Serengeti Day Three

The day broke clear, although there had been violent thunderstorms overnight. I slept soundly, awakened only once by the thunder. In the next tent, however, Eveline and Liz were awakened by growling and animal sounds outside during the night. There were lion tracks in the wet sand beside their tent and throughout the campsite. Perhaps the lions we had seen early yesterday morning had paid us a nocturnal visit. As we were able to account for everyone, we had breakfast and started to break camp.

Our garbage can was nowhere to be found. Some of the garbage was found by Wilson, our guide, a few dozen meters from the campsite, but the rest of it, and the can itself did not turn up after further searching. He figured it had been taken by hyenas, who wanted the refuse from our fish dinner.

We drove back the way we came, as we were scheduled to tour the Ngorongoro crater in the afternoon. About a half-hour into our drive we saw a lioness and three cubs beside the road. We stopped and they walked along the road in front of us briefly, then turned off and disappeared into the long grass. A little later we stopped to watch 10 zebras drinking from the ditch beside the road, including a baby a few weeks of age. They were nervous and didn’t linger over their water. A little bit further along we saw a solitary male lion, lying in the grass less than ten meters from the road. He had scars on his face, at least one of which looked fresh. He looked at us with a somewhat mournful and weary expression, as if he had just lost a fight.(photo above)
We detoured off the road several kilometers for a look at the Olduvai Gorge, where the Leakey family made their groundbreaking archeological finds. We saw a casting of the famous bipedal walking tracks of an adult and child australopithecine dating back some 3.6 million years. It is the oldest evidence ever found of our ancestors.

We reached the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater after noon and had lunch. We transferred to 4x4 Land Rovers, as the bus would not be able to negotiate the steep and narrow road going down the inside of the crater wall. The roofs of these vehicles had removable sections, so we could stand up and get a clear view of the animals.

The crater was formed by collapsed volcano, and is many kilometers across. The floor of the crater is a flat plain with a shallow lake and is the home of much wildlife. We had to stop our car because a herd of more than 200 wildebeest and zebras was crossing the road. Almost every female wildebeest was accompanied by a calf which appeared to be a few weeks old.(photo above) The calves stayed very close to their mothers. Several hundred meters further along we saw several lions lying in the long grass, probably with designs on the wildebeest, or their calves. We were told that four thousand wildebeest are born each day during the month of February. 40% of them die before they reach 4 months of age.

Later we passed a small pool with about 8 hippos in it. Perched in the reeds around the pool, and also on the ground around it were over 100 white egrets and ibises.
A little further along a large stork stood near the road. It appeared to be about a meter and a half tall. It had a pink neck, black wings and a white body.
The lake had numerous hippos in it as well as a flock of hundreds of pink flamingoes, but they were too far away to see clearly.

The driver of our 4x4 had very keen eyesight and was practiced in spotting game. He pointed out two rhinos lying in the grass, quite far away. They were in the middle of a scattered herd of wildebeest, and we would never have noticed them ourselves. We waited there for some time, hoping they would get up, but they were not interested in moving. We drove further hoping to find more rhinos or maybe a cheetah, but we had no luck.

It had become quite late in the afternoon, so we headed off to meet the bus and have dinner at a new campsite. This was at a privately run campground in a small town, and it had showers and also the possibility to upgrade to a room instead of sleeping in a tent. We took a room, as Barb had not slept well in the tent, and was very tired.

Dinner that night was soup and barbecued steaks, somewhat tough but good nonetheless.

The wildlife in the room was somewhat exciting too. Large cicadas (like crickets) lived in the shower. A major spider, almost the size of a Toyota Echo, lived behind the toilet tank. It kept us up quite late, shaving its legs in the bathroom.