Day 27 - Serengeti National Park,Tanzania

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We all awoke early and with anticipation of a great day ahead. After breakfast the 4x4s arrived with pathetically small luggage compartments, so 6 of us endured a rather squashed journey to the Ngorongoro Crater rim. The ride was uneventful and I think we all slept until we arrived at the information centre.

There were some interesting displays on how the Ngorongoro Crater had formed - it used to be a volcano that was taller than Kilimanjaro until the cone collapsed to form the crater. There was a topological map display and we could see where we were headed over the next few days. After I had read through all the displays I went back out to the car. Some baboons came over to the car park. One climbed a tree and peed very close to where some of the drivers were sitting, causing them to move rather swiftly. One then peed on out car but fortunately all the windows were shut. They are so very ugly with their long snouts and hairless bottoms!

We then drove around thr rim to a viewing point and I had my first glimpse into the crater. It was awesome! The crater is oval - 16x21 miles across and the sides are steep. Thebottom is so flat with a couple of forests here and there and not much water, which dissapointed me - no flamingos! But it was truly spectaular scenery. There arent really words to describe it but I stood for 10 minutes trying to take it wall in and still felt I could have looked for 100 yeard and not seen anything. I looked through my binoculars and saw tiny buffalo down below like ants!

After a short while we stopped again for lunch, where the guides gave us some rather disgusting packed lunches. I was examining the meat (goat I think) when a black kite flew down and whacked me on the head and cheek. It came from behind so I saw nothing until I felt it. Even more put off lunch I gave it back an ate my emergency Pringles.

Afterwards we drove down the crater rim to the Serengeti grass lands, through the bumps and folds of the mountain. These were green grasslands and pasture, dotted with Maasi villages. It looked like some pictures I've seen of Iron Age villages and could have been timeless. The villages were nestles in the sheltered areas and herds of cattle and goats roamed the hills and valleys with thier Maasi minders. We saw one particulary, one assumes, ferocious set of 4 goats being guarded by 4 Maasi - a little overstaffed I think!

As we got further down the mountain pass the scenery in front changed to a browny green flat grasslands with no features except the odd tree and the road. We were in the Serengeti! We drive for a short while before heading to a rest area which had a viewing point, which I climbed up the kopje to see. A kopje is a mound of stones that hasnt been worn away and are plugs of huge volcanic rocks. I saw an agame lizard on the wa up - a little lizard with blue, pink and peuple skin. Quite hideous really! The view was amazing - flat for as long as the eye could see, except for the odd kopje. Serengeti was named from the Maasi word siringet, which means "endless plains".

The afternoon was then spent on a game drive. We saw the following:

• Elephant: huge tusks! Mooching around in a forested area on the side of the Ngorongoro Mountain.
  
• Zebra: hundreds and hundreds of them. Plains zebras, so purely black and white - no shadows as in the Burchells Zebra of southern Africa.
  
• Giraffe: Maasi giraffe - patterbs very clear. Nibbling on trees.
  
• Thompson's Gazelle: small graceful gazelle, brown with white underparts and bold black stripe on flank. Small curving lyre-shaped horns. Beautiful black eyes, like onyx.
  
• Grant's Gazelle: larger than a Tommy with no black stripe.
  
• Kori Bustard: heaviest flying bird (up to 12.5kg) and 1.3m tall - taller than some antelope! Grey brown plumage and long neck.
  
• Ostrich: black and white for males and greybrown for females. Huge pink legs with massive thighs. Brain smaller than it's eye! Mostly spend their time pecking, eating rocks (aids digestion) or running at 70kph. Magnificant feathers!
  
• Secretary Bird: raptor, quite larger, 1.5m tall. Black and grey lumage with breeches and quills behind it's ears. Striking. Very long legs like a stork. Likes snakes!
  
• Impala: lots!
  
• Hippos: they smell terrible! Saw a 2-3 week old calf - tiny! They roll right over in the water to get mud on their backs. Allegedly the most dangerous animal in Africa.
  
• Wildebeast: very ugly brown and cowish. They moves their heads about a lot because they are irritated by a fly that lives in their noses. Young can stand and run at full speed 15 minutes after birth. They use the same energy running as they do walking. Their young grow 20 times faster than human babies.
  
• Hartebeest: large, reddish brown antelope with lyre shaped horns that are ridged. Long morose face, like it's severely depressed.
  
• Dik-dik: very small antelope with cute black button nose and black eyes. akes a "zic-zic" call, hence the name. Twitches its nose constantly, which is thought to play a role in temperature regulation.
  
• Hyrax: nearest living relative to elephant. Small, cat sized rodent like a cross between a large guinea pig and a mouse (no tail). Have buck teeth which makes them look goofy. Like to sit on kopje's sunbathing. Some species further back in the past were as latge as horses! Cute round ears!
  
• Hyena: actually more closely related to cats than dogs. Often hunts for itself and lions scavenge as much from them as they do from lions. Spotted hyena is 85cm tall and about 70kg with blotchy brown coat. Females lead the clans have have false penises to dominate the males.
  
• Vulture: we saw them sitting around in trees on the lookout for food. Very good eyesite to scour the plains and clear away carcasses from he bush. Are actually very clean and spend hours preening after a meal.
  
• Lions: saw 3 femals stalking in the grasslands but quite far away. Africa's largest predator, average weight 150-220kg. Females usually do the hunting. Spend up to 23hrs a day sleeping!
  
• Jackal: Beatiful small graceful animals. Seen wending its way though the gradd. Black back with golden coat elsewhere. Delicate snout and biggish ears.
  
• Topi: dark large antelope with yellow legs that look like stockings. Backwards curving horns. Seen just before heading back to the campsite.
  

Towards the end of the day, we moved from kopje to kopje in search of leopards but no luck and we arrived at camp at around 6pm. We put up our tents and ate dinner around a campfire. There was a delicoud soup followed by spaghetti bolognaise. It was filling and strange eating in the middle of nowhere! I went to bed soon after as there was no electricity and wrote down the day's sightings for my diary. I slept really well and it was great to listen to the warblings of the Serengeti.

Sally xxx

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