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Published: August 17th 2009
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Our first, fleeting glimpse of a leopardAfter the mountain gorillas, the Serengeti National Park and Ngorogoro Crater Conservation Area are the highlight of our trip, and we’re all hugely excited as we head out from Arusha in jeeps, leaving Hyena behind for a few days. We drive up and along the crater rim before descending onto the vast Serengeti plain - a truly awesome place, barren and dry.
Now that we’ve seen all the prey, our focus at the Serengeti is the predators. We instruct our driver and guide, Julius, that we only want to stop for elephant, lions, cheetah and leopards. We’ve been told that leopards are rare and difficult to spot (no pun intended!), but pretty soon we pull up along 15 or so other jeeps all staring intently at a tree... where a leopard is dozing, it’s tail hanging from the branch. As we watch, it stands up and walks around, and we get our first good glimpse of the last of the Big 5.
Within half an hour, we find another leopard. Again in a tree, but this time it jumps down and pads lazily across the track in between two jeeps parked ahead of us... so much for a rare
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A male lion casually wanders by sighting! We drive again the next day and Julius delivers us everything we’ve asked for... within the space of a few hours we see a pair of cheetah being chased by a lioness, a lioness and her cubs and a solitary male lion, who ambles along beside our truck. We all buzz from the excitement of seeing the big cats so close, and hope that our luck holds for the Crater...
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Mum and Dad
non-member comment
First impressions
Photographs impressive and commentary thoughtful and sometimes amusing. You seem to dislike the commercial side of the tour, but as you say, they are probably very grateful for the tourist income. Keep up the good work and enjoy.