Serengeti National Park
Tuesday, 8 July 2008
We flew to Kilimanjaro Airport, Tanzania, via Amsterdam where we spent three nights to get over jet lag before continuing on to Africa. The map shows the route, which is 15,693 kilometers (8,474 nautical miles). After landing at Kilimanjaro, we had one more flight to take to get to the start of our safari.
After spending the night in an Arusha hotel, we flew in a small airplane for 90 minutes to Lobo Air Strip in the northern part of Serengeti National Park, near the border with Kenya. The two stops we made on the way would be visited again, but from a four wheel drive truck with an open roof as we work our way back to Arusha.
The core of the giant Serengeti savanna is a well–run national park with an area of about 5,700 square miles; if it were in the shape of a square, each side would be 75 miles long. Serengeti National Park is a World Heritage Site, and more information about the park can be found by clicking this link.
The big story of this park is that wildebeests, ungainly–looking antelopes, are constantly on the move, looking for suitable grass. Over the course of a year, more than one million wildebeests move north into Kenya, following the rains, and then back again into Tanzania. The distance covered in this annual, oval migration is nearly 500 miles.
A motion picture was made of the Serengeti migration in 1959. It won the Academy Award in 1960 for best documentary. (The big winner that year was Ben Hur.)
A map showing the area we will tour, Serengeti, Ngorongoro, Lake Manyara and Tarangire, is available by clicking here.
We took this airplane from the city of Arusha to Lobo Air Strip in the northern Serengeti. One of us had never been on a plane this small.
Here are two pictures that show a view of the dry winter savanna from the airplane and a typical runway.
We met our driver/guide at Lobo Air Strip and set out in a long car/truck with an open roof. The landscape is attractive—grass and trees. Where are the animals?
About ten minutes later we spotted our first wildlife, zebras and wildebeest.
While there was plenty of sunlight in the Serengeti, which is located just south of the equator, the animals sometimes stood uncooperatively in places where we saw their shadow sides. Here are some elephants that were walking near the zebras.
One of the amazing things about this park is the absence of fences, telephone poles, lights, sidewalks, and man–made structures. The animals knew we were close to them, but generally, they did not really care.
Our guide was very cautious about letting us out of our vehicle, though. Snakes and charging elephants could ruin a vacation. Behind the next tree, just out of sight, could be a giraffe, a lion, a hippo or a buffalo, so the policy of keeping us in the vehicle was sound.
We saw a lot of Thomson’s Gazelles today, and their tails never stopped moving.
As lunchtime approached, the temperature rose to about 90ºF. We saw very few other people, and the animals were often seen in the shade of a tree. Here are some lazy lions.
After four hours, we had seen elephants, lions, cheetah, zebras, and now, a pair of leopards. We were told leopards are very seldom seen in pairs. Note the camouflage works quite well in dry grass, but is less useful in green grass.
Our guide was always on the lookout for signs of animal activity. Sometimes this was indicated by vultures waiting their turn to eat. Big cats, hyenas, and other ground mammals have priority over vultures in the pecking order.
Our guide said that wildebeest, who are always on the move for greener pastures, were the big attraction for meat eaters.
This is a baby baboon. Right after the picture was taken, it went off to its mother.
Next—a long day spent driving north to the Mara River to see wildebeests crossing it as they migrate north into Kenya.
