Safari – Serengeti Game Drives – Monday 30 April

We thought it was an early start yesterday – today we had to be up and ready to go by 630am!

It wasn’t too bad actually because we’re staying at this camp site again tonight so we didn’t have to dismantle the tents. In fact today’s important lesson was to make sure the tent was securely zipped up so no animals or creepy crawlys could get into our beds.

We set off on our first game drive. Heidi got picked up a few hours earlier to go on her balloon ride. We saw her balloon – took some pics for her. We’re meeting her at the Lodge about 11am.

The plan for today was a game drive through the Serengeti while the animals were getting up and another one this afternoon just as the animals are settling down for the evening. This morning we saw a bison and ostriches then we saw a daddy elephant. He was all by himself, then we went along a bit further and we found his herd. They were so cute. We took loads of photos. There were babies and teenagers the works.

We spent ages with the elephants, then on the way to the lodge we saw a few more of the local inhabitants – birds, bisons, crocodiles. At one point (not far from the elephants) we were driving along and Hungry Man stopped the truck and him and Alex got out to check the road – it looked a bit soggy to us. They were worried that we might get bogged so when Alex got back in the truck he told us to hold on, Hungry Man was going to floor it through the mud so there’d be no time to get stuck.

We all settled into our seats and braced ourselves. It wasn’t nearly as exciting as it sounded. We just zoomed through with a spray of mud and we were safely on the other side. I’m glad we didn’t get bogged – I didn’t fancy trying to leverage the enormous truck out of the mud, it would have sunk up to its axels its so huge.

We met Heidi at the Lodge. She was so excited. She’d loved every minute of it. She said she’d seen some herds and got some ok photos. Her only complaint was that her zoom on her camera wasn’t zoomy enough.

We went back to the campsite and had an early lunch. We had a few hours to kill before the next game drive so we got the cards out again. Fiona had a sleep for an hour or so and the rest of us played card. We were talking and laughing it was great fun. The boys had a beer and then Heidi and Aidan cracked open the bottle of Bacardi. It was funny to watch them get drunk – they got smiley, then more smiley. I think they went through half the bottle and they only had 4 cans of coke!

We were drinking in the daytime because Alex had us so concerned about leaving our tents in the night time to pee that none of us were drinking so much as water in the evenings. The plan was they could have a few drinks and be sober by the time it got dark.

They were both still drunk when we set out for our afternoon game drive. Heidi even forgot her camera! When we set out for our afternoon game drive we saw two lions in a tree. We stopped and took some photos then continued on our way – that’s when we saw the leopard.

The leopard was great, but he was too far from the road. He was in a tree, hiding behind the branches and despite our best efforts we couldn’t convince Alex to have Hungry Man drive over to the tree (some nonsense about ruining the natural environment by driving off road… :) )

It was pretty funny trying to take photos of the leopard. We were all complaining about the branches being in the way, about lack of zoom, about not being able to work our camera. I finally figured out how to do the digital zoom on my camera as well as the 10xoptical. I got a couple of good photos, but nothing worthy of the National Geographic.

On the way to the Lodge (for a quick toilet stop) we saw some more hippos. They didn’t do anything exciting though – just general wallowing. At the Lodge we took some nice photos. Got a nice one of all of us on a rock overlooking the Serengeti. We asked some other random tourist to take the photo of us all.

Tonight was our second night in the Serengeti. Its so peaceful here. We were doing a bit of star gazing, but it was funny – we could see loads of stars, but not as many as you’d expect. The moon was pretty full, so that made it a bit too bright. It was so peaceful in the middle of nowhere.