Serengeti Pictures

We spent the first morning of expedition in the Ngorongoro Crater. This beautiful caldera is over 200 square kilometers and holds a glorious community of all sorts of animals.

There were lots of spotted hyenas running around the crater. Also lots of wildebeest and zebra.

Pictures and words can in no way capture the magnificence of the caldera cliffs rising up around you from all sides.











The crater is full of animals that are rare to see in other places, even the national parks. These super muscular antelope are eland. We've seen them maybe three other times outside of the crater.

Estimates say there are less than 100 black rhinos left in the world. Of the remaining black rhinos, about thirty live in the Ngorongoro Crater. We were lucky to see four of these guys, and one was a baby!

And something even rarer than a rhino… a unicorn!

(OK, actually just a Thompson's Gazelle with one horn)

On our way out of the Crater, one of the cars was lucky enough to see a pride of lions trying to take down a male buffalo! The buffalo got away, however, because one of the other buffalo turned back and chased off the lions! Our professors had never heard of anything like that happening. I didn't get to see the chase, but I did get to see the lionesses.

 

The afternoon turned stormy in the crater, but its so big that half of it would be covered in storm clouds and the other half would be slightly sunny. This picture can't really capture the beauty of the sunlight playing on the caldera's sides while a rain storm was blowing through the middle of the crater.

Driving to our campsite in the heart of Serengerti National Park! From the Ngorongoro Crater it was about a two and a half hour drive to the Nabi Gate of Serengeti and then another two and half hours to our campsite. The main road was a very rough gravel road and the side roads to the campsite were mud. Mudding was super fun, not going to lie.





I didn't take any pictures of our campsite, but I have to explain about it because it was the coolest campsite ever. Being in the heart of the Serengeti meant being surrounded by wildlife both during the day and at night. We had askari (guards) to escort us around the camp at night because buffalo, hyena, zebra, baboon, and lion wandered around. During a night time trip to the bathroom, it was pretty likely that you'd see a buffalo or a hyena. The scariest part, however, was the safari ants. These are ants that typically form thick lines on the ground and if you step in that line... pole sana (very sorry). They swarm you and then start biting you. Luckily, it's pretty easy to step over the lines of ants, but one night there was a huge mass of them in front of all of our tents, so it was impossible to get through for about 30 minutes. One tent had the unfortunate experience of a safari ant line forming inside their tent. After bravely trying to hold their ground, they had abandon their tent and find other tents to sleep in that night. Thankfully, I did not have any bad experiences with the safari ants. OK, on to more pictures!

A cheetah in the Serengeti.

There weren't too many giraffes that we saw in the Serengeti, but the ones we did see were a lot less skittish around humans than the ones in Tarangire and Lake Manyara NPs.

We saw so many lions! We also watched lots of lions because one of our assignments was to observe how much tourists value different wildlife species. We did this through recording how long tourists cars would watch an animal (or if they didn't stop to watch at all). Tourists stayed the longest with lions and leopards, so we spent many hours lion and leopard watching.

Life is so hard when you're a lion in the Serengeti.

Disney wasn't lying when they depicted Simba as a cub who was always jumping on his parents and bugging them to go play. This female cub would jump on her sleeping pride mates left and right, trying to get them to play. Usually the older lions shoved her in the direction of the yearling lions, who willingly wrestled with this ball of energy (when they weren't sprawled out like the guy in the picture above).

There was a very popular spot where a leopard had a den with two cubs. There were always at least seven or six (if not 30) tourists cars in that area, which was really annoying to be around. I only got a glimpse of the cubs (and no pictures), but… I was lucky enough to see another leopard get chased out of her tree by a troop of baboons. She walked alongside the road for quite a bit. Leopards are usually pretty rare to see, especially out of their trees!

A beautiful topi. Their coloration is gorgeous.

Dikdiks are adorable. They are quite tiny and they mate for life so you always see them in pairs.

The clouds were one of my favorite parts of the Serengeti. You could watch them go from fluffy cumulus in the morning, to cumulus congestus by lunch time, and then impressive cumulonimbus by sunset. At sunset during our drives back to camp, the clouds had just started to form their anvils, and only the very tops would be lit up by the remaining sun.

It isn't a complete trip to the Serengeti during the wet season unless you get stuck in the mud at least once. This was right after our ecology professor got his car out of a muddy hole in spectacular fashion.






The whole group has some spectacular stories from the expedition. On top of seeing leopards, cheetahs, and lions, we also saw a serval and a caracal. Both are smaller wild cats and pretty unusual to see, but caracals are especially rare. We also saw lions hunting wildebeest, though the lions were unsuccessful. We also identified over 60 species of birds, learned that you should never open the roofs before you move the car the morning after it has rained (you'll get very wet if you do), tried to pull some very unsuccessful pranks on April Fools day, and had the chance to stuff ourselves with dessert and cheese when we visited the Serena Lodge for an afternoon.

On our way back from Serengeti, we stopped at Oldupai Gorge, the place where some of the oldest fossils of early human ancestors, from Homo habilis to early Homo sapiens, have been found. Early human tools have also been found, as well as fossils of early predecessors to modern African animals. There was a skull of an extinct antelope that was almost the size of an elephant!! We were given a short lecture and then a chance to look around the small museum. It was cool to look at the gorge, which has been shaped by long gone rivers and multiple volcanic eruptions from millions of years ago.

It was almost sad to get back to Moyo Hill. Expedition had been amazing, and nobody wanted to start thinking about finals. We were given one day to study for Ecology, had our Ecology exam the next day. We had a non-program day on Sunday, which I spent exploring cool restaurants in Karatu and studying. I also went to a Lutheran church in Rhotia for their Easter services. I didn't understand most of it, but it was nice to hear some of the hymns.  On Monday we had another study day, and today (Tuesday) we took our Wildlife Management Exam and are now studying for our last exam, Environmental Policy. Exams aren't too bad, but kind of daunting because they're worth 50% of our grade… After Wednesday, however, Directed Research projects start. Hopefully I will be able to write another post soon about my Directed Research. Here's a sneak peak: I'm studying the contribution of beekeeping to household income and poverty alleviation in the Karatu District. Econ and enviro in one. I'm so excited!