Serengeti with Matt

  Amazing time.  I have never seen so many wildebeest (in my vast wealth of experience ;-)); they were everywhere – even walking around our tent grunting all night long.  We saw so many other amazing things; some of the highlights for me include the cheetah and seeing so many lions including a very pregnant mama and a cub feasting on a wildebeest.  The Sayari camp where we stayed was very high end – being greeted by name with warm washcloths as soon as we pull in from game drives, amazing food, and we even took breakfast out with us one morning so we could eat out ‘in the bush’.  Very cool.  Even the flight there and back was great – flying over Lake Manyara National Park and Ngorongoro Crater. They even had to clear the runway of wildebeest for us to land.  The only thing we didn’t see was a wildebeest river crossing.  Our last morning we sat by the river waiting and got to see thousands of wildebeest lining up along the banks (with a few zebra thrown in), but we had to leave for our flight and never got to see the exciting jumps into the water.  Good thing we’re heading back to the same area over the kids’ October break to try again.

Even after over a week on safari Matt still seemed to be confused by the wildebeest noises in the middle of the night and he kept thinking that it was his cell phone buzzing – in all fairness since we were right on the Kenya border he did get a welcome message from the Kenyan cell service provider, but when he kept telling me to check my phone I knew he was a little confused (it was turned off in my bag).  That did not help my plan to get a lot of sleep, but it was worth it, especially when our morning wake-up was fresh coffee brought to the tent with cookies. 

Landing strip at Kogatende

View of zebra and wildebeest from pool

Dining tent with our tent behind

Traffic Jam

     John (driver/guide) checking to see if it was safe to cross the river.  Check out the dead wildebeest on his right (didn’t smell too nice either)

 Although it may appear that he was '”happy” to see us, he really wasn’t.

Very pregnant lion. One of four lions that were walking away from the wildebeest kill pictured just below.

When we arrived here there were no vultures, but we watched them all swoop in as the lions retreated.  

Wildebeest as far as you can see.

Cheetah!

Marking territory (and you must need to be a cheetah to smell it; we checked) 

Cub feasting on a wildebeest

Isn’t he gorgeous?

View of cloud bank as we flew over Ngorongoro Crater on the way home.

 

Some more pictures:

And the kids all seemed to survive just fine without us; they may even have enjoyed it a little.  Looks like we might be able to sneak away again sometime.

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And finally, a HUGE welcome to my newest nephew, Michael Wilkinson.  Born Sept 10, weighing 6 lbs, 10 oz with a full head of blonde (??) hair. 

Congratulations Joanna and Mike!