Off to the Serengeti

---

I can't believe our day. I fell last night, gouging up my left shin, bumping the back of my head and my butt. It made it pretty hard to ride in the vehicles with a sore left cheek and having to lean forward all day, and it was ALL DAY from 800am to after 530pm .We started out in the rain with a school visit. The kids were Masai, the school sponsored by the Serena Hotel. Roads were rough. But game was everywhere. After Ngorogoro, I was afraid everything else would be downhill from there, but it got better the further into the Serengeti you get; giraffe, a few bull elephants, warthogs and zebras as far as you could see. Seth must have been laughing inside when I said I'd hoped to see zebra. We even got caught up in part of the wildebeest migration. Thousands of them moving wherever there is more grass, followed by zebra who eat another part of he grass, the gazelle, that eat the very bottom to the hard pan. After hearing how elusive leopard can be, we spotted one in a tree just near he road. His kill, a gazelle, was up in the tree, it was fresh, uneaten. Our guide Seth said it was the closest he's ever seen one to the road. It was amazing to watch her relishing her kill, sad for the gazelle, but they are like sheep in New Zealand, everywhere. Just after the kill we watched a lion "honeymoon." A pair of lions will mate up to 70 times in a day for about a week. They would mate for a few second then lay down and rest. We watched for about half an hour, 4 repetitions. Here you see death and life along side each other. Its an amazing ecosystem here. Even the tse tse fly has a part, so there are traps all around to catch and sterilize them to eradicate sleeping sickness. This was our first encounter with the tes tse flies, they are really annoying, but no longer a threat to humans. They can't kill them all because they are food for certain birds. Our big surprise was that on arrival our hotel is on a watering hole, and on arrival there were twenty elephants at the hole. The Kapenski Bilila Lodge is SO gorgeous, private deck with a view of the Serengeti to die for! Elephants coming and going to the water hole. Food here is European and Indian. After dinner we sat outside stargazing. So many stars visible it is incredible. We heard a lion roar near the pool, lying in wait for small game to come to the watering hole. Time to head inside to admire the view.

---