Well, after sorting through almost 6000 photos and videos, we've put together a shortlist, organized by the type of animal. Please feel free to view them, we're quite pleased with how they turned out!

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03/28/07 by bryan+elizabeth
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One of the memories of our trip is definitely going to be camping on the Ngorongoro Crater rim. Once again, animals woke us up during the night, and they were quite funny: first of all, we had cape buffalo feeding right next to our tent at night, waking us up with their munching (Elizabeth could feel the ground moving from the eating!); then in the early morning I heard a big commotion, which turned out to be bush pigs raiding the cooking area.

It was a gorgeous sunrise to start the day, which was a whole day just inside the Ngorongoro Crater. We dropped down into the crater, which was a switchback along a very bumpy road. After about 30 minutes or so, we were in!

Today was a great day, two things really surprised me: how relatively small the crater is to drive around; and the amazing variety within such a small area. There was a big lake, marshlands, arid desert, mountains along the edge, forest, trees, and some grassy plains. This tiny panoramic doesn't do it justice, but you can visit the full photo gallery for a larger version:

I'd say we saw almost the whole range of wildlife inside the crater, except for giraffe, cheetah and leopard. I'll start with the bird photos.

Kori Bustard

Pelican, Egrets and Sacred Ibis flying

Vultures

Early on, we spent a while following a male lion who at first seemed calm with our jeeps, but then slowly meandered away. A bit later, a lioness was just lounging in the shade of a jeep on one of the dirt roads, then eventually got up and passed right behind our jeep, where I got a good closeup of her face.

As we were moving between locations, we had some brief rains for a few minutes, but other than having to stop to raise/lower/raise the roof, it wasn't a big deal. This year had much more rain this early on than usual, so inside the crater it was muddier than usual, meaning the drivers had to negotiate some pretty fun sections:

After a brief stop for lunch (which involved Elizabeth being dive-bombed by birds for the pasta on her plate), we were largely left on our own, since it seemed that the other tour groups had given up after the short rain. Either that, or our guides were more courageous than the others and were going to more remote areas. Regardless, we went to a great zebra area, where they seemed much more used to jeeps and didn't run away when we slowed down or stopped. This gave way to some fun zebra pics.

As the afternoon was wrapping up, we saw a few black rhino in the *far* distance, and then had our elephant experience. There was a group of about 4 bull elephants, and one was clearly curious about us. He slowly came our way, casually eating the grass as he went, and just came closer and closer while the others remained further back. But at one point we could count almost 30 elephants both up close and along the horizon. We were the only two jeeps out there, the engines were off, and we just experienced the presence of the gentle giant.

We rounded up the day by driving out through a small rainforest section, where we saw some more baboons (and the other jeep saw monkeys), then wound our way up a very steep and *very* bumpy road. Tried taking photos and video, but after being thrown around had to stop. Here's my last photo from the Ngorongoro Crater, looking back down onto the winding road.

Sad to say, that was the end of our Ngorongoro Crater animal experience - well almost...

When we got back to the campsite, I took advantage of a shower, then we had dinner and hung around a campfire, chatting with our guides and learning about their experiences and training. As we're doing this, we saw pairs of eyes looking at us from the edge of the campsite - hyenas! This was so cool that a few of us went out with our flashlights and slowly walked towards them. They are very wary and would just slink out of sight, beyond the range of a camera flash; but very cool nonetheless.

And so ended our Serengeti adventure. We saw a lot, took tons of photos and videos and could have taken even more. This has been my lifelong dream, just to be in the Serengeti and experience these amazing animals in their natural environment. I'm sure I'll have many more thoughts to add over time, especially as I review the photos; but in the meantime, tomorrow we leave, a straight drive to Moshi and the Kilimanjaro Marathon - www.kilimanjaro.cn or www.kilimanjaro.in

Cheers!
Bryan

03/02/07 by bryan+elizabeth
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Right after lunch, the first thing we saw was a lone cheetah on the move. It stopped on a rock right in front of us, crossed in front of our jeep, then moved off towards the herds of wildebeest. It stayed perched on top of a rock, just surveying the vast herds in the background, and posing for our cameras.

As we moved on, just a few minutes later we came across a couple of cheetah brothers laying in the grass, again with massive herds behind them. This was just too cool!

We then circled back to the previous rock cropping with the lions, and the lioness was still there. There were cubs inside a lower cave with another lioness, but I couldn't quite spot them :-(

This time we arrived into the new campsite in late afternoon before it got dark, and we were able to erect our tent with only a small amount of help. The campground is right on the edge of the crater, close enough that you could look in and see different parts, but the trees and brush didn't allow for a completely unobstructed view. But, we had close views of the Marabou Stork, which are scavengers around the campgrounds.

After dinner and more downloading of photos to the laptop, it was another early night to bed.

03/01/07 by bryan+elizabeth
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Last night was a bit better of a sleep night as I became a bit more used to the sleeping bag and tent - and not nearly as noisy either!

Our goal for the day was to find lions and cheetah, with an end goal of transiting to the Ngorogoro Crater rim camp site

Today was much warmer (and sunnier) which led to good picture taking. It started out with some beautiful giraffe and gazelle in the morning.

We then went to the Serengeti museum, which is basically a walkthrough of the Serengeti's history, regions and funding. It's interesting that so much support comes from Germany, specifically the Frankfurt Zoological Society - here's a link for more information: http://www.zgf.de

The best part of the museum though were the small animals roaming the grounds, in particular the Slender Mongoose and Rock Hyrax - here they are!

When we were done, we were off on our lion hunt. Obviously, the guides know the common places the lions like to eat and rest, since we went straight to a shaded tree where we saw the male lion and lionesses. The male had obviously finished eating, while out of camera view the lioness was chewing on some fresh meat. We got lots of good photos, although there were an incredible amount of flies around, making the lions look quite annoyed at times.

Once we had had our fill of the lions resting and eating, we travelled through another amazing section with the migrating wildebeest herds, along with tons of zebras - couldn't resist taking a few more photos!

Just before lunch, we went to another likely lion common area, where we saw a lioness perched on top of rock, it was a great photo opp with the rock and blue sky in the background.

Then it was time for us to eat!

03/01/07 by bryan+elizabeth
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After lunch, our mission this afternoon was to visit the hippo pool. Along our way, we saw our first cape buffalo - here's a picture with a red-billed oxpecker on it's head.

It took about 45 minutes to an hour to finally get to the hippo pool, and it was nearing dusk, but was it every cool. This pool was packed with hippos, including one dead bloated one on the edge with crocodiles for company. They would each slowly surface and submerge, occasionally yawning and baring their teeth. Every 10 minutes or so they would come up as a group bellowing and grunting in a big display. We stayed for a solid hour, just enjoying the spectacle - at one point we watched a crocodile slowly drift down the river like a log.

It's really hard to capture the whole experience, but here are a few photos.

Right after we left the hippo pool, we saw a dikdik, which is like a little mini gazelle. It's about the size of a small dog, so cute.

Next we saw a crown crane, which is incredibly beautiful.

It was really getting quite dark, but our wildlife day wasn't quite over yet - first we saw a hyena lying on the side of road, and then the giraffes. Definitely a highlight of the trip so far, these 4 male masai giraffes would graze and then "neck", which is the way that males fight. They whip their huge necks around and hit each other on the neck - it's actually quite beautiful, as their necks move through the air they make great "whoosh" sounds, followed by a gentle "thud" as they make contact. It's all done in quasi-slow motion since they are so big and their necks so long! Fortunately, managed to get a few good shots:

That ended our wildlife viewing for the day - as soon as we got into camp (which had far fewer campers than the night before), the guides had set up a night shower (a canvas cover with canvas hot water bag and shower head) which we thoroughly enjoyed. Then eggplant dinner again and it was off to bed.

02/28/07 by bryan+elizabeth
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