2nd February - Day 2 Safari - Ngorogoro Crater/Serengeti National Park

This morning we woke to almost clear skies, a beautiful morning

We had breakfast early, packed up and went to meet up with James, who was waiting out front with the Land Rover ready to start.

We decended into the crater and were able to look up at the lodge perched on the crater rim that we'd stayed in the previous night.

I don't remember everything in order but I do remember that as we came down the crater edge, within minutes we saw 2 cheetas. Too far away for a decent picture but beautiful to watch through the binoculars. We would later get the treat of seeing them up really close in the serengeti.

A pack of hyenas

A Rhino, the first of 11 that we would see today. Apparently there are only 20 in total in the crater, so for us to see so many of these shy creatures was wonderful.

In the distance is a Rhino with her offspring. We couldn't get any closer for a picture but the view through the binoculars was great

Zooming in on the same picture

We saw lots of lions but got really close to some

Shame he didn't come a bit nearer but we would see males very close up later in the safari

Another lioness

Elephants were not evident in abundance but we found some

Buffalo, like the one that we found grazing outside our window in the middle of the previous night!

The sightings of wildebeest in the crater were nothing compared to the spectacle of the migration we would later see in the Serengeti.

After we'd seen just about eveything that we could see, we headed out of the crater for our journey to the Serengeti. We watched as the topography of the land changed dramatically from mountains and hills to just vast flat plains interupted only briefly by the odd mound of rock or hill. The roads were good at first but deteriorated to large stone tracks. It was a very bumpy ride with dust thrown up by every passing vehicle. James said it was uncomfortable whatever speed you did so he put his foot down. We saw giraffe and zebra along the way and small groups of wilderbeest to begin with.

We turned off the main track toward our tented camp at Ndutu and after a few hundred metres this little pride was just laying in the grass near the road enjoying the sunshine. Note the black items on the horizon of the grass are wilderbeest. They were fairly spread out here, but just wait!

As we proceed, the wildebeest get gradually denser and stretch right across the horizon as far as you can see. There is no way to adequately show this spectacle in photographs. 

Zooming in on part of the above picture

Later

We made our way to the tented camp at Ndutu whilst we continued to enjoy the jaw dropping spectacle of the wilderbeest. Ndutu is right on the border between the Serengeti and the Ngorogoro Conservation Area and we would be staying here for 3 nights. When we arrived, we found a nice open sided mess tent, a cooks/porters tent and 4 client tents. I forgot to take a picture of our tent but it was like the one below. As you opened the zipper at the front there was a double bed complete with bed linen and a further seperate compartment at the back was the toilet and shower. The camp porters asked if we'd like to shower and on agreeing they went off to heat the water. The tent had a plumbed fixed shower that was gravity fed by a large bag above the back of the tent. They would simply lower the bag, fill it with the hot water and hey presto! We had some coffee whilst the water was heating and watched some gazelle in the distance. The camp was surrounded by Africa's beautiful Acacia trees and we looked forward to waching the sunrise through the trees if it was fine in the morning.

We showered and changed, sorted our stuff out and went to dinner. We dined with our neighbours - 2 Belgian doctors, an American couple with their daughter and another American couple who were also doctors. As we dined together, just like on the mountain, we marvelled at how the cook could dish up such good 3 course meals in the middle of the bush, with some fairly primitive cooking facilities.

After dinner we all sat round the roaring campfire and watched the moon come up. The moon was still almost full, so it was huge and bright and all manner of birds started singing and calling.

We'd had a long day and we slept very well that night.