Serengeti and Beyond

Tanzania has some of the finest wildlife parks in the world. We headed right to the most famous and perhaps the finest national park in Africa, the Serengeti. This huge park is the site of the mass migration of wildebeest, zebra, and gazelles. We entered thru the western corridor after driving from the Rwandan border.

We were treated to close ups of lions, and lots of ‘cat food’ as I call the herds of impala and other antelope. I saw almost no other cars in the west and north or the park. All the tourist are concentrated in the middle where all the popular lodges are. But this time of year the migration has taken the mass herds up across the Kenyan border into the Masaai Mara National Park and they have just started their southern track back thru the Serengeti. We caught a glimpse of this spectacle as we drove far north into the park where our campsite was. We were surrounded by buffalo, gazelles, roaring lions, baboons, and thousands of wildebeest and zebras at our campsite.

The terrain of the park ranges from permanent rivers filled with hippos and crocodiles, forested hills, vast plains, and kopchis, which are groups of giant boulders that dot the plains. (think pride rock from lion king.) We found the majority of the migrating herds in the northern forested hills. After looking hard we were also treated with sighting of nile monitors, hyenas eating a fresh kill, tawny eagles, leopard and a hinged-back tortoises, rock hyrax and dwarf mongoose, and a leopard that had hauled a bush buck kill up into the tree to keep it away from hyenas and lions.

Once we hit the southern plains that fill up with the migration starting in Feb. I notice that they were almost completely devoid of wildlife. The grass was brownish yellow for as far as the eye can see. Every once in a while a kopchi would rise out of the grass, or an ostrich would run by. A few herds of elephant trudged from somewhere unseen. The landscape was beautiful in its own way as the hot wind blew through the grass which stretch to the horizon.

The main road leads out of the park directly into the Ngorogoro Crater Conservation Area. This land has been left in charge of the Masaai who herd their cows thru the plains, grazing the grass down to nothing. Overlooking the crater itself is pretty amazing. It is 9 miles across and is filled with animals.