Hello!
Time
to talk all about our amazing expedition to Serengeti National Park for a
week!!! This expedition was a day
shorter than the one that we took in Kenya before, but was filled with amazing
animal sightings and some really great experiences!
The
first day was again a full day of travel.
The entire trip takes a total of 7-8 hours with a few stops along the
way. We left bright and early, like
always, and I rushed to get a front seat in one of the cars so I could have
plenty of room for my legs and all of my things for the week! I got in a great car with a bunch of my
friends and our SAM, and we were off towards the park!
The
first stop on our way was pretty soon after we started. It was once again at the gate of the
Ngorongoro Conservation Area where we had been the week before! You must drive through the conservation area
to get to the Serengeti, so not only do they make tons of money from people
visiting the crater, but they make money on tourists and locals that are forced
to take that road to get where they are going!
It was a quick stop though, and before I knew it, we were climbing up
the side of the crater on the bumpy and extremely narrow roads. The drive to the next stop took about 2
hours, so I was thankful to curl up with my Maasai blanket and pillow and sleep
until then.
The
next stop was something that I had never expected to see in my life, but was so
happy when we found out that’s where we were headed. The place that was stopped was Olduvai Gorge,
the “Cradle of man”. It is where the
oldest humanoid remains were found by Mary and Louis Leakey. There have been remains found of homo erectus
and foot prints preserved alongside ancient mammals that resemble the ones that
we have today. We had a lecture by one
of the local guides telling us about all of the amazing skulls and bones they
have found in the area and how many more they are expecting to find! They have archeologists coming from all over
the world to excavate and hopefully fill in more pieces to the puzzle. We learned a lot about the Leakeys and they
were seriously incredible. They picked
up everything and moved to Tanzania with their pet Dalmatians and lived here
almost their entire lives! They
dedicated over 50 years to excavating the area and finding what can be
considered one of the most amazing archeological finds in history. We got to see old pictures of the two of
them, and Mary is officially my role model.
Every picture of her is her doing something that was not usually
acceptable for women to do in that time.
Every picture, she has a cigarette hanging out of her mouth and tackling
some wild animal or covered in more dirt than the actual bones she was
finding. It was insane to learn about
these dedicated people and know we were in an area that man has been walking
for millions and millions of years. What
an incredible and extremely unexpected experience.
After
our lecture, walking through the museum, and buying a few bracelets along the
way, we hit the roads again to finally get to Serengeti! The roads to the gate were terrible
though. They have purposefully not paved
them to reduce the traffic in the park and to reduce the amount of animals that
are killed in car accidents, so I guess the bumpy dirts roads are worth
it. It was a fine ride, until suddenly,
I was leaning on my door, falling asleep, and the door unlatched and flew
open!!! Thank goodness I was wearing my
seatbelt and nothing was too close to the door besides my head. I kinda screamed and was shocked when I could
see the ground flying by underneath me, but I was able to get it latched and
locked as we continued flying down the dirt road. Other than that it was a smooth trip haha.
When
we arrived at the Serengeti gate, we had to stop while they checked us in and
found what campsite we would be staying at.
I got some fresh made popcorn and a soda for the rest of the ride.
Serengeti is the largest National Park that we have gone to so far, so even
when we got through the gate, we would still have a 3 hour drive before
arriving at the campsite. Lucky, we were
allowed to pop the hatches up as soon as we got in the park and do a game drive
all the way to the camp site. At that point, I think I had wasted all my energy
being excited to get there the entire day, and I passed out for a good
hour. When I finally woke up, we had
stopped because one of the cars had spotted a cheetah really far in the
distance! I was excited that we were already seeing a cheetah, but it was
really too far to see, so we had to keep moving. Not far from that siting, we saw a bunch of
lions right next to a big water hole.
There were two littler lions and three big ones, including a male. They were doing what lions do best, aka sleeping,
so we watched them for around 20 minutes as they rolled around on their backs
into one another, and then once again had to get to camp to set up tents before
it got dark out!
When
we finally arrived to camp, it was around 5 pm and we immediately got to work
putting up our tents. This campsite was
so different than where we had stayed on our last expedition. There was no fence around us at all, meaning
any wild animals are able to come right into our camp with us. After 6pm, we have to be accompanied by an
armed guard to go to the kitchen or bathroom because of all the wildlife. The other thing that was different was these
little devil insects called tsetse flies.
They are these evil biting flies that take out big chunks of skin, hurt
like heck, leave gross bumps, and can spread scary diseases like African
Sleeping Sickness! And they love the
colors blue and green, aka my entire wardrobe that I brought to the
Serengeti. It was quite funny actually
to watch everyone running around away from these flies trying to set up their
tents, but as soon as I got bit once, I realized why they were running…
After
all our tents were set up in a row, we had dinner around the campfire sitting
in our crazy creek chairs and told campfire stories and hung out after such a
long day of travel. We all had to be in
our tents by 10 because of the wildlife, but some of us were in there before
then even! I had three other tent mates
this time including Maggie S., Erin, and Paige and I was happy with that! That night, I was suddenly woken up at 3 am
by a dragging and scratching noise outside my tent. I knew better than to get up and check what
it was our leave my tent, so I just put on my headphones and hoped for the
best! The next morning, we found out
that a few hyenas had come into our camp and stolen our compost bin and dragged
it through camp! Its so crazy to think
that hyenas were right on the other side of my tent, but I knew our two guards
would take care of us!
The
next day we had a normal morning of breakfast, which is surprisingly amazing
with a small kitchen with not a lot of resources, and packing up for the
day! We were all a little intimidated by
the day that was ahead of us because we were leaving for a game drive at 8am
and were not coming back to camp until 6pm!!!
I was so excited to be in the Serengeti doing this game drive, but it
was destined to be a long day no matter what.
We had three assignments that we were in charge of completed while we
were out that day. The first, which I
was happy about, was a giraffe behavior exercise. Everytime we came across a giraffe or a group
of them, we had to observe their baheavior for 30 minutes, including what they
were eating, how long they did each activity, and then we got to name all of
them to keep track of all the different giraffes. THe other exercise was almost identical to
the giraffes, accept with elephants instead.
I wasn’t too upset about these exercises since those two are probably my
favorite animals to see! The last
exercise was a birding exercise, which at first, I was not excited about. The Serengeti has over 300 bird species, so
trying to identify all of the birds we saw was not my idea of fun. I knew we would all make the best of it
though!
Probably
the most amazing feature of Serengeti National Park is the open
grasslands. I know it sounds like a typical description, but it literally
looks like a giant ocean! It goes on for
ever and ever and when the wind blows across it, it moves in waves. It is sometimes as tall as the windows on the
car and you can easily lose yourself just staring at it and the way it moves as
the car passes it! I have never seen so
much open space with gorgeous healthy grass going on for miles and miles. It was amazing! However, the chance of you seeing an animal
in this kind of grass was nearly impossible, so it was definitely a trade off. In the morning, we literally saw nothing the
entire time. We drove and drove and
didn’t even see any giraffes or elephants.
Surprisingly, I LOVED birding! We
had this giant checklist with all the names of birds and our guide books, and
everytime we would see a bird, we would stop and have to try and work together
to identify it and then check it off the list.
It was literally a giant ISpy game and so fun to work with everyone in
the car to try and figure it out. It was
frustrating some times, but overall was surprisingly fun!
After
driving for around 4 hours, we stopped at this place called Maasai Rock. It was a picnic spot that was lofted up on a
rock that overlooked a huge part of the Serengeti! It was boulders stacked on boulders and we were
able to find some nice shade to have our lunches in! We scarfed down out PB and J’s and then went
exploring on the top of the rock. I
found hundreds of lizards and bats in the dark areas and even a skull of an
antelope that a hyena had chewed on! There
were some Maasai paintings at the top as well! The best part of the rock
besides the view was this amazing rock that when you hit it with another stone,
it makes a hollow noise that changes tone where you hit it on the rock! You could literally play an entire song on
this rock and we all had our turn making songs on the Maasai rock. We finally had to climb back into the cars
and head off for more exercises, but it was a nice stop!
For
the rest of the day, we drove and drove and did not see much. I even fell asleep for a an hour because
there was nothing to look at! At one
point, we saw two lions, which we nicknamed Mary Kate and Ashley, but other
than that, we started to head back to our camp.
We were all sort of bummed that we were almost back, and hadn’t seen a
lot, but I still had faith. As we were
driving back through the woodland to camp, all of a sudden, the tsetse flies
went nuts!!! In a matter of a few
seconds, the entire car was filled with them and they were all over us biting
every inch of skin possible! It was so
scary, but also the most hilarious thing I have ever seen. Our professor and driver in the front seat
were swatting and climbing out of the cars and yelling like little girls. I was laughing so hard that I could barely
swat the ones off of my own legs, which turned out to be a bad decision later
on. When we made it back to camp, we
were over an hour early than when we needed to be back so we begged our driver
to take us out a little bit longer.
We
were excited to see a lion right after we left camp! It was a momma with 4 baby cubs that we
estimated had only been born a month before!!! One of the little babies was
stuck in a tree and squealing for its mom!
We watched and watched as the mom walked away, and finally the baby made
the leap of faith into the ocean of grassland!
I was laughing once again when I heard all of us cheering for the baby
lion leaping from a shrub haha. These
are my kind of people. The final thing
that we saw before going back to camp was a dead hippo that was not there when
we had driven in that same area that morning!
It was belly up in one of the hippo pools, and we were shocked when we
realized what it was.
Thanks
for reading! I hope everyone is having a
great time kicking off spring time!
Love,
Mollie
Ann
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