No bears, no chickens....but the big 5!

We went on a 9 day safari  from Dec’ 13 to Dec’ 21 the first day we went to Arusha National Park, it was a great starting place ‘cause you could see lots of variety of different animals and lots of them.There were lots of giraffes and we got lucky and saw a black and white Colobus monkey. They are rare to see because of how well they hide. We drove to a little view point and saw them in a tree and then when we were going back from the view point they were gone. The second day we woke up and drove to Lake Manyara National Park. Lake Manyara is famous for its tree climbing lions. The lions adapt to different habitats so this is why they climb trees in this park only.  Although we didn’t see any, we saw lots and lots of elephants. The first elephant we saw was way in the bushes and you could only just see him.  Looking contently at it, James (our amazing driver/guide) said lets skip this elephant because we will see many more up close. We drove about 2 minutes and  guess what? We saw another elephant. Not necessarily closer, but a lot easier to see. Actually, he was very hard to see at fir... let me skip the details and give you the highlights and main thoughts!

 Day 3 -we came about a metre away from a big bull elephant - he came so close we could have touched him, but instead we all jumped back. We thought we would drive away, but James just sat there while we freaked out! We asked him how do you know when an elephant is mad, he said since he is happily eating you don’t have to worry.  Phew!

Day 4 - Serengeti - James pointed out a Leopard in a tree but all we could see was its tail. He suddenly stopped, backed up and we were looking all over wondering what he saw and then he pointed in the tree about 30m away. None of us could see it, then he gave us more detail about where in the tree and we found him!
Day 4 - When we were driving in to the Serengeti, practically the first thing we saw was a cheetah lying down in the shade of a bush. Then after a few more minutes driving, we saw a lion lying down. He was hard to see unless you looked backwards and then all you could see was her paws sticking up in the air! (lions are lazy). We got a good view of the lion then as you know we saw the leopard I mentioned above.
Day 5 - We woke up early in the morning and went for a game drive before breakfast. Luck must follow us because we saw a pride of lions. There were 8 females, 3 cubs and one male. He was the dominant male ( there can be 2 or 3 males per pride). James said the pride probably had more dominant males because sometimes the males will leave the pride for a bit. We watched them for so long that we saw them move from the long grass all the way to the rock outcroppings. We watched them for a long long time and we saw something very interesting that they do to protect their cubs. They leave their cubs on a smaller rock nearby all hidden and all the other full grown ones on the big main rock. Then we went back for breakfast.
Day 6 - on Day 6 we went and saw a bunch of wildebeast and zebra on their great migration. James said there were half a million Zebra and 2 million wildebeast. Zebra and wildebeast go together because wildebeast can smell well and zebras can see very well. We drove right into the middle of the wildebeast and zebra. you could hear the zebra making their weird almost trumpeting noise. We were surrounded by them and could not see the road but James knew by heart the way to go and the wildebeast and zebra would move out of the way.
Day 7 - Day 7 was very lucky for all of our leopard sightings. We went out in the morning looking for some good game. We saw a bunch of cars parked around bad luck rock (we don’t usually see anything there, but James was determined we would so we kept going back, and that day we saw a leopard and two cubs. James said there were three cubs, but we only saw two.  Later that day, after lunch, we went for another game drive and came really close to a Leopard. You pretty much looked up and she was there sleeping in the tree. I am not joking that she was 3 metres away. After we looked at the leopard for a while I wondered, “hmmm, why doesn’t it have a kill in the tree?”  then James said “ look right behind her.” and there it was, it was a grand gazelle pretty much eaten and would last maybe for that day. She had wedged it in between two branches and stuck its horns into a branch. The Leopard’s put their prey in a tree so hyenas  (scavengers) and other cats cannot steal it. They also put it in a tree to rot for a day or two so it is more tender for eating. Their teeth aren’t strong enough for fresh kill. If it over rots they leave their kill for the vultures.

Day 8 -  Day 8 was our luckiest day. We actually saw two kills. The first was a cheetah walking around in the grass. James said he is looking for rabbits, and the next thing we knew she had a rabbit in her mouth! It wasn’t hard for the cheetah. She just had to walk and pick it up.  The second kill was the most amazing. It was five lions, one was male, attacking a heard of cape buffalo for a newborn young one. In a fight like this one, either one of the cape buffalo or one of the lions will die. After a while, some of the herd left. Only the mother and one other was left to help the calf. The lions got the calf and the mother buffalo made one last try to save her young and realised it was already gone. wah!: (

Day 9 -  On our final day we saw a mother black rhino and her young. They were very far away and very scared of vehicles. There are still poachers but not in the Ngorongoro Crater where we were. There are only 27 rhinos left in this area.  We also saw lots of Hyenas here, there are over 400 in the crater!

The safari was so amazing. I think we got really lucky on it!  Everyone we meet says that Mima and I are the luckiest because of our age already doing crazy things like this.

Bye everybody, I will do another blog shortly about poaching.