WEATHER: Hot and 28C
HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: Seeing 17 lions in total within 3 hours
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Our 4x4 breaking down = longer drive home
BUYS OF THE DAY: Hakuna Matata sticker for 1AUD
WORD OF THE DAY: This is the best day so far
ANIMALS SEEN TODAY: 17 lions, cheetah, leopard, giraffes, elephants, gazelles, wilderbeest, donkeys and goats
CAMP SITE RANKING: Back to Mwa To Mbo - 5 out of 5 stars
Well after 2 nights and 2 days in the Serengeti it was time to leave. As George is switched on, he has decided to switch around our itinerary and we are now able to do a game drive this morning and the village walk will now be done tomorrow. And with the way things panned out today, it was a wide move in the end for 2 reasons which will be explained later.
We were able to have a sleep in this morning till 6.30am, which was super cool. The other group left at 7am, so we were able to say a 4th goodbye to them on the chance that we may see them in Dar Es Salaam, probably in passing, but it all counts in my book. So good-bye again guys and it was awesome to see you all again. Lisa and I decided to leave little notes in their tents, but after unzipping all 11 tents, I only recognized Jo’s pillow, so I had to leave all 3 notes in their tent, but it is the tough that counts and I guess that makes the 5th good-bye and it was good to get the last word in.
So after packing up camp, we hit the road for our last drive around the park before hitting the dust bowl road and back to some paved roads. We were asking what could possibly top off the day we had yesterday? We had pretty much seen everything we had wanted to see, short of a rhino to say we saw the Big Five all in the one park. But high on the list was more cats. We really hadn’t see a proper male close up, so this was a high on the list, more cheetahs and a leopard would also be awesome. Well we had only driven 15 minutes when we saw around 20 trucks all looking at something. We only had to drive a little further on and we saw what they were looking at. It was a pride of 11 female lions, walking across the road, and then down the plain. It really did look like they were on the hunt for some breakfast, so we stopped and turned off the engine and just watched them advance. They stopped at a big rock that all 11 lions sat on, which we waited for another 15 minutes and they didn’t move from there, so we decided to move on and see what else we could find, but I think that will be very hard to beat to 11 lions prancing down the plains. I got some great photos, so it was an awesome way to start the morning. We had headed off when Freddie got a call to come back past the lions as there was a leopard spotted. So we turned arund, screamed past the lions (old news now) and we headed for the leopard sighting. I tell you we were in luck, as there was a leopard clear as day sitting in the tree. It was amazing to finally see this elusive animal, you could see his spots quite clearly and he sat for us for about 15 minutes, then he jumped to the other side of the tree for a few more minutes and then he jumped off the tree. AWESOME!!! We kept an eye out for him for a while, in case he was heading to the road, the grass was quite long, so he was hard to spot, but we did eventually see him through the binoculars and it looked like he was moving away from us. What a great find. We are now starting to make out way out of the park, slowly as the gates are still an hour away, but Sean saw some trucks in the distance,so we went to check it out and we found ourselves, finally, a male lion, with the big mane and a female lion. They were probably 150m away, but with nockies and a good zoom you could see them okay. As there was just the 2 of them Freddie called them the honeymooners and they were to shortly live up to that as we saw the male mount the female and have his way with her, if only for 10 seconds. Well what ever tickles your fancy I suppose. A further 20 minutes got us to the find of the day, after the 11 lions and the leopard, was another male lion and female, but this time they were only 10m away from the truck in a rocky outcrop. The male had a bit of attitude and Sean upset him by lifting his arms, accidently on purpose, and he started forward slightly and gave off a bit of a growl! It was absolutely terrifying for a few seconds, and all Freddie was doing was still sitting there with the car switched off! I also need to mention that we had been push started by 3 trucks in the last 2 days as out engine wasn’t kicking over, so the scenario of the lion pouncing and us not being able to start the truck crossed our minds briefly, just as we thought he would also have no problems jumping high enough to get in the top of the truck and eating us all alive. Well we didn’t need to worry about any of those senarios, but the male lion was certainly keeping a beady eye on the truck and Sean. We got some absolutely wonderful photos of him and his beautiful female companion. There was one more wow moment and that was when the female crossed right in front of our truck, she was like 2m from the truck and then walked behind some rocks on the other side. We were waiting from grumpy guts to follow, but he had moved behind the rock, so it was time to move on. But what a way to end a fabulous morning.
Well little did we know, we saw another convoy of trucks and we happened to stumble across a cheetah and her 2 cubs. We think it was probably the same ones from yesterday, but she was sitting right next to a small tree and the silohette photo of her is just amazing! This day just keeps getting better! We have now hit the plains, the trees are all gone now and it was flat as the eye coiuld see, so we just enjoyed Freddie driving like a wild man on the dusty Seregeti roads, missing pot holes and fish tailing at 90km an hour! What a rush. We did one last surprise and it was a herd of 9 elephants crossing th road in front of us, it was amazing to see the whole family that had 3 babies in tow, and with the beautiful blue sky, the yellow plains and the grey elephants, the photos were AWESOME!!! Besides the Gorilla’s on Rwanda this would have to be the second best highlight of the trip so far. All of this was seen within 3 hours of game driving before we drove for another 50 minutes to get us to the gates of the national park. The last 10 minutes Freddie was driving like Miss Daisy, so we asked what the problem was and he said he had no power – Hmmmmm he said he’d fix it when we arrived at the gates to check out.
We got a 45 minute stop at the park gates at 11.30am, while we got permits to go back the other way and let them know that we were leaving. We are travelling in a convoy of 4, so the other 3 drivers were also looking under the hood of the car for the 45 minutes we were there. We got the nod we were ready to leave at 12.15pm and the car had apparently been all fixed. Well we travelled for 50 minutes and then we lost power again, so we got roadside assistance again. It seems there was some air in the something and the dooby wasn’t working, okay so I don’t know exactly what was wrong, but they were temperoli fixing it in the hope it would hold out. So we set off again and 10 minutes later, we were off the road again for another 40 minutes, when they decided we would just have to limp home and drive the 30km we could manage. I guess the most frustrating thing for the other 3 vehicles was there was nothing wrong with their cars and they also had to travel at 30km! We travelled like this for another 1.5 hours, before George decided to split the 5 of us into the other 3 trucks, Freddie was going to limp home on his own, and there was a new truck waiting for us as we left Ngorororo Crater National Park. So we got delayed in the end by probably 2 hours, but we still made it back to camp in daylight and the nice surprise that was waiting for is were our tents were set up again for us!! WOO HOO!!!!!
We were all so dusty and our clothes and bags were covered in the stuff. My hair felt so good after having it washed, the birds nest was quite surprisingly easy to get out with the shampoo.
With a few drinks after dinner it was off to bed after a massive day. Good-bye Serengeti – you ROCKED
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