Day 12: Serengeti National Park

We had a comparatively late start to the morning by safari standards, not departing our camp until 08.00. 

Our surroundings were just as pretty in the morning, although it was a bit cloudier and mistier than it had been last night.

The itinerary for today was to drive to the Serengeti. From where we had been staying to the entrance to the Serengeti National Park was a journey of around 70 miles, which would probably take a couple of hours given the quality of the roads. We got off to a slower start than intended, however, when our first stop was a garage in the nearby town of Karatu. The very rough road up to the lodge where we'd stayed had taken its toll on one of the jeep, resulting in a flat tyre overnight. Our guide had already changed the tyre, but needed to get the damaged one mended so that we still had a spare. Within 30 minutes or so it was all sorted and we were on our way towards the Serengeti.

Before we got to the Serengeti, we actually had to pass through another national park: Ngorongoro. The two national parks border one another and were originally created as one combined national park. in 1959 the government split off Ngorongoro from the Serengeti so that the Serengeti would be a protected area just for animals, whereas the local Maasai people would be allowed to live and farm within Ngorongoro. 

The Ngorongoro National Park revolves around an enormous volcanic caldera, which we would be visiting on the final day of our safari. Today we were driving on the main road, which runs along the crater rim. We passed several viewpoints from where it ought to have been possible to look down into the crater, but it was so misty and cloudy this morning that we couldn't see a thing. We did pass some buffalo lounging by the side of the road, though.

Despite being a main road - and even a bus route - the main road through the national parks is both incredibly bumpy and incredibly dusty. The jeep didn't seem to enjoy the constant bumping, because after an hour or so we ground to a halt. Our driver got out to fiddle with things under the bonnet. Oh dear!

There seemed to be a wire which had come loose. It was soon fixed and we were on our way again. What was nice was that as soon as other safari drivers saw our vehicle stopped at the side of the road, they pulled over to check whether everything was okay. All the drivers seem to know and help each other, so I don't think you could ever truly get stranded. At one point we had five different drivers crowded around our bonnet  

As we progressed further through the Ngorongoro conservation area, the skies began to clear and we began to get some views of the surrounding landscape. Not of the crater, but of the Ngorongoro highlands which are beautiful in their own right.

You'll see from this photo the clouds of dust which each vehicle was kicking up as it drove along the main road.

We drove past a lake...

...as well as lots of Maasai villages.

Cows are very important to the Maasai and once or twice our route was blocked by Maasai cows crossing the road.

The closer we got to the Serengeti, the dustier everywhere seemed to become.

We stopped for a break at an information centre, near a site where some of the oldest remains of human species have been discovered.

The landscape was increasingly barren.

Shortly after this point we left the Ngorongoro conservation area...

...and entered the Serengeti National Park.

How exciting!

At 5,700 square miles, the Serengeti National Park is huge; for comparison, the country of Montenegro is only 5,362 square miles. We weren't going to be able to see all of it on our trip, but would be driving through the southern part of the park and heading towards the central Serengeti, where we'd be staying overnight.

The first animals we encountered as we continued down the main road were gazelles. 

There seem to be thousands of these grazing in the Serengeti.

They move incredibly fast; at one point our jeep startled them and they started racing alongside us.

We saw some giraffes...

...and then stopped for lunch at a picnic site where we were persecuted by bright blue birds hoping to steal our lunch.

The road didn't get any less bumpy after lunch and at one point we even saw a dust-storm by the side of the road.

We drove past Simba Rock, which apparently features in the Lion King...

...and then eventually turned off onto smaller, less dusty roads where we got our first sighting of big cats here: a couple of lions asleep under the shade of a tree.

We stopped and watched them for a while.

It was around 3pm in the afternoon by this point and pretty hot, so they weren't doing much beyond snoozing  

A bit further on we caught sight of some distant giraffes...

...and found a solitary elephant.

But the most exciting animal sighting for me involved us fording a small bit of water...

...in order to get to a hippo pool!

There were so many hippos here.

The hippos have really sensitive skin, so they spend the majority of daylight hours submerged in the water and come out to eat after dark. 

That meant we could only really see the tops of them, although occasionally one would come up for air and we'd get a better view of their head.

As we drove a little further around the pool, I realised there were even more hippos than I had originally thought.

It was around 5pm now and evening was starting to come on, so they were beginning to stir and wake up.

We caught the occasional hippo yawning as they woke up.

They have rather impressive teeth; you definitely wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of them!

Once we'd finished admiring the hippos, we drove back across the water.

We caught sight of some mongooses in the distance...

...and also a very small antelope. I can't remember its name, but it's the smallest species of antelope in the park.

As we began to drive through the Central Serengeti towards our camp for the night, we also saw a rather impressive secretary bird...

...and - not a very good picture - but we also saw jackals in the distance.

Soon we had some spectacular views of sunset over the Serengeti.

We'd had a great day but our guide was a bit disappointed that he hadn't been able to find more bigger cats. That was until I spotted something moving in the distance, when we were around 10 minutes away from our camp. Initially I thought it was a warthog, but it soon became clear that it wasn't...

...it was a female lion!

We were able to get surprisingly close to her before she walked off into the sunset

We definitely couldn't complain about that as an end to the day! A few minutes later, we drove up to our camp for the night.

The tent we had here looked enormous from the outside.

And it was indeed pretty enormous inside too! The bed was huge...

...and the bathroom was as nice as anything you'd get in a hotel.

We were given a small radio which we needed to use to call a member of staff to escort us from our tent to the dining tent. I didn't take any pictures this evening but we had a buffet dinner, with rice and beef that we could serve ourselves and a selection of different desserts. Everything was lovely and the tent was so comfy that it felt a shame that we were going to have to be ready to check out at 05.45 the following morning!