Saturday was safari day. We got up early, alarms set for 5:15. Still we didn't get breakfast. We left at 6:03 according to the Nissan Patrol's clock. The sun rose as we drove, and we were at the gate to the Serengheti park at 7:45. After paying for entrance, we enter. I am surprised somehow at the amount of animals already, right near the entrance and right near the road. Right away there are wildebeast, zebra, impala and warthogs (I guess one would not expect warthogs to be cute, I didn't. But they definitely are. Especially when they run.). We spent the day driving around the dirt roads of the Serengheti in search of wonderful animals, stopping just to eat lunch in the parking lot of a super-expensive hotel. We would have gone in to eat but lunch was 50 dollars. Each. By the end of the day we had seen almost every kind of animal we could have hoped for. we saw far more wildebeast and antelope than we needed, but though we also saw tons of zebra, I never grew tired of them (they look like striped donkeys, and that is what they are called in Swahili). We saw giraffes, elephants, lions, a leopard in a sort of distant tree, viboko (hippos), an unimpressive crocodile, gorrillas, monkeys, buffalo, mongoose galore (tons at the lodge. baby ones are really cute; adult ones not so much), lots of birds including a walking one that Evan swears he saw in the Lion King and
even a hyena, which was stockier than I expected and very ugly. The only things we can think of that we didn't see is a cheetah and a rhino, but apparently we weren't likely to see a rhino had we stayed for a week. That at least gave us four of the "big five"(leopard, lion, elephant, buffalo and rhino). We had planned to stay for more than one day, but at the end of one we felt we had seen enough and another day would just be more of the same. After leaving the park, we see more zebra, antelope, even giraffe and an elephant crossing the road makes us stop for a moment. Same with a herd of wildebeast crossing, though we just drove through that – far less dangerous than an elephant. Not like animals know about such things as park boundries.
Saturday was safari day. We got up early, alarms set for 5:15. Still we didn't get breakfast. We left at 6:03 according to the Nissan Patrol's clock. The sun rose as we drove, and we were at the gate to the Serengheti park at 7:45. After paying for entrance, we enter. I am surprised somehow at the amount of animals already, right near the entrance and right near the road. Right away there are wildebeast, zebra, impala and warthogs (I guess one would not expect warthogs to be cute, I didn't. But they definitely are. Especially when they run.). We spent the day driving around the dirt roads of the Serengheti in search of wonderful animals, stopping just to eat lunch in the parking lot of a super-expensive hotel. We would have gone in to eat but lunch was 50 dollars. Each. By the end of the day we had seen almost every kind of animal we could have hoped for. we saw far more wildebeast and antelope than we needed, but though we also saw tons of zebra, I never grew tired of them (they look like striped donkeys, and that is what they are called in Swahili). We saw giraffes, elephants, lions, a leopard in a sort of distant tree, viboko (hippos), an unimpressive crocodile, gorrillas, monkeys, buffalo, mongoose galore (tons at the lodge. baby ones are really cute; adult ones not so much), lots of birds including a walking one that Evan swears he saw in the Lion King and
even a hyena, which was stockier than I expected and very ugly. The only things we can think of that we didn't see is a cheetah and a rhino, but apparently we weren't likely to see a rhino had we stayed for a week. That at least gave us four of the "big five"(leopard, lion, elephant, buffalo and rhino). We had planned to stay for more than one day, but at the end of one we felt we had seen enough and another day would just be more of the same. After leaving the park, we see more zebra, antelope, even giraffe and an elephant crossing the road makes us stop for a moment. Same with a herd of wildebeast crossing, though we just drove through that – far less dangerous than an elephant. Not like animals know about such things as park boundries.
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