Safari Highlights

Doing a safari is an incredible life experience. We did a walking safari staying 2 nights in a tent out in the wilderness (which we later learned was a 'serious' safari), then a Jeep safari staying at different kinds of lodges. We did actual lodges (running water, toilets, comfy beds), stayed in hard-roof tent lodges (basics) and a soft-roof mobile tent lodge that actually moved with the migration (I'd say tenting with the lou inside the tent). It definitely wasn't a Hilton Hotel experience while driving around in an Audi. Jeep safaris are rugged (but in a good way I guess) and it's a lot of off-road with dirt flying around at all times. We did about 1,700 km, the equivalent of going from Toronto to PEI on roads resembling our north country gravel roads but with no gravel or grading and then no roads at all!!

That said, the scenery was breathtaking. Here's a sunset at the Tarangire National Park:

And a sunrise when we were at the Ngorongoro Crater:

And here's a pic of the scenery from a spot in the crater itself:

We saw hundreds of different animals and birds. Some of our favourites? For monkeys, it has to be the Black Face African monkey:

There's also an animal that looks like a miniature deer, but it's not. It is less than 2 feet high fully grown and is called a DikDik:

We saw 3 different types of gazelles- the largest being the Topi, then the Grant and the smallest is the Thompson:

We saw 4 different cats- male and female lions, a leopard, cheetahs and a cat I didn't even know before called a Serval (about the size of a dog):

Here's a shot of a lion on a kill hunt through a herd of wildebeasts: 

You can see the wildebeasts are either looking at her directly or running away because  she's going to have one of them for dinner. 

We saw hundreds of elephants, the favourite being a mother and baby:

Did you know that elephants eat over 150 Kg of berries, shrubs and grass a day? 

We saw thousands of zebras; their marks are incredibly beautiful and they seem so majestic:

And one other favourite- the giraffes were awesome to watch while eating treetops:

There is an the eco system in the parks that is not pretty but is a reality. All the cats kill and eat other animals- primarily wildebeasts, zebras, gazelles and even DikDiks if they're hungry enough. Once they finish eating their kill, this next group finishes off the carcasses- jackals, hyenas and vultures:

And just as lions are king of the land, crocodiles are king in the water (they're bigger than our alligators in North America): 

They can easily grab a wildebeast or zebra crossing water, tire them out in their efforts to get out from their jaws, drown them then put them by the river bank for eating a few days later. That's the bad part of doing the safari and watching the kill be eaten (we saw this almost every day of our trip).

Back to nicer parts of the safari- we saw hippos that basically stayed to themselves both in water and out (did you know they only eat grass?):

And the beautiful flamingos! We saw some in groups, then if you can believe it, over 500,000 of them together in the Ngorongoro Conservation Reserve:

And we were incredibly fortunate to watch the migration of the wildebeasts and zebras in the Northern Serengeti. Each year, these animals do the trek from the south up to the north, a 500 Km journey taking about 8 1/2 months up and down. Here, they are crossing the Masai Mara River: 

There are 1.6 million wildebeasts and 600,000 zebras that do this trek. Not all make it- either they get killed by lions, leopards or cheetas along the way, get killed by crocodiles or they aren't strong enough to cross the Mara River with the current and they drown. When we were at the Mara crossing, we saw 2 wildebeasts being killed by crocodiles and 2 being swept away by the river current.  Still, watching the migration is an unbelievable experience.

Would we do it again- absolutely! The beauty of the scenery and the animals is hard to describe; I hope I've captured a bit of it.