First afternoon in the Serengeti

If getting there was easy everyone would be doing it right? Of course! You have to go through what feels like being a large rat that squeezes him/herself through a very small hole! It takes a while to recover. We did and had to rather quickly. Our guide, Amani, through Ranger Safaris picked us up at an airstrip that was in the middle of nowhere Serengeti/Seronera. He was fresh and happy and raring to show us one of the most spectacular things on earth. Well, we were not as fresh, but were very excited, so off we went. What we should have told him was, we are really tired and would like to take a quick spin through and start heading toward our camp. OOPS! We had no idea that he drove directly opposite our camp from the air(dirt) field and off we went into the wild blue yonder with one eye open! He could not have made a better choice. We saw elephants, hippos, cape buffaloes, giraffe, impalas, gazelles, crocs, eagles, all kinds of spectacular birds and for those of you who are "birders", the lilac breasted roller is still one of our very favorite birds. Nicky took another great picture this year of a female. He said "the girls just aren't as pretty." He is right. They aren't. We saw what many people never see, leopards. One beautiful leopard just laying in a tree and then she got spooked or saw a "treat" and decided to climb down. What a sight that was. Her beautiful coat rolling over her very well developed muscles. You have a sense of real appreciation for a leopards space when you see how long, lean, mean and muscular they are. Why would anyone want to kill such a majestic creature, unless of course they were about to pounce on you or your baby!! Nevertheless, they are worth the trip to see in the wild. As are, as much as I am surprised to say it are the elephants. We saw many elephants families and one "trumpeted" when the leopard started down that tree, that was like being in an episode of Wild Kingdom! The largest elephants were waiting for us on day two, but these were up close and curious, breaking off branches of trees right beside us. Of course, Amani told us that the bull elephant that was staring us down at one point was not showing signs of charging! That made us all fell really much safer, almost where you could just relax and stop white knuckling the seat! The bull elephant did not charge us, Amani was absolutely correct and should have some sort of honory degree from the elephant body language college, as he always knew when an elephant was happy or not, thank goodness! After about 3 hours, we asked Amani how much longer it would be until we got to our camp, the answer, one more hour. That wasn't the best news but worse than that, picture this...One large green Land Rover plenty large enough for 9 people with only 5 in it, with a top that pops open about 18 inches to 2 feet so you can stand up in the vehicle and look around and take pictures. Our Land Rover was clipping along the dirt road and all of a sudden Amani slowed to a stop and said that he would not be able to slow down or really stop to look at any animals for the last 20 minutes or so of our ride to the camp because we were about to get into Tse Tse fly infested area! Not good. I don't know if I have ever seen a Tse Tse fly before, but I know that nobody in this group wants to ever again! Only armed with regular Americano bug spray and some pamphlets I had in my "lifebag", we drove into the swarms. Swarms is not an overstatement, sadly. They are awful. Worse than awful. If you get bitten, don't scratch it, it makes it worse. They like females better than males I guess because the boys did not get bitten, only Kathleen and me! Looking at the photos now, you can understand the need for the mosquito netting over the beds. It does make you feel like a princess, but it also keeps those flies away! There are research teams in that part of the Serengeti now developing ways to lessen the flies. One way is cutting down the trees nearest the roads and they found out that flies are attracted to dark blue and black colors. They have dark navy and black flags in the trees. I guess they are helping. Seems the Tse Tse flies are more prevalent in this part of Africa than any other place. The camp, Mbuzi Mawe, was lovely. The photos of our tented room give you some idea that we were not roughing it. The funny photo of the Saran Wrap tote is because the airlines wraps your bag like this probably to keep anyone from going through your bag after it has been through security. Not a bad plan but we did not have scissors...getting into the bag was a bit difficult. We had a nice dinner and then were escorted back to our tents with "security". Security from any animals that is. We did not have phones but they gave us whistles in case we had any kind of emergency! We made it through the night without blowing the whistle and were ready for day two!