Serengeti Day 1 (safari day 3)

(Sept. 7, 2023)

Our third and fourth days on safari we spent driving to and through the Serengeti. We Started the first day bright and early, ready for the six hours drive. On our way we drove through multiple little villages and towns where men and women were selling scarfs, fruit and other little nik naks.

Our first pitstop was the the entrance to the Ngorogoro park preservation where we had a bathroom break, our driver filled out some paper work and I bought some snacks (baobab seeds and cookies), a Kilimanjaro pin with elephants on it and a patch with a lion which says Serengeti, Tanzania. Once we were all ready to go we got back into the 4x4 and continued on our way.

As we drove around the crater, we passed many Maasai villages, where the local people lived. The Maasai originally lived in the Serengeti, however when the Tanzanian government decided to make the Serengeti a protected land for only wildlife, the Maasai were removed from their land in the Serengeti and put in the area surrounding the Ngorogoro crater; with the promise of having a better supply to clean water, better schooling for the children and space in order to raise their cattle and goats with less worry about wild animals attacks.

Our second rest stop was to look at the crater from above, which from where we were was covered in clouds, but we could still see some animals (that were tiny black dots) moving across the plains. After this stop we continued driving for another hour or so and stopped once for lunch at a big picnic ground where everyone else also stopped. Scott and I climbed up a little hiking path which over looked the fields before us which was very beautiful, and then after lunch, we continued to the entrance of the Serengeti which was marked with a big gate and also a statue of two skulls - marking an archeological site where some of the earliest human remains were discovered.

Upon entering the Serengeti we were immediately consumed by tall yellowed grasses which seemed to be infinite. The drive took us through the fields where we began seeing many different animals such as gazelle, hyena, water buffalo, and even some plains elephants. We also came across some hartebeest, which are named for the shape of their antlers.

On our driving we also found a giraffe, and some of the most exciting was when we heard over the radio (where the guides/drivers spoke to each other) that there was a leopard asleep in a tree.. We made it to the spot with the leopard was and it was almost too far to see with the naked eye, so we had to use binoculars (and the camera lens) to see him better.

After this we also came across three cheetahs eating something in a field - and they were also quite difficult to see because of their camouflage, but the only way we knew they were there was because of the vultures flying above the kill, and also at one point a hyena came to see what was happening the the cheetahs moved away so as to not have a confrontation.

(you can just see the tops of their heads in the second photo..)

Our drive then took us to a pride of lions who had recently killed a giraffe and were enjoying their dinner in the middle of the road. There was about 15 - 20 lions, all either munching down, or asleep with full bellies, very unconcerned about the three to six 4x4s that had just gathered around them.

This was our last big sighting of our third day out. The sun began to set as we drove to our camping grounds in the Serengeti. Our tents were glamping tents so we had a bed and a shower, but it was still made out of heavy tarp, and we had walkie-talkies in our tents incase we needed to call the front. We had dinner in our camping areas, and Scott and I made our way to our tent (we also had a person who walked us from the main area to the tents just in case of a wild animal). We left the front of our tent open so we could see through the screen out onto the path, and as we were going to sleep, a hyena walked down the path right as the path lights were turned off and all we could see were the glowing of his eyes.