Expedition Serengeti Post 5 of 5

This was the last day in Serengeti National Park. The night was calm and peaceful. I awoke to the sound of chirping starlings. We packed up camp at about 5:30 and prepared to leave the campsite at around 7. As I soaked in the final moments at camp, the experience I had, I realized that my time here in Africa is winding down. This was the climax of my journey, and I couldn't have asked for a better one.

We had a game drive out of the park, writing down species associations on the way. My friends Sidra and Becca still hadn't seen a cheetah though, so we were on the look out. as we drove along searching for the cheetah, I observed the "Sea of Grass" and the beauty of the open space. The horizon seemed closer than it was and the clouds lined up in millions of rows, each one appearing as though painted on the sky. It was literally like driving through a painting.

On the way out I spotted a hyena family (no pun intended) laying under some bushes. Hyenas really are amazing, despite the bad rep. They plan all of their attacks using strategical moves and are caring, loving parents that are in a constant struggle with the other top predator, lions. We drove on and on until we were almost at the gate. We spotted what looked like distant lion in the grass, and I would have been happy with them being lions. Upon closer inspection by Sidra through her binoculars, we came to find out that it was actually a family of cheetahs. It was incredibly exciting that now everyone on the trip had seen one, and that we got to see a family of three was a real treat. Seven cheetahs seen at Serengeti? Not bad at all. We drove the rest of the way home with one of our cars getting in an accident. Luckily no one was hurt, but their car was apparently totaled. The SFS car barely had a scratch. You gotta love safari vehicles, man. When we arrived at camp, I was saddened but relieved and as I opened the door to my banda, I felt less restless than I had been for the past months. Now all I had left was to find out my research group and project, and to do work in that course. Then I could go home satisfied with Africa, for now at least.I then proceeded to nap off the day, my day of rest from this incredible adventure.

SWOD is "salama" which means "peace" or "peaceful"

Well... That's the end. Sorry it took so long, I'll have my homestay post and a few DR posts to write and then I'll be back on track. I hope you enjoy the writing and let me know what you wanna hear about from any of my experiences.

Tutaonana, baadaye

-Ian

Expedition Serengeti Post 4 of 5

Last night was NUTS. All sort of animals were up and causing alarm around camp. Lions were calling out by the bathrooms, leopards from the east side of camp, and a hyena was literally five meters from my tent. They were cackling, laughing and whooping all over the paddock at around 4 am. So of course I got up to look, and I saw one of them. Big, big girl hyena. It was SO awesome.

Disappointing part of this was that I tried to record their calling, but the sound of the camera recording blocked the sound of the hyenas. Disappointing.. Funny part was that everyone thought I was the one making all the noises. I'm honored that I'm authentic, but come on people. 4 in the morning? I'm not that crazy.

This morning was another interesting one. I got up after that crazy early start and went to get in the same car I was in yesterday, due to my superstitious nature. After eating breakfast, I went to get in the car and it was Sipaya and Whitney again, so I was excited to have another great day of spotting. And then another car starts rolling toward ours. Luckily the driver, Ninah, got there in time to close one of the doors and stop it from rolling. Unfortunately, it did damage the passenger door enough so that it wouldn't close. Fun stuff, man. So, lucky us, we got Nuru the mechanic as a driver and askari Bura as a copilot. It was pretty sweet.

Now on to other news. We game drove all morning and got to see Double Trouble again(pictured above). This was my third time seeing them, this time they were just chillin out with Mom on a log. I loved being able to check up on the same individual animals, namely the big cats, because it made it more exciting to see the same surroundings. The next goal, see a leopard and pray for another cheetah sighting because a few select people hadn't seen either one yet(even in Nakuru). To noone's surprise, that didn't really happen, I even started to fall asleep. That is, until we got to the hippo pool. That was a really fun time. They were everywhere, and they stunk, plus there were crocodiles. Bura, true to form, was imitating "viboko", which means hippos in Swahili, and it was pretty darn funny. Ton of baby hippos play fighting, and big adults actually fighting. It was definitely an interesting sighting. Most of the people in our car started to get in so that we could drive to the lodge, where we could eat lunch and swim, when suddenly, we heard the word "duma". Well, then everybody (myself included) jumped out of the car with our cameras to go take this picture. Talk about an odd species association. There was an adult cheetah just hanging out by the hippo pool. It didn't stay long, but it did give some people their first cheetah sighting and me a few good pictures.

After a few hours of relaxation later, we started game driving until we had to go back to camp. This time, we HAD to find a leopard. And we did. It was of course awesome. We first noticed a car parked in front of us on the road. The elderly people in it swore they saw a leopard in the grass so we, of course, decided to look. Patrick was the first to see the tail, and then it flicked again. This was such a tease at first, I thought that was all we were going to see of that leopard. We scanned the grass again, for a good ten minutes, before I saw a flock of birds fly out from under a distant tree. I made a verbal note of it, but kept searching nearer to our car. Then my friend confirmed the sighting. There she was, sitting on a termite mound looking out into the distant grassland. We quietly creeped, as well as we could in a car, perpendicular to her and waited and watched. Cars started coming in, including some of our own, and the leopardess started waltzing toward the road. She crossed right in front of one of our cars, and walked to another termite mound on the other side. Suddenly, she stops and looks into the distance again. This time, she crouched suddenly and continued to stare. At first it looked like stalking, until she turned tail and fled back across the road and eventually across a river. A large troop of baboons were coming  toward us, and considering that male baboons are on record as leopard killers, I'm glad she managed to get away. However, it would fulfill the need to see a hunt/kill. Just sayin.

We drove home, passing a hippo lumbering out of the water and a few antelope, excited about another terrific day and stoked for the drive home (mainly so that I could shower).

TO BE CONTINUED...

SWOD is "kisu" which means "knife"

Expedition Serengeti Post 3 of 5

Hamjambo marafiki!

DAY 3

Last night blew! It rained enough that our tent started to leak at the corners. Plan of Action: get our stuff off the ground and go sleep somewhere else. So I spent my second night in Serengeti, sleep on the floor of a land cruiser,squished between the seats, on nothing but a sleeping pad and covered with a shuka. It's safe to say I was sore the next morning.

So today also was pretty crazy and lucky. The best day of game driving I've ever had. For the first part of the morning we spent our time identifying and counting birds in the grassland. After we finished that exercise, we had a game drive until lunch. This is when the stuff got nuts. So we had basically the same car as yesterday, but in addition we added Jenna (the beloved intern from Kenya. SO glad she came on Expedition, she's awesome.), Sipaya (also from Kenya, Sipaya drove the White Rhino, which carried our bags. He's an insane spotter and driver.), and Whitney, who is literally the luckiest game driver I've ever been in the same car with.

So, of course the goal was to find a cheetah, because no one had seen one close enough yet.
And we found one. It was an awesome spot, and no other cars saw it (that's the first picture I have on this entry). And then we drove on and saw another. Right next to the road. Granted there were around 30 cars there as it was trying to cross the road, but it was still exciting. I started feeling bad after a few minutes though, as cars upon cars poured in and the cheetah couldn't cross the road. It's tail was flicking in frustration as it walked ever onward along the road. Eventually all of the SFS cars that had seen it had had enough and left, but I don't know whatever happened to her.

We then drove on to the Serengeti Visitor's Center, where we saw a ton of rock hyrax and two types of mongoose (dwarf and banded, for those animal people that care). I also watched a 30 minute documentary on Serengeti three times through. I never though I'd miss Animal Planet in Africa but... We then would get a lecture on the challenges of managing Serengeti National Park from one of the wardens. It was really informative and I am definitely interested in the behind the scenes stuff.
We would then go on a second game drive. Insanity ensued.

Jenna left our car for this drive, but we still had plenty of luck even with her gone. After driving for a little bit, we saw the first leopard of the Serengeti. It was a good distance away, chillin in a tree. I don't think I've seen something look so relaxed. As we drove along, we passed by the area where we saw the first cheetah of the day. In the distance, ANOTHER CHEETAH!. I couldn't believe our luck. Three cheetahs in one day? Absurd. Anyways, it was another good sighting when there was no one around, so I felt no guilt about my excitement. As we drove on, another highlight was seeing a serval after I said that doing so was our next goal. It was so funny because it was being chased by a mongoose (white-tailed this time) and we barely got a good sighting of it, let alone a picture.

The next sighting was very near and dear to my heart. We pulled up on a small group of cars as we headed back to camp and there were three lions there. It was the radio collared female from the first day, and the two cubs were there too. It was such a blast man, I've been more content only a few times in my life. Got plenty of photos and videos of them playing and they are great. They even walked up to our car, which was SO awesome. Firstly they are totally cute, second, they were just hilarious. I decided to nickname them Double Trouble, for obvious reasons, and was hoping to see them again at some point. I felt so blessed to witness that whole moment and realized how great the day had been. It may have been one of the single greatest days of my life and I don't regret the lack of sleep from the crazy night.

TO BE CONTINUED...

SWOD: usiku which means "night"

-Ian

Expedition Serengeti Post 2 of 5

Hamjambo I say!

DAY 2

Today we spent 10 hours in the car game drive and working on two field exercises. The first exercise was examining giraffe browsing behavior and identifying individuals. The second exercise was all about profiling elephant families and observing behavior. We also had a bird identification practice exercise in which we had to identify 30+ African birds. Definitely got better at it by the end.

Driving around the Serengeti for a day was also a dream come true. We saw tons and tons of wildlife, including a couple of female lions we affectionately named Mary Kate and Ashley (Amazing, put a bunch of girls heads together for twin sister names and...). They were a great pair of lions to observe and it definitely got me interested in their family history. Maybe they were part of the same pride we had seen yesterday.. But the goal was to see a cheetah or leopard, so we trekked ever onward. At around noon, we stopped for lunch at Maasai Rock and the Maasai Paints. It was pretty interesting to see the paintings from hundreds of years ago, when the Maasai were living there. The Rock also gave us a spectacular view of the area, and a bunch of good photo opps.

After lunch, we continued our game drive. Species association sheets were being filled as we saw wildlife left and right, but still no leopard or cheetah. We patrolled a forest line for about an hour searching for a leopard, but there was just no sighting. Our driver, Ninah, was a riot though, and this particular group passed the time pretty well. On the way back to camp, we encountered the swarm again, this time it was even worse. I killed like 30 flies after we closed the windows and the hatches. The rest of the car eliminated them as well, but there were so many it took like 15 minutes. Ridiculousness.


Once we got back to camp, we checked our watches and saw that we still had about an hour of game driving left, so we begged Ninah to take us out again. He obliged and we sped back into the Serengeti. We saw the girls again in the same spot. It was actually exciting this time because one of their colleagues had joined them, and they were watching some wildebeest in the distance. If I had an hour I would have sat and watched the hunt, but we didn't have that kind of time. We sped away, passing a group of hippos we had seen earlier, but this time with a twist. One of the hippos had died and was floating belly up. It was a funny sight, and we all joked that even though we hadn't seen a cheetah or leopard, that it was still worth it to see the dead hippo.

As we sped back to camp once again, I spotted a lion standing up out of the grass. SO proud of that sighting because even though she was pretty close to the road, no one else had seen her. WE of course stopped, and upon looking harder, I spotted a tiny lion cub in a tree. And two more on the ground. Score! They were really tiny. I 'm guessing that she hadn't even introduced the three of them to the pride. I took a pretty nice video of the event; mother had been calling to him/her, but the baby just couldn't find the footing or the courage to jump down. Yeah it was a short tree, but not for a baby lion. After about a minute, he/she leaped down from the fork, and we all cheered. It was worth not seeing a cheetah, I can tell you that much.

TO BE CONTINUED...

SWOD: hamna which means "nothing"

-Ian

Expedition Serengeti Post 1 of 5

Hamjambo I say!

How do I begin to describe Expedition Serengeti to you all? It was truly an absolutely amazing experience and that national park is now my favorite place on the face of the Earth.

I thought I would write about each individual day due to the high amount of incredible events. So.. DAY 1. We left Moyo Hill camp at around 6:30 that morning. The journey would last till around 5 o'clock that evening, but it would be worth every second in the crammed cars.

There is a large area outside of the actual national park gate and here we saw hundreds of gazelles, a few hyenas and a jackal. Pretty basic stuff if you ask me, until the grudge match of course. We saw two gazelles duking out their differences, and man it was epic. I knew they would be alright in the end, but a few times I thought they might get stuck together or maybe a neck would get broken. Cool right?

After finally arriving at the gate, the group would game drive into camp, in order to observe the magnificence that is the Serengeti. Something we actually didn't see for the whole expedition, was the famous natural wonder of the world, the Great Migration. They had moved on into Maasai Mara and so we would not see a single wildebeest  for the entire journey. But we did see a cheetah the first day, sort of... It was probably two miles off on a hill, but somehow our Wildlife Ecology professor, John Kioko, saw it. He is a ridiculous spotter. Anyways, after that we drove on and saw a variety of bird and mammal species, including topi (which I hadn't seen yet).

The next sighting was rather grand, as we observed a pride of lions resting near a water hole. I would see this pride again many times, but I didn't know that at the time, so I just soaked it all in. The two adolescents were a treat as well, since I also had not seen lion cubs in Africa yet.The discouraging part of this experiences were the dummies who drove off-road to see them. Oh and guess where they're from: the Southeast (specifically Arkansas). They were kind people with a son at Duke University, but man they pissed me off. Not only did they completely destroy a line of vegetation, but they definitely disturbed the animals. I don't care how entitled you think you are, never go off-road just to get a cool picture or get closer to the animals. It kills me. Researchers try their best to stay on the road, but sometimes they have to follow the animals. So if the people that are required by occupation to see the animals try their best to stay on the road, so should you, tourist.

Enough ranting.. We drove into camp with a cloud of Tsetse flies with us and man did those suckers bite. It hurts worse than horse flies and itches like mad. I killed like 20 in the car and then we had to get out... Cue the climactic music. Man it was rough, but we got through it and set up our tents and such. The sunset that night was beautiful, and as we sat around the fire I began to understand the magnificence that I had witnessed in just a single day. and there was plenty more to come believe me. Because of the general lack of a barrier between us and the nocturnal wildlife, we were required to be escorted to the bathroom by Askari Bura. He is a riot. I probably had the same conversation with him at least 20 times on the trip(due to his inability to speak English and mine to speak Swahili very well). While walking to the bathroom, I got to see a hyena's eyes again at night, and I laughed to myself a little. Nice to see a familiar friendly face. Later that night, everyone else heard the hyena come into camp and take down the trash can before Bura chased it away, but I was soundly sleeping in my tent. Kinda sucked to miss it, but no big deal. Then it was evening, then it was morning, the second day...

TO BE CONTINUED...

bro tip #1775
A new dawn means a new day, and a new day means a new night. live it up bro.

SWOD: Majani which means "flower" or "clover"

-Ian