Sleeping with the lions

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Trip Start Dec 17, 2010 Previous
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  Mto wa Mbu, Tanzania
Thursday, January 6, 2011

OK, so we've just spent the last two nights camping in Serengeti National Park, with game drives during the day to try to spot as many animals as possible, and wait for it, I FINALLY SAW SOME LEOPARDS - woo hoo!! Admittedly, they were really far away and we could only see them properly with binoculars, but we still saw them and two of them were baby leopard cubs which is a really rare sighting. We also saw another adult leopard up a tree with an impala it had recently killed. Hurrah!! I'd still like to see one up closer though, so hopefully I will at some point later in this trip, maybe when I'm at the cheetah reserve.

We also saw a couple of cheetahs from quite far away, but it was still cool to see them, I'm even more excited about going to the cheetah reserve next month now!!

And we saw LOADS of lions, including lots of cubs which was great as I didn't see any cubs when I was in Africa last time. We've seen loads of baby elephants too. Also all the usual stuff like giraffes, hyenas, zebras, impalas, numerous varieties of antelopes & gazelles, ostriches, wart hogs (Pumba) etc. I got a bee in my bonnet about seeing something really unusual like a meercat or an aardvark but no luck... at least I managed leopards and cheetahs!!

So we've been camping in an unfenced campsite in the middle of the park, so any animals could realistically walk through the camp in the middle of the night. We had a drill for if you have to go to the toilet. If you have to make a 'local call' (African speak for a wee) then you wake up your tent-mate, unzip your tent, survey the area with a torch, then once you know the coast is clear you go and pee behind your tent. If you have to make an 'international call' (self explanatory) then you have to wake up your tent-mate and have them go with you to the toilet block, so that you don't open the toilet door to come face to face with a lion/hyena/hippo. My tent-mate and I tried not to drink much in the evenings so we wouldn't have to go to the loo, but we did have to both pee behind the tent last night at about 3am. Apparently there were some hyenas in the camp but we didn't see any, phew!! Although it would have been quite cool to see them from a distance, just not close up when you're in mid-wee!

So it was quite an adventure and the Serengeti 'endless plain' and the Ngorongoro Crater are just amazing. I've got some photos but as per usual this computer doesn't seem to want to upload them. We didn't shower and wore the same clothes for 2 1/2 days which was a bit gross but also quite liberating to not have to worry about it. We were all in the same boat anyway. And when we got back to our camp here in town a load of us just jumped in the swimming pool to rinse off the grime, then had lovely long showers, so we're all clean now!

So tomorrow we are doing a local village walk in the morning, then driving to Marangu which is the base camp of Mt Kilimanjaro, hopefully if it's not too cloudy we will get a good view of the mountain. Then it's on to Dar Es Salam and then 3 nights in Zanzibar - hurrah!! I'm very much looking forward to chilling out on a beach for a few days.

Hope you're all well, will post another update soon!!!

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Leopard cubs

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