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