 |
| Sunrise in the Serengeti |
A few months before Christmas we were trying to decide
where to go for the Christmas break. We
weren’t even sure how much leave we would be getting, so bounced around a few
places, including Selous,Mikumi, Gombe and Kenya… we didn’t really consider
Serengeti because it was the middle of the short rain season, and we’d been
there quite a few times before…
 |
| Songata Falls Lodge |
But the lure of the Serengeti is hard for us to
ignore, and pretty soon we were planning a trip there for Christmas J It would be the first time that we’d been during
the rains, and we were a bit worried about the roads, but in the end decided to
take the chance and hope it wasn’t too bad.
Of course we would be camping as well, so we were really hoping it
wouldn’t be too wet! But we swayed when
we heard that wildebeest migration had become a bit confused due to the strange
rain patterns. Instead of being down
south already, they were milling around the same area that we would be based –
perfect!
 |
| The Songata Falls valley |
So the Friday before Christmas, we finished work, packed
up the car, and headed out first thing on Saturday to Arusha. For us, the drive is a full day’s one and we
only passed Moshi late afternoon. Again,
we made a quick stop to meet up with Selma and Ngomi (the tour operator that we
go with when not driving ourselves) to pick up our prepaid TANAPA and
Ngorongoro cards.
They were again kind
enough to work out the cards for us, saving us a lot of hassle trying to sort
it out from Dar, or spending a day of our holiday getting things
organized. Thanks guys!
 |
| Mount Meru |
We’d done a bit of research on the net and found a
place that sounded quite interesting, called Songata Falls Lodge. Owned and run by a Tanzanian woman for the
best part of a decade, it’s set within walking distance to the falls, and has
quaint little chalets set in lush surroundings.
It is a bit hard to find though, and by the time we’d finally found our
way to the place, it was almost dark.
After a quick lookaround we headed for dinner, which was completely
worth it. While I had chicken, Dru was
served a full, barbequed fish – as he said – the best fish he’d in Tanzania,
high praise indeed!
 |
| Waiting at Ngorongoro gate - spot the odd car out |
Because of the 24 hour permits granted to the
Serengeti, we have to plan our arrival at the Naabi hill gate carefully, so
that we don’t get there too early to make sure we would have ample time to
explore on the way out.
After doing some
calculations, we realized we didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn to
start our trip. Just as well, since the
bushbabies that seemed to infest the place had great fun jumping on the tin
roof of the chalet and kept us awake for quite a while ;)
 |
| The required Ngorongoro Crater photo :) |
|
|
But it still meant we got up pretty early – mainly to
indulge in the breakfast while enjoying the view of the valley of the Songata
Falls. And we were pleasantly surprised
by seeing a Hartlaub’s Turaco, a first time sighting of the bird for me. Too bad we were too busy eating breakfast to
take photos…
Soon though, it was off on the road to the
Serengeti.
 |
| There were hundreds of thousands of them! The migration was in town |
A quick stop to check out the
Crater from the new viewing platform, it was time to tackle the road from hell…
the most corrugated road it feels in Tanzania.
With safari vehicles speeding past us, we bumped around slowly heading
towards the hill. Our info about the
migration had been right – and within sight of Naabi Hill, we came across
thousands and thousands of wildebeest grazing on the plains.
We’d seen the migration on the plains last February,
but there weren’t nearly as many as we saw this time – we estimate the bulk of
the migration was there – everywhere you looked you just saw wildebeest around,
it was fantastic. The frustration though
is trying to capture it on camera, an almost impossible task as they’re so
spread out. Eventually we took a few
photos for the record, and then just drove through enjoying the amazing view on
the way to the gate.
 |
| Wildebeest along the road |
We were taken aback by the amount of cars that were at
the gate, it was the fullest that we had ever seen and struggled to actually
find a parking space. Judging by the
amount of visitors, we figured it was going to take quite a while to get the
formalities done, I set about making lunch, while Dru went off to fight the
crowd of guides to get the payment done.
While it took long, Dru had a few tricks to get it done a bit quicker. When he got into the office, it was chaos
with so many guides pushing their way to the TANAPA administrators. If you try to wait your turn you’ll be
waiting there forever, so he pulled the “I’m new here, I don’t know what to
do!” and got helped a lot quicker than we thought J Still,
it ended up taking over an hour to do the paperwork, but we were finally
officially out the Crater area, and in the Serengeti.
 |
| Greater kestrel |
Instead of taking the corrugated main road all the way
to Seronera, we turned off within sight of Simba Koppies (a drive we’d
discovered last time we’d been in the park) and headed the back way to Maasai
Koppies. One of the things that you look
for in the Serengeti – besides animals – is clumps of cars. That’s normally a good indication that
there’s something worth seeing.
And sure
enough we found a clump of cars, watching a couple of cheetahs who were resting
on a grassy dune. It was a bit far to
get any good shots, so we carried on further north, soon being rewarded with
the sight of a couple of lions.
 |
| Lioness and cub |
We soon
realized that they were mating lions, but found that the show wasn’t really
worth the wait. We have seen some great
displays of aggression during mating sessions, but these 2 looked like that
they could hardly be bothered :)
 |
| Cubbies |
But a little while later, we hit the jackpot
– a pride of lionesses and their cubs – about 15 in all. They were just starting to wake up and the
cubs were quite energetic, jumping around.
We spent the last hours of sunlight with them, before having race to our
campsite before it got dark.
 |
| 4 young cubs trying to get a drink |
We were pleasantly surprised to find that except for
one other self-driving couple and one tour group, the Dik-dik campsite was
empty, so it was a nice and quiet evening spent hanging around before heading
off to bed.
 |
| Lion family |
Day 2 >>
No comments:
Post a Comment