Tanzania Take Three - Time for an Intervention

[Zubbie15]

So, after a short passage through the conservancy, we headed out onto the main road, and made the quick transit to Tarangire.  I have to give TANAPA props here, since our visit in 2016 they've really improved the procedure at the gate.  In the past, we've probably spent at least an hour waiting for the paperwork - this time, there was just time for us to each make a quick trip to the bathroom and then we were ready.  This was also the first time I can remember, although apparently it's been in place for a while, where they came around and sprayed the vehicle with some type of repellent to try to reduce the Tsetse's - it didn't seem to work, or if it did, wow they would have been unbearable otherwise!  

 

This was our third time in Tarangire, and each visit I have moved us further into the park - the first, we stayed outside at Maramboi, then at Tarangire Safari Lodge, and now at Lemala Mpingo Ridge.  I'll talk more about this camp later on.  Funnily enough, I think the next time we're back we'll go even farther into the park, probably staying at Oliver's or somewhere in that location.

 

To start, here are the maps of the satellite info from our cameras. I think both the hybrid and the pure satellite map are interesting to show.

 

 

 

As usual, I didn't take many photos of Impala, but they were pretty much all over the place from the second we entered the gate.

 

 

I think just about everybody's first stop in Tarangire is the small waterhole along the entry road.  We had eaten lunch here in February 2016, watching the Weavers make their nests, and had only seen in that time 1 or 2 other vehicles.  Well, obviously early September is much higher season in Tarangire, especially near the gate - Mussa told us there are now a lot of vehicles that stop off just for a day visit and so this area gets very busy.

 

 

 

 

[Zubbie15]

From the waterhole, we headed along a loop toward the Tarangire River.  This road was very narrow, and there were a lot of vehicles on the road.  I'm normally not one who is too concerned about the number of vehicles around, but it was definitely a big change from Manyara Ranch.  Of course Tarangire in the dry season is known for its elephants, and there were a lot of very relaxed elephants in this area.  

 

 

 

 

It was fun to watch these two dig for water and take dust baths - although getting a photo without a butt in the background turned out to be a challenge.

 

 

 

There were lots of little babies around too.

 

 

[Zubbie15]

We'd been lucky up to that point in that it had been a fairly cloudy morning, so the light wasn't too bad. However, the clouds started to break up, and the heat started to rise, so we decided to hear further into the park and get away from the crowds.  We took a back road, on the other side of the river from the main road into the park - it did a great job of reducing the other vehicles, but at the expense of lots of Tsetse flies. They were definitely the worst I'd experienced in three trips to the park overall, and this was just a taste.  We made a half-hearted attempt to scan for a mother cheetah and her cub(s), who were known to frequent the area we were in, but didn't last long as whenever we would stop we'd start getting eaten.  So not too many photos for a while, which wasn't a surprise as most animals were relaxing in the shade. 

 

 

 

 

We finally stopped for lunch in the shade of a tree on the edge of the little Serengeti portion of the park.  It was pretty late by this point (after 2), and after eating we helped out another jeep that stopped near us and who was having engine issues (some water in the radiator seemed to eventually get them good enough to make their camp).  It was cool to see the animals that had gone down to the river at midday for a drink start to return to other parts of the park, and I got one of the my favorite wildebeest photos from this.

 

 

The rest of the afternoon was pretty quiet, the highlight being a creche of Ostrich chicks taking refuge in the shade of a Baobab tree.  I lost count at 50, there were definitely more.  It was quite the sight, but hard to capture well.

 

 

 

[Zubbie15]

We slowly started to make our way to our hotel as the afternoon was winding down, with the plan to see what might be happening on a few of the river loops on our way. At one of our first stops, there were several vehicles stopped on the edge of the precipice on the edge of the river.  We made our way up to them, to find a male and female lion with a baby wildebeest kill.  The male was taking his share when we arrived.  I doubt if there are too many people here who are overly affected by gore, but fair warning there will be some blood in this post.

 

 

 

 

 

Eventually he picked up the carcass and dragged it closer to the river, presumably to get into more shade.  The female then followed him down, and eventually was able to get her share. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Zubbie15]

We were fortunate that the lions had located themselves in a rather picturesque part of the park, so when they were doing their lion thing and not being overly active we enjoyed the views. 

 

 

Things definitely improved as the sun got lower in the sky, and the light a little warmer.

 

 

 

The river also of course attracts other wildlife, which would go walking by.  There was actually a family of warthogs that came walking along the river, and if they'd gone just a few steps more I'm pretty sure the female would have tried for them - but the wind must have changed, and they ran off pretty quickly.  Lucky for them, less for us.  

 

 

 

And the first, unexpected, river crossing of the trip.

 

 

[Zubbie15]

After the lions had eaten their fill, they lay down to relax.  I took advantage of the waiting time to take various landscape photos of the surrounding area, including various iterations.  

 

 

 

 

We'd just about decided to give up and head to our camp, when the male lion got up to get a drink.  He looked really nice in the diffuse sunset light, and nicely gave us a little glance before taking his drink.  

 

 

From there we headed to our camp, which was up on the ridge overlooking the river, ~20 minutes away.  We arrived just before it got dark.

[Zubbie15]

The next day we started out bright and early, for once (foreshadowing alert!).  We had a plan to spend the whole day out, making our way down to Silale swamp and back.   Here are the maps. 

 

 

 

 

You can see we spent most of our time around the swamp (the darker green area in the satellite photo), but had two sightings with a lot of photos closer to "home."  

We left camp just as the sky was getting light, and headed back down to the river to where the lions had been the night before.  We first found a large male lion down by the river - he was a different male from the one the night before, as he didn't have a collar (there are slight glimpses of the collar in the previous photos I posted). 

 

 

 

Just 100 meters down the road, the male and female from the night before. They were passed out...

 

 

 

 

Once we were satisfied they weren't going anywhere, we headed off to continue the day.

[Zubbie15]

Continuing along, we followed the curve of the river for a while, then crossed it and started to head in the direction of the swamp.  Not far along (in fact, still in view of the river), we came across a troop of baboons, and decided to stop with them for a little while.  

 

 

 

Rather quickly, I realized that every once in a while they would look up into the tree they were under, which made me wonder what they were looking at.  So I looked up into the tree, and was greeted with a pair of eyes looking back down.

 

 

The baboons and leopard seemed to have reached an impasse.  In fact, the baboons were so relaxed that when I said to Mussa that there was a leopard in the tree he was sure we were joking (it was blocked from his view by the door frame).   However, after we'd been there for a few minutes, the baboons decided to harass the leopard again.  

 

 

It was hard to capture photographically, with the branches obscuring the leopard, but quite the site to experience, and makes me wish we'd thought for once to take a video.  The hooting, the shaking of the branches, they were quite something at times. 

 

 

At one point we thought he was getting into a precarious position on the end of a branch, as one of the bigger baboon males was really forcing him up.  But then we heard a commotion from a group of baboons about 100 meters away - looking quickly in that direction, we saw a second leopard making a run for it over a hill.  This also served to distract the other baboons, and give a reprieve to this male.

 

 

Gradually, the baboons wandered off, and so we hoped the leopard would come down.  We positioned ourselves on the opposite side of the tree, assuming he would come down that way once they had left.  However, I guess love is a stronger pull than complete safety, and so when he decided it was safe to go he ran 90 degrees from where we predicted, off toward the female.  I got a few photos, but they were all not focused properly.  They ended up under a distant tree near the river; we had our boxed breakfast nearby hoping they would move, but no luck.  

[Zubbie15]

We continued along, and while we had several nice sightings, nothing was really photogenic.  We did find this lone Hartebeest, which was a first for me in Tarangire, so we stopped for a (tough-light) photo.

 

 

We traveled with a professional photographer in late 2018 on a workshop, and he was fond of saying that things can be beautiful but not photogenic.  I think this trip was the safari equivalent to that, lots of interesting things but not really anything amazingly photographic.  This included a female lion hiding in some bushes, watching closely as a parade of wildebeest passed by. 

 

 

Eventually she went to sleep, and we continued on finding a nice Martial Eagle that seemed to enjoy keeping his back to us, no matter how we repositioned the vehicle.  A large herd of buffalo was in the same area, but really sticking to the river bed and hard to see beyond looks like this:

 

 

We then passed through a fairly heavily wooded area that's always been slow for us (except for the Tsetse flies) before descending toward the swamp.  The landscape really opened up as we approached.  

 

 

Of course the swamp is a haven for elephants, and we quickly saw many families coming down to cool off as the day warmed up.

 

 

 

There were several (5 or 6) lionesses hanging out near the edge of the swamp, most were sleeping but one had decided to try her hand on catching a zebra.  We arrived and managed to watch her stalk them a bit, but they saw her in time and scattered quickly. She then headed back to the shade to lie down.

 

Finally, as we were reaching the picnic area, we saw some elephants re-applying their dust layer after bathing, the color of the soil here is quite something.

 

 

[Zubbie15]

We stopped for lunch at the picnic spot that overlooks the swamp, and in fact were able to distantly see the sleeping lionesses from where we were sitting.  Because people come here to eat, there are obviously a variety of birds that come in to steal the crumbs (and get fed, I'm sure).  So I'll sneak in a couple of bird pictures - I feel like I'm the anti- @Galana, I'm almost entirely photographing mammals with a few birds thrown in.  

 

  

 

 

After eating, we continued further down the swamp, heading toward the area where Oliver's Camp. I'd never been down here before, it was quite lovely, and rather quiet (not that the swamp area, being so deep into the park, was especially busy).  

 

Right by the road to Oliver's there was a honeymooning pair of lions.  They were right by the road, I guess they likely had taken shade in a vehicle that had probably recently been there.  

 

 

Being so close made things a challenge, the next time they mated it was in fact too close to the vehicle for my 400 mm lens to take anything.  They also faced away from us, so the best we could do was the following...

 

 

This male, despite being so close to the road, was clearly not too comfortable with us.  After mating, he turned and stared clearly at us in the vehicle.  

 

 

Especially magnified through the lens, you could really feel the intense interest he had in us.  We didn't want to disturb them unduly, so we continued along. There were clearly a few drivers coming back from the direction we were going, and talking to Mussa - we were pretty sure he had a destination we were headed toward.

 

 

And, we found a sleepy leopard.  

 

 

He'd put his head up every once in a while...

 

 

And occasionally shift around...

 

 

But he never got up prior to us needing to start heading home, so we had to content ourselves with seeing him sleep, and enjoying the scenery.

 

 

We left things as late as possible, so didn't really make any stops back to camp, but we did make a quick detour to check out the lions where we started the morning.  We got there just as the female went into hunting mode,  and there was a small group of wildebeest very close that hadn't seen her.  

 

 

Unfortunately, just as she was about to run at them the male came sauntering along, not trying to hide at all, and the wildebeest were saved.  Pretty stupid, really, he would have had an easy meal!  It was almost dark by then (that last shot was at ISO 2000, and the light was rapidly fading) so we headed back to camp after a long but rewarding day. 

Edited April 16, 2020 by Zubbie15

[Zubbie15]

The next dawned cloudy - in fact, that was the case for all of our days at Mpingo Ridge, and the camp manager told us they had only had a handful of nice sunrises in the previous couple of months.  Which is a shame, as the camp is on a ridge facing east, and I'm sure it could offer some pretty spectacular sunrises under the right conditions.  My wife woke up not feeling perfect, so we had a bit of a lazy morning before heading out.  There had recently been good sightings of cheetah in the little Serengeti region of the park, both two brothers and a mother with a baby, so we headed over there.  

 

 

 

The clouds gradually started to break up, and eventually the day turned bright and hot.

 

 

 

 

We searched for the cheetahs with no luck - in general the area was very quiet.

 

 

Evidently we were "working" with a couple of other vehicles, as eventually we were informed over the radio that the mother and cub had been located.  We headed over there, finding them and a couple of other vehicles.  They were quite relaxed, but pretty much just lying around.

 

 

Gradually they got up, and headed off about 50 meters from the road.  

 

 

 

We decided to stay with them, as they looked like they hadn't eaten in a while, and so settled down to watch.  Unfortunately, they were quite close to the park gate, and all of the daytrippers from Arusha started to arrive as other guides told them about the sighting over the radio.  While we were happy to wait for the cheetah, the guides that were just in the park for a few hours didn't have that luxury, and they began to drive off-road to get closer, so that they could then move on.  We'd sit there until a critical mass would build up (usually about 8-10 vehicles). Then you'd see the drivers start to talk to each other, and then eventually 5 or 6 would head over to the cheetahs.  This happened multiple times, until the expected happened - one jeep got too close, and scared them away over the far hill.  By then we'd put in at least a couple of hours, in any area with no shade and the sun beating down - it was extremely frustrating.  But luckily, the safari gods have a way of evening the score...

[Biko]

@Zubbie15 Great cliffhanger. Those busy sightings are over now and in the next years.

[Zubbie15]

With the cheetahs having left out of sight, and the light being rather mediocre in any case, we decided to head off to see what we could see elsewhere.  To be honest, it was a pretty quiet start of the afternoon.  There were elephants all around, which is always fun to see.

 

 

And we watched some young male giraffes practice their necking for a while.

 

 

 

But apart from that, the main excitement was the stop we made to help a stuck jeep get out of a river crossing spot.  Here's Mussa (on the right) working (supervising?) with the group.

 

[Zubbie15]

Now, to the cliffhanger that @Biko mentioned.  Having helped the jeep get unstuck, Mussa thought that it might be a good time to go back and check out the cheetah mother and cub, with the expectation that all the daytrippers would have left by then.  So we headed back to the direction they had been in.  We seemed to be going against the flow, there were a fairly high number of vehicles heading toward the gate, which was good not only because the crowd was dropping, but obviously they were still around.  We located a small cluster of vehicles looking off into the bushes, and joined the group.   The cheetahs were located near what I'll call an unofficial road - it clearly wasn't one of the well-maintained park roads, but there were pretty well-worn tracks heading in that direction.  I guess you can argue whether it's appropriate to use such roads, but there seemed to be a decent understanding between the guides and so the jeeps were going one by one along that track, stopping for a couple of minutes, and then heading off.  It seemed to work well, and the cheetahs didn't seem to be affected all.

 

 

 

The nice thing for us was that we retained our last position in line, so when it was our turn to go, there was no one else waiting, so we were able to spend several minutes with them. 

 

 

 

Not only were we fortunate to be alone with them, but they were in a pretty photogenic Baobab landscape too.  I was taking pictures of them, then turning 180 degrees to photographic sunset, and back and forth...

 

 

 

As the light started to fade, we took a few last pictures before heading off.

 

 

[Zubbie15]

That certainly made up for the earlier frustrations, but it wasn't all that we'd get that evening. The route back to camp took us right by the entrance to the river loop where we'd had the good views of the lions, and as we got to that intersection Mussa stopped and seemed to ponder for a few seconds.  Then he said "let's give it a quick try" and turned down toward the river.  The sun was dropping below the horizon, so it was really getting late. 

 

 

But we got lucky, other members of the pride were out, and hanging in the trees.  

 

 

 

 

They're pretty noisy images if viewed fairly large, but I still quite like them.  In any case, we only had a couple of minutes with them, so with one more quick phone capture of the sunset we were off.

 

 

That photo was taken at 6:31 PM, and we still had at least 20 minutes to get back to camp.  We ended up arriving in complete darkness, coming across our first spotted hyena of the trip on the road to the camp.  

[Biko]

@Zubbie15 Very attractive scene, relaxed lions in the tree and a wonderful sunset. Why do I find lazy lions in a tree much more interesting than lazy lions lying on the ground.....

[BRACQUENE]

@Zubbie15

 

Wonderful pictures especially the first of the two sunsets !

[michael-ibk]

Love the sunset pictures!

[xelas]

Ahh, the African sunset!!!

[Zubbie15]

Thanks @Biko, @BRACQUENE, @michael-ibk and @xelas, there's definitely something special about African sunsets, especially after a productive day.  

 

The next morning dawned difficultly for us - my wife's stomach, which had been off, had turned into a full GI bug, and she was up half the night in the bathroom.  Our third time in Africa, and the first time this happened to us.  My best guess, since I was perfectly fine and we'd eaten pretty much the same stuff up to that point, was a juice box she'd had the day before.  In any case, the plan had been to head back down to Silale Swamp, but that was not going to happen.  She was up for a bit of a drive though, and I knew we were relatively close to the Sangaiwe Hills, where Greater Kudu are supposed to be relatively easy to see, so we decided to do a half day in that direction.  To be honest, it was a pretty quiet drive.  There were some nice elephants though - this youngster didn't like us much.

 

 

And we enjoyed watching some young ones try to negotiate a hill...

 

 

 

While the older ones looked on calmly.

 

 

I also got my only dik-dik photo of the trip, most were just so skittish they wouldn't stay in the open.

 

 

We saw a few other things along the way - a baby giraffe that had been separated and was alone, and likely wouldn't last long was one, although the photos weren't great.  We also went through a couple of areas where clearly something dead was nearby, but no sign of the carcass or the culprit.  We gradually ended up in a very pretty forest that seemed like it would be great leopard habitat, but scanning the trees didn't produce much.  From there, we got to the Kudu area, but the Tsetse flies were so bad we almost couldn't stop without "dancing."  

 

Eventually, we did have a brief view of three females, but they were incredibly shy and the best I could do was this...

 

 

Having "succeeded" in our quest, and with my wife looking rather green, we turned around, braved the Tsetses, and headed back to camp. Taking a different road we did see several lumps on the ground that were sleeping lions, and there were a bunch of elephants playing in a pool.  That was fun to see, and if my wife had been feeling better would have probably made for some nice high-key images, but it was definitely time for her to get back to camp so we didn't even try.  

[Zubbie15]

Hmm, I forgot the maps in the earlier post, so here they are.

 

 

 

So we spent this afternoon hanging around the camp, although calling it a camp might be a little off.  It's probably a good time to describe briefly Lemala Mpingo Ridge, where we were staying.  This is a fairly new camp, it had opened in 2018 I believe.  It's somewhat larger, with 15 rooms, but during our stay I think the most guests we counted at dinner were 12 (so ~6 rooms taken). Despite the size it's fairly spread out, so you don't really see any other rooms once you are in yours (although we could see another balcony from our balcony, even though they claimed all balconies were private - luckily no one decided to "take advantage" of the supposed privacy on that balcony!) The camp if anything was too fancy for me, but my wife really liked it, and we were celebrating birthdays ending in 0 so we splurged.  The room had a sitting area, a king-size bed, a small desk, some closets, a small fridge, indoor and outdoor showers and indoor and outdoor baths.  Not exactly roughing it... The balcony also had a daybed, which was where my wife spent the afternoon, napping.  I took advantage of a small table on the balcony to read and update my notes, and then, as the sun got lower in the sky, to try to find some photographable views.

 

The view from our balcony - I could get used to this...

 

Three kings.

 

I also tried, later that night, to do some night photography.  Not really something I've done much of, but still a different view of the park.

 

 

 

One thing we'd signed up for originally on this night was to do a night game drive.  Luckily, the nap made my wife feel better, so while she skipped dinner she decided to come along.  In the maps above, the game drive route can be shown in the orange flags - we went much farther than I would have expected, and were out for a couple of hours.  The guides from the camp were really good, and fun to be with.  The major exciting sighting we had was a clan of hyenas definitely up to no good, we were able to follow them for a while.

 

 

 

We saw a lot of otherwise common game, although it was nice to see them in the dark. I was slightly disappointed that in 3 total night game drives on this trip that we didn't get a few more nocturnal species, I would have hoped for at least some galagos, maybe a porcupine or two, and of course any of the more exciting ones (aardvark, aardwolf, etc) would have been cool.  But, in any case, I really enjoy being out in the dark.  It was nice to see that even in the night, and with a spotlight, the elephants were very calm - I had always heard that it was a no-no to shine a light on elephants at night, but this mother and calf didn't seem to mind at all.

 

 

And, to finish this off, I'll sneak in a bird (Spotted Thick-Knee, I believe).  

 

[Zubbie15]

The next day and a half were planned to be quite busy, with an early morning departure from our camp to allow for a few hours of game drive in Tarangire, followed by a drive to the Ngorongoro Crater for the afternoon.  Then, the next morning we would be heading back down into the Crater before heading off to the Serengeti.  Well, best-laid plans and all that... despite being relatively ok during the day, that night my wife was fairly sick again.  So I got up at 6, sent Mussa a message on WhatsApp to say not to rush, and then spent a couple of hours on the balcony.  We ultimately left camp around 9AM, and pretty much headed straight for the park gate. 

 

From there, we headed pretty much straight to the Crater, except for a stop in Mto wa Mbu for red bananas.  My wife spent much of the drive sleeping, although she kept banging her head on the window.  To compound matters, there was some paperwork confusion at the NCAA gate, and it took us roughly an hour to get through that gate.  Most people seemed to only take 5-10 minutes, I’m not sure what our issue was.

 

We finally made it to the Crater floor around 2PM, and we opened up our box lunches.  The good thing about the Crater in the afternoon is it is clearly less busy, which is certainly nice compared to the morning crowds.  It was extremely dry and dusty though. We spent the afternoon driving around the Crater, but it was by far the quietest I’d experienced in now 3 visits there. You can see in the map below that we really didn't take a lot of pictures at all. 

 

 

There were lots of herbivores standing around in the heat, certainly, and a nice, if distant, clan of hyenas. 

 

 

There were also a lot of Golden Jackals/Wolves, although they generally seemed to be avoiding the roads and running off with their heads down. 

 

 

 

Apart from that, the light was tough, and so not much really to photograph.

 

Does a flightless bird count in my bird count?

 

 

But no lions, except for a couple of blobs in the distance; no elephants at all; not even a big herd of buffalo like you sometime get.  It was just really quiet, and whenever we would stop my wife would just close her eyes and doze.  Even checking on the radio didn’t seem to indicate that anything was going on in the Crater.  So we headed over to where the rhinos are typically seen, and did get very distant views of a couple of them, but then gave up.  They were so distant we just lucked at them - this area in particular was super dusty.

 

Hazy, dusty conditions - really not great for photography.

 

From there we headed to our camp, Lemala Ngorongoro.  I chose this camp specifically because it is located inside the park gate, and had read in places that allowed you easy and early access in the morning.  It was a nice camp, with real canvas tents – the altitude meant that it was quite cool at night, although the heavy blankets on the bed were sufficient for us.  We went for dinner, but after the soup my wife gave up and headed back to our tent.  She ended up spending all night in the bathroom area, hardly getting any sleep. 

 

Luckily this would be her last bad night; after this she gradually started to improve.  However, it meant that once again we didn’t leave camp until ~9AM, and we only used our entry fee for the Crater this morning as a shortcut to get across the caldera, doing absolutely no game watching as we crossed it. 

 

So a tough 36 hours, but things definitely would look up after this. 

[Zubbie15]

So leaving the Crater, we headed down from the highlands toward the Serengeti.  We didn't really stop until reaching Naabi Hill, the entrance point to the park, but still noted that it was very dusty, and for a large stretch of the road there were gazelles (especially Tommy's) all over the place.  I've never seen so many congregated before, it was almost to the density that the wildebeest can reach.  We didn't really stop for this though - to be honest, when we departed I expected we would head straight to our next camp and my wife would sleep off the rest of the day.  From the maps, you can see that we basically didn't stop until the gate (only one little cluster, where we stopped for a few Topi).

 

 

 

Having reached Naabi Hill, we stopped for lunch.  My wife was feeling better, and did eat a bit out of the lunchbox.  She then said she thought she'd be good for the afternoon.   Thankfully this was the case - despite taking the main, busy road up to the Seronera valley, we definitely had a good trip.  

 

First, a pair of lionesses with a adolescent male came walking along the road.  

 

 

They were clearly hungry, and several times stepped off the road to scan for potential targets.

 

 

 

At one point, they noticed a pair of warthogs, relatively close to the road, that were oblivious to their presence.  They clearly coordinated amongst themselves, which was fascinating to see - each lioness started off on a flanking maneuver, while the male clearly was told to stay behind.  One of the lionesses would regularly look back to make sure he was keeping himself back, which to his credit he did a good job of.

 

 

Unfortunately for us, the warthogs drifted further and further from the road, making seeing anything, let along photographing, very challenging.  

 

 

Ultimately, one lioness got close, but the wind must have shifted as the warthogs bolted off just as she was getting close.  She gave a half-hearted chase, but no luck.  But still, certainly a good start to our Serengeti time.

[Zubbie15]

We continued along from the lions, and ended up getting really luck with cheetahs.  Over the next little while, we saw three different cheetahs.  First, one that was prowling along, looking for something to eat. Unfortunately, she wasn't in an area where there were any visible prey species. 

 

 

 

You might be able to tell, especially from the second picture, it was extremely dusty in some parts of the park.  

 

Because this cheetah was wandering off, we continued along, not long after finding another cheetah that seemed to be hungry.

 

 

 

There were some Tommy's in the area, but they clearly already knew the cheetah was present, and so there didn't seem to be much chance of a hunt.

 

 

From there we continued along, stopping shortly at a location where a couple of vehicles were already stopped. There was a cheetah lying under a bush, just slightly visible but not worth even a record shot.

 

Did I mention it was dusty in parts?  You can tell from the shadow in the following photo that the sun was still high in the air, but the color of the sky was almost sunset worthy from all the dust.

 

 

 

Because we were still on the main road, this area really made me think of a safari in India. In fact, it was the first time I've needed a bandanna to cover my nose and mouth in Africa.  It meant that sunset on this day was a total bust, the sun disappeared behind the dust at least an hour before it officially set.  But, knowing that dust can also enhance sunsets, perhaps tomorrow's will be better?  

 

Finally, we got to the Seronera area.  This is one of the regions of Africa that has a reputation for being good for leopards, so what did we find pretty quickly?

 

 

This cat had obviously caught either a small animal or a bird, we could see either white feathers or fur getting thrown around. However, apart from the occasional pop up to check its surroundings, it didn't really give us great views.  Still, that was our "cattrick" for the day, which is always fun!  

[BRACQUENE]

@Zubbie15

 

Safari sightings as you rightly say in your TR are mostly a question of luck as I could myself experience on three safaris until now with so many leopards and especially cheetah  (not so common there )seen in Zambia  and Ruaha Tanzania  !