted the crossing and ran back away from the river.  The entire process was disgusting.  There were drivers on our side whistling and yelling at the people on the other side.  Some of the vehicles on our side were blocking the exit trails of the ones that came across.  The wildebeests are stressed enough with trying to make a crossing with crocs waiting much less having humans multiplying the anxiety. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[amybatt]

Wow!!  Patience paid off!  Your photos and description are excellent.  This is the second time in as many days I've read about people getting out of the vehicles for the crossings (the other was on another forum).  Are there rules around this?  What did your guide tell you?