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Published: December 12th 2012
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The Serengeti is possibly the best-known wildlife National Park in the world and with more than two million wildebeest and a quarter of a million zebra has the greatest concentration of game in Africa. As part of our overland tour we bush camped in the Serengeti, with a stop at the magnificent Ngorongoro crater on the way.
We set off from Arusha- a town that is the starting point for many safaris and headed in 4x4s towards the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater. We were all excited to be out of our huge truck and knew it would be better to be in the smaller vehicles with pop up roofs for the game drives.
After spending a night at a campsite near the entrance to the national park we departed early and headed into the Ngorongoro Crater. The Crater hosts about 25,000 large mammals and at 250sqkm is the largest caldera in the world. Due to its continual water supply the crater boats some of the best game viewing the Africa, and we were not disappointed!
Not long into our drive we stumbled upon a couple of lionesses making their way across the Savannah. The rest of the morning
was passed spotting wildlife- with a few more lions seen in the distance, and a highlight being a huge vulture that came and landed right beside us and then flew away right beside our vehicle. Its wingspan was so huge that Michael had zoomed in too far and therefore cut of the tips of its wings when it took off. An interesting bird that we saw was the secretary bird- which spends all day walking for miles in search of snakes so it can stomp on them to kill them.
Lunch consisted of pre packed boxes at a picnic site by a lake with hippos, but we had to eat in the cars as there was circulating kite birds, which were waiting to steal food straight from tourist’s hands. We saw a few people stupidly eating outside but sadly none of the swooping kites were successful at stealing their lunches.
The roads became even bumpier and dustier as we left the crater and entered the Serengeti- cameras were failing to start left right and centre as the dust made its way to everywhere it could. The Serengeti is the vast open plains that generally come to mind when
one thinks of Africa due to the number of documentaries filmed there. It was great to experience such an amazing place and see the difference in scenery to the Masai Mara-, which is a lot hillier and has more trees.
Due to the annual migration a lot of the wildebeest and zebra had already fled north to the Masai Mara, but that was fine with us as we had seen them a couple of weeks before, and there was still plenty of wildlife to be found.
After game driving a while we watched a beautiful sunset over the Serengeti and then headed to our campsite to pitch our tents in the wilderness. There were no fences surrounding the camp- but thankfully there were about 100 tents so we felt safe enough. I slept surprisingly well and didn't hear any animals.
Setting off just before sunrise we game drove again hoping to finally see a leopard. Coming across a cluster of vehicles we were informed that a cheetah was in the distance- half an hour of watching the 'cheetah' through binoculars and cameras we discovered it was actually a rock, so we moved on- still on the looking
for our leopard.
Soon we arrived at an area with about 20 other vehicles and were informed that there was a leopard in the tree about 100m away. It took us a while to spot it as it was so well camouflaged but when we did we realised that it also had a kill up the tree. It was amazing to see and now I have finally ticked off all the big 5- Elephant, lion, buffalo, rhino and leopard.
Leaving the Serengeti we made a couple of quick detours to see more lions, including one that was just going for a casual stroll through some Thompson Giselle. We were hoping we might witness a kill but no such luck- it was so hot I don't think the lion could be bothered.
We covered our faces again as we exited the park (with what ever we could, a roll of toilet paper in one case) to minimise our exposure to dust and then drove all the way back to Arusha.
The Serengeti and Ngorongo crater lived up to the hype and was definitely the best game driving I have done so far- with vast open plains ensuring
it to be easier to spot wildlife. We made our way back to camp all rushing to be the first to have showers to get rid of all the dust, and were eagerly awaiting the next part of our adventure- which was to take us to Zanzibar Island.
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Home and Away
Bob Carlsen
It took awhile for you to publish this blog...
but we are glad you did. We look forward to reading about the rest of your trip through Africa!