The Serengeti gets brisk in the evenings and that makes for a perfect beginning of the day for me. Many people were wearing fleece tops but the mid-50's Fahrenheit temperature felt right at home for me.
Kristen and I wanted to get an early start to the day because the 200 or so KM back to the middle of the park seemed more palatable spread over many hours. Safari is great in the mornings and evenings with many sightings but the mid-day hours are either spent covering large distances or resting. The Lobo Lodge has a great dining room to get you started and on your way. (Note the tree encased in glass right in the middle of the room.)
Have no fear, he won't eat much. Actually, this close-up is for a collection of animal faces that Kristen will turn into individually framed portraits. The Tree Hyrax is a cousin of the Rock Hyrax but is slightly bigger, probably about fifteen pounds. The combination of the two literally litter the Lobo Lodge grounds making it look and smell more like a gerbil cage than a human habit trail.
Still on the Lobo Lodge grounds, we exited the lodge gate and headed around a small knoll to the gas station. (Note the funnel made of a cut water bottle.)
Something caught my eye up on a rock outcropping. It was a juvenile lion complete with leg spots.
Very soon after stopping the van and turning the engine off another cub came out from hiding to join his sibling. The day had already started very well.
Approximately two kilometers away and our luck continued with a Seval sighting just to the right.
This is the same type of cat that was in the lodge rafters at Ndutu. It was hunting small rodents with limited success. The Seval could catch the ground critters with relative ease but somehow didn't or couldn't make the transition to feeding. Maybe it was just playing or practicing.
We had heard of a lion taking down a Wildebeest yesterday and this may be the proof.
Shortly after making the turn South on the main road we saw two Eland Antelope off in the distance. These are the largest of the antelope family and are about as tall as a horse with a body that resembles a shoulder heavy cow.
I was hoping for a good picture of a Coke's Hartebeest, but this may be as good as it gets. The name is unusual and makes me wonder if it has anything to do with the heart shaped antlers?
Now, if I had to be some sort of horned creature on the Serengeti it would definitely be the Waterbuck. The strength and design of this animal is really impressive. Besides, this is finally a horned animal that looks like he means business.
We received a tip from another guide that there may be lions off of the main road and down a game path, so we headed that way. Our little "mini-van that could" bounced and labored to follow the land cruiser leading the way. Lions like to sleep during the day on clusters of rocks with small trees surrounding.
Sure enough, there was a big lioness looking down at us from her sunning position...
The young cubs were scattered under bushes near by.
The grass bed made for this little guy was too perfect. It made me want to start singing "The Circle of Life".
Not every cub was lucky enough to have a grass bed, so this one decided that a log would do the trick. Parked and enjoying the litter, we came to realize that there were actually two lionesses and their cubs. So the younger ones used grass sleeping pads and the slightly older ones layed their heads down on just about anything including felled tree.
Even after an hour of driving, when we came to a clearing, the backside of the lodge was still in sight. We had made a gigantic loop.
Heading South, the Serengeti is a beautiful changing topography and ecosystem. There are patches of forests, where the elephant population has not kept up with their duty of knocking down the trees and vast areas of open grasslands where they have. The most beautiful parts, to me, are the transition areas like this one. The grasses are growing well and so are many small trees, but the persistent elephants have also done their work of knocking many saplings down to eat their soft leaves and tender branches.
Oh well, you can't remember the names for everything, and that is the case here. If forced to guess, it would be a juvenile Water Buck but don't place any money on that. It just looked so content in the grasses that it was worth a picture.
After hours of driving down dry, dusty, hot, roads in the grasslands a grouping of trees appeared. With one right turn and a couple of kilometers behind us we came to a spectacular dead end. More hippos than could be easily counted were bobbing in an aptly named "Hippo Pool".
Mama hippos guided their young around the group and surprisingly plopped right down next to some crocodiles.
There was a symphony of grunts and noises loud enough that once the van had turned off its motors there was no doubt what creatures were in the water below.
The visual and auditory amazement temporarily blocked the other senses, but wore off pretty quickly by an olfactory assault. What was that stench? The water was absolutely putrid and still with dung. Watch out pig farmers, there's a bigger stink in town. The crazy thing is that the hippos didn't seem to mind and the young even ate from the masses. (It made me think of the developing floral track of baby Koalas and wonder if baby hippos had the same deficiency.)
Pulling back from the pond, it became apparent that Kristen and I were the brave ones venturing so close to the stinky mass congregation. Maybe our nostrils were so caked with the red Serengeti dust that our sensing nodes were blunted? There is a tolerance point for everything and we had reached ours too.
But, ever curious, with nose covered and only my eyes peeking out of my shirt, the source of the pungent emanation was found. A thousand kilos of carrion baking in the mid-day equatorial sun can tend to have this affect. Uh, enough...
Walking back to our four-wheel drive mini-van, we were greeted with flat number two for the trip. Jesse was already busy at work changing the tire and opting out of the hippo pool sensory extravaganza. His nose was working just fine from the parking lot.
After fixing the tire, we decided to give another smaller hippo pool a chance. This one smelled directionally better, with actual water flowing through the pool and no bonus carcass.
The overall numbers in the water were lower, as roughly half the herd was standing on the banks letting birds pick the bugs from between their wrinkled folds.
Hippos have a natural secretion that makes their vulnerable underskin pinkish in color. This is actually a form of natural sunscreen for warm afternoon walks in the sun. Actually, there were not many constitutionals taking place with many hippos simply standing near the banks. Most of their feeding is done at night under the UV safety of the moon and the coolness that allows walking distances without overheating.
After a long morning of driving and an early afternoon in the sun we were ready for a break. Kristen and I climbed the stairs to the lounge for a couple of hours out of the sun.
The Rock Hyrax seem to own this lodge as well, which I guess is only fair since it is literally placed between and in the rocks.
Even without air conditioning the lounge made for cooler temperatures and a comfortable enough setting to read and review the day's photos.
Instead of regenerating, the respite in the lounge made me ready for a nap and that was exactly the plan prior to starting the evening game drive.
With all the Toyota Land Cruisers and Range Rovers out, you would think that we were hunting safari utility vehicles.
These jumbo sized "Overland" vehicles vary in size and many make the months long trek from Cairo all the way down to Capetown, South Africa.
What everyone was waiting and searching for was a view of this one amazing cat, a leopard. The good news is that we didn't wait long with the crowd and headed to the other side of the grass field and were just lucky enough to catch a glimpse.
With the approaching sunset the animals were beginning to noticably stir, including this hooded vulture.
My target animal of the day was a perfect head and antler shot of an Impala. This picture made my day.
If you are wandering through the bush and happened to see one of these, you may want to stop in your tracks...
... because it is usually attached to one of these. In this case, the lion was still licking his chops clean of blood from the latest feeding.
After the lion sighting we drove along the banks of a stream and found a Grey Heron on the banks.
Further down Yellow-billed Storks stood surprisingly close to a lazy crockodile.
We've had a couple of decent distant glimpses of hyena thus far but Kristen did a great job of spotting this one just behind the van. He was heading to the water for a drink, but may have changed his mind with the waiting crocodile.
The evening light helped to highlight a standing snag or dead tree. It is interesting to know that these standing snags can remain upright for longer than they were alive, sometimes for over one hundred years.
This was just not Jesse's day or ours. The second flat of the day took a little longer to change but we were on our way in less than fifteen minutes.
Returning to the Saranara Lodge around dusk, our animal safari was not finished for the day. A colony of Dwarf Mongoose were waiting to greet us in the rocks around our room.
A baboon seemed to be contemplating the sunset on the roof.
He had a good idea, because the sunset was worth the effort.
We finished the evening by watching a Tanzanian dancing show.
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