21, 22, 23 December, 2018. The Thorntree Lodge, Serengeti National Park, Tanzania

ACT 1 – The story so far… a pride of lions near Lake Ndutu has had two females come into heat. They have both left the pride for a private lakeside rendezvous with the dominant male …surrounded by 8 safari tourist vehicles and at least 25 cameras. Unbenownst to no one, a second male has also left the pride and sits about 15 metres away, occasionally craning his neck over the tall grass to see what is happening.

The dominant male lies near his favoured female. The second female lies about 5 metres away, occasionally craning her neck to sneak peaks at the second male.

…and…. ACTION!

The second female makes some suggestive moves. The dominant male goes over to her. The first female pretends she doesn’t notice anything.

‘Grrrr’… says the second female, and takes a swipe at the dominant male. She walks off about 20 metres in a neutral direction. The dominant male, somewhat mistified, returns to his favourite female. The second male has seen all this, and sneaks over to the second female. The dominant male notices and takes a few steps towards the pair, but he’s tired and it’s early, and so returns to his favourite female. Then he changes his mind and goes for a drink at the local watering hole, which is only a few steps away.

While he’s drinking, his favourite female leaves and goes to visit the other pair, to wait her turn with the second male. The dominant male sees all this, and returns to the watering hole once again to drown his sorrows.

End of Act 1.

_______________________________

Who knew the lives of lions could be so complicated?

After leaving the Ndutu plains, we entered Serengeti park. We saw a second pride of 7 lions who had a mostly eaten wildebeest carcass. The dominant male could not eat any more… but he was not ready to let the younger lions have any. When the senior lioness walked away a few steps to lie in the grass, you could almost hear him think: “I want to go over with her, but I can’t leave the carcass. Hmmm, what to do…” He eventually dragged the entire carcass off so he could sit near her but still have the carcass nearby. One of the young males came too close, and he asserted his dominance quite strongly. Kirsten took a great photo – if i can only figure out how to upload it.

Actually we saw a lot more than lions yesterday. We found a cheetah and three cubs that must be just weeks old. As this was in the park, we had to stay on the roads, so we followed her for about half an hour until she crossed very close to us. Then we saw two hyenas take down a wildebeast about 500m away. We found a dead gazelle up in a tree near the hotel, so there is a leopard in the area. We also saw hundreds of thousands of wildebeast, and thousands of zebras having just completed or still in progress with their annual migration. There is a lot happening!

Today we saw maybe 20 lions over the course of the day including three cubs that were 5 or 6 months old. We found the leopard near our camp, but it disappeared under a bush and would not come back out. And we saw a hippo who showed us both of his weapons- his huge mouth… and his windshield wiper-like tail that spreads his poop in all directions at high speed like a manure spreader. Actually this last one may not be an official hippo weapon, but it certainly would be effective. And we found a very elusive Serval cat – the female is about the size of a big house cat, but they look like a cheetah

We leave the Serengeti tomorrow, and hope to visit the Oldepai Gorge Museum. then we’re off to the Ngorongoro crater for Christmas day.

Handsome leading man

The 'happy couple', or so we thought

NSFW

drowning his sorrows

Hyena ralaxing in a mud puddle

Hippo

Big and little

Big mouth

James Bond would escape by running on the hippos

Topi Posing

It's not cold. There's too many flies!

Don't touch my meat!

4-5 months old

Life doesn't get better than this

Game spotting is easy: Just look for the other vehicles!

Serval Cats - this mother and kitten are about the same size as our siamese cats were

 

20 December, 2018. Mbugani Migration Camp, Ndutu Plain, Tanzania

We visited the Hadzabe bushman tribe this morning. They speak the ‘click language’ , and live as nomads in the bush. They hunt with bow and arrows, and wear clothes made from hides of animals they’ve skinned plus hand-me -downs. We were supposed to go very early in the morning and hunt with them, but it was raining hard so we went over after breakfast… and after the rain.

It’s been fascinating- they have zero carbon footprint as a people. Actually, the Datooga and Maasai basically have no or negligible carbon footprint either, yet they are being pushed to join the rest of the world. I think there’s a lot we can learn from them on how to live simply again through living comfortably with what they have rather than wanting more.

After leaving the bushmen, we drove along the top of Ngorongoro crater on the way to Lake Ndutu.   We could see rhinos on the crater floor with binoculars as we drove by, and we look forward to trying to find those on our visit to the crater floor in a few days.

Bushmen

Salim talking to the local masaai kids after lunch

small scale wildebeest migration

Sibling cheetahs. Note how full the left one is

Bat eared fox

 

19 December, 2018 Eyasi Lodge, Lake Eyasi, Tanzania

400 cows is what the first wife of the chief of the Datooga tribe recommended that Mark pay to Kirsten should they ever decide to get married. It would be up to Kirsten to decide what to do with the cows. 

It was as if Sarah had provided the script to the first wife beforehand.  After a tour of the their village, and a demonstration of how to grind corn into flour, we started asking questions of each other through the interpreter/ guide.  They asked Sarah to explain how we were all related. When it became clear that Mark and Kirsten were not married, then came the recommendation that 400 cows was appropriate.

So Mark now has a goal, and Kirsten has a decision to make: what to do with 400 cows.  They may never get married! 🙂 

We left the Sangaiwe Lodge this morning and drove to Manyara Lake where we saw a huge number of baboons and blue monkeys… with a few elephants and a distant leopard thrown in for good measure.  And Heather learned that ‘brother’ in swahili is ‘caca’, which is french for ‘poo’. I’m sure that will get old fast for most of us. 

The first tribal visit today was to the Datooga tribe that does metal work. The girls now have bracelets. We have a second tribal visit tomorrow to visit bushmen. If you remember “The Gods Must be Crazy”, these are the tribes that speak with a series of clicks and live a nomadic existence in the bush. 

the '400 cow' lady is on the left

bracelets 'r us

We were pretty close to this one

Riding on Mum

Night time....

Day Time!!!!!

 

17, 18 December 2018, Sangaiwe Tented Lodge, Tarangire National Park , Tanzania 

We were stopped at a corner just about to turn left in the Tarangire National Park. Salim, our guide glanced to the right prior to turning and said “there’s a leopard”. 

We all looked. 

“It’s lying on the branch”

We looked harder.

“it’s on that tree, on the big limb that has the vertical branch”

Heather got the binoculars. Mark, Kirsten and I zoomed in our cameras. It was really hard to see, but we could finally make it out. I have no idea how Salim could see it with a single glance through sunglasses while driving.  A number of other safari vehicles passed by us and missed it completely too.

Unlike the leopard Sarah and I saw in Samburu, this one did not move as we approached, so we got to look at it closely. 

I had been worried that the National Parks would not be as good as the conservancies that we visited in Kenya. However the elephants were as close as we’ve ever seen, and today we watched as one group played in a waterhole. 

Unfortunately Sarah’s been sick, probably from something she ate yesterday. She was very quiet in the back seat saying very little through the day… until Heather asked how to tell whether the elephants were male or female. Sarah perked right up and finally got that awkward ‘birds and bees’ conversation over with. Pheuw… better late than never. 

… and we’ve discovered Heather’s favourite African animal: the dung beetle.  It actually was kind of fun watching these things appear out of elephant dung, and roll dung the size of lacrosse balls across the road. I have named one of them Sisyphus- it pushed the dung ball up the tire track, only to have it roll back down again. 

Sarah sat out day 2 at Tarangire and felt much better at end of day. She should be 100% tomorrow. The kids and I saw 5 lions: 3 sleeping, 1 eating grass and then being sick, and the final one was hunting. They really are like every cat we’ve owned. We were downwind of the one that was hunting, so it quickly disappeared from view as it went away from us. 

And I realized we missed a golden family opportunity- there was another family with older kids at the picnic area today.  They were all dressed in matching khaki pants, shirts and safari hats!  It would have only cost me a little money and all my self-respect

We’re off to two lakes tomorrow: Manyara first, and then staying overnight at Lake Eyasi. 

At top of hill near Sangaiwe gate to Tarangire park

The professionals have arrived

Baobab tree

Lots of elephants

Spot the Leopard. Now imagine you were not looking through a 300mm lens.

Sleepy but alert leopard

Sleepy but alert leopard

Dung beetle!

Mud bath

Silly cat - being sick after eating grass

They should call this a kaleidoscope of zebras, not a herd

 

16 December, 2018.   Arusha, Tanzania

…All the gang except for Chloe and Stephanie, of course. Unfortunately they had to stay home and work. We are missing them already, but happily they will be with Stephanie’s family on Christmas Day. 

Mark, Kirsten, Sarah and I spent a hot day and a half in Moshi before picking Heather up at the Kilimanjaro airport this afternoon. We’re now in Arusha and leave for the 9 day safari tomorrow after breakfast.  

I’m  not sure about the availability of an internet connection while we’re travelling, but we will send updates when we can. 

Dried fish anyone?

Kirsten is having fun pulling Mark over

Together at the Materuni Falls