Serengeti NP - day 4

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Apart from being woken up in the night by roaring lions I had a good night sleep. The campsite was not fenced off so it made for an interesting trip to the bathroom, by bathroom I mean the start of the long grass:-)

The morning of the safari started off very slowly and we had started to think that we had received all our good fortune the previous day. Spotting the wildlife is largely down to luck and a good guide - thankfully we had both. The park is huge and you sometimes have to be in the right place at the right time. After seeing the leopard the previous day we started asking Andrew if we would see a cheetah and a rhino, apparently the rhinos are in a protected area of the park and you need a special licence (which means money) to view them and he said it was very rare to see cheetahs - guess what happened next:-) The park is criss-crossed by dirt tracks and the guides are not allowed to leave them to go off road. However all of a sudden Andrew veered off the tracks into the long grass - then he whispered cheetah. Of course we didn't believe him as he had just said how rare it was and none of us could see anything, as I had now become an expert in wildlife spotting after my 2 days on safari I saw something in the distance and advised that it was just an impala!

As we got nearer a cheetah and her four cubs came into view, they were absolutely gorgeous and were not bothered at all by the trucks, we took loads of pictures and it was a marvelous sight to see these animals a couple of metres away.

After the cheetah we spotted another lioness with her cub and later as we were driving along Andrew suddenly veered off again. This time he whispered lion and we joked oh no not another another one. As we neared the lion it became clear that ity was a male and he was dragging a recent kill (wilderbeest) across the marshes, he was absolutely exhausted and needed to lie down to catch his breath. This gave us ample opportunity to get some pictures as we were only a couple of metres away from it - woohoo. As always Andrew said that this was very rare:-)

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Photos

Ostrich
As with every animal on the safari John wondered what Ostrich tasted like