For The Love of Travel

The sixth largest park in Tanzania. The name of the park originates from the river that crosses it, being the primary source of fresh water in the ecosystem during the annual dry season (long distance migration of wildebeest and zebras).

The landscape is composed of granite ridges, river valley and swamps. And famous for the number of baobab trees and elephants.

We saw a beautiful sunset after a long day’s safari, (and a faint rainbow that followed a brief downpour).

A silver backed hyena surprised us as it hurried across the grasses. 

Mariana and I stopped off at a women’s collective, displaying beautifully beaded works in their rather humble tin gallery – and were prepared to pose for a photo so long as one of us dressed up in their garb. Good on you Mariana! :).  And we saw some young Maasai men herding their animals as one of our last memorable vistas of that area.

 

 

 

The Ngorongoro Conservation Area is a protected area and World Heritage site, with a crater that’s the world’s largest intact volcanic caldera, with a 2,000 foot descent to the crater floor. Home to about 25,000 animals.

A beautiful lookout gives you an idea of the vastness of the crater, but our accommodation on Lemala Hill gave us spectacular views. We left early in the morning and it took us 10 mins to get to the crater floor, well ahead of other tour operators – we had the place to ourselves for a whole 30 mins before there were another 100 vehicles touring around.

A local vet was chasing (with a view to tranquillising) the rare, and only black rhino in the area, as it was limping badly. Local lions were seeking the shade of tourist vehicles until they had to be made to ‘move on’ (drops of water on their backs from water bottles held by tourists). Zebras canoodling. Male lion listening out for calls from his harem some 300 metres away. Pink legged ostriches making like ballet dancers…and a very rarely spotted black winged bishop (because they flit so quickly) , but I did and took a pic! Haha!

 

The Serengeti hosts the largest terrestrial mammal migration in the world, which helps secure it as one of the 7 Natural Wonders of Africa.

We did heaps of game drives across the 15,000 sq kilometres of the Serengeti, home to over 3 million animals, particularly lions!. 

Lions languishing,draped over tree branches in the heat of the day, zebras enjoying a dip in the pool, hippos fighting, giraffes grazing at leafy tree tops, watching a male feeding on a hartebeest that had been caught for his lunch by the females in his pride, a lion cub mewing for his mother. A herd of about 12 elephants chasing a pride of lions away from a drinking hole to which they wanted access!

 

 

 

We had warm days with clear blue skies. Magic!