Safari Part 6a

September 3, 2009 (Serengeti Day 3)

This is our last full day on the Serengeti. We’ve already seen lions hunting, cheetahs hunting, elephants charging, and all kinds of birds, gazelles, warthogs, hippos and zebra. So everything now feels like icing on the cake (and the really good kind of icing—you know, with the cream cheesy goodness preferably on carrot cake, mmm…).

Mike decides that instead of going back into the heart of the Serengeti, where we’ve been the past two days, that we should head north, toward the Kenyan border.

Here the land changes. It is hillier and greener. More trees dot the landscape, as do more grazers. It is here we will see our first eland. The animals up here are more human shy, harder to spot and quicker to run. In Tanzania, the Serengeti is a protected national park with no hunting allowed. In Kenya, right over the border, it runs into Maasai Mara, a game preserve, where legal big game hunting is very big money. The animals up here therefore associate humans with guns, they don’t stick around.

But it is a nice change of scenery for us.

Mike spots two bat-eared fox early in the day. These guys are rarely seen as they’re nocturnal and extremely shy. As we drive up they immediately retreat into their den. They’re funny looking critters, with their squashed face and huge ears.

We see many more impala, hartebeest, and zebra. And the cool day is perfect for hanging our heads over the top of the Land Rover, hair blowing in the breeze.


To be Continued...


Photos: Bat-eared fox. Hartebeest. Zebra.