Aug27

Western Serengeti

Sunday, August 27

This large male lion was lounging by the side of the road not far from the lactating lioness. What a life...

We left the Serena Lodge around 9:30 and headed toward the western part of Serengeti park where we'd spend the next two days. Along the way, we stopped by an almost dry river to watch some elephants digging for water. A little baby elephant was very cute, but was getting pushed around by the larger adults. I'm not sure how it avoided being injured.

Colobus monkeys were jumping back and forth between the trees above the elephants but I never got a clear shot to photograph them.

Nearby we found a lioness getting a drink. She was clearly lactating so we had high hopes that we'd find some lion cubs. We watched her and listened for meowing for a while but had no luck. Across the road we spotted a large male lion lying under a tree. We drove over and took several pictures as he rolled over.

We headed to Kirawira Tented Camp to check in and for lunch. Of all the places we stayed, this was my favorite. It wasn't quite as luxurious as Crater Lodge, but had excellent food (a little more to my taste than Crater Lodge), had a nice pool, and was closer to the game viewing. It was also easier to have a conversation with other guests.

After lunch and a swim, I went out on another game viewing drive. I was the only one of our group that wanted to go out - everyone else just wanted to relax, but I wanted to try to find the lion cubs. We drove back down to the river which was more mud than water. This part of Tanzania was having a serious drought and animals were starting to die from lack of water. The zebra in this picture managed to escape the mud (it was gone the next day), but many were not so lucky.

We also saw the cutest little baby giraffe. It still had its umbilical cord and was probably no more than a couple days old. When they are this young, they are significantly lighter than the adults, but are already fairly agile. This one was a little spooked by our vehicle and took off running after we stopped for a couple minutes.

We didn't find the lioness or lion cubs, but we did find a beautiful bird which I believe is called a ruby-breasted gonoleck. It moved around through the shrubbery near the river bed. It was fairly late in the afternoon when we saw this bird, so I had to use a flash in order to get enough light.

On the way back to the lodge, the sun was coming down and creating a beautiful sunset. We found a spot to take a photo where the sun came down behind an acacia tree to create a beautiful silhouette. The bird was flying overhead, but I did a little photo editing to move him to a better position in the photo.