A CATalyst for Fun

Day 13 - True Date 6/18/13

The plan for the day was to meet at 7:00 for breakfast. While that plan would only require us to awaken at about a quarter of 7, the local wildlife had other intentions for us. As the sun began to rise just before 6, the roosters (of which there were apparently many) began their infernal clucking. Much more interestingly, the trees over our tents were home to a number of Stork nests. They were remarkably noisy but also funny to watch. Due to their size they seemed very awkward in the trees and always seemed like they might fall or break the branches. We then did meet for breakfast as planned and were served fruit, eggs, pancakes, etc. It was very reminiscent of the mountain climb and we were on the road by 8.

From there we began the long drive farther south through the Ngorongoro

 Savanna and the Serengeti. Serengeti means "endless plain" in the Masai language. At the entrance gate to the Ngorongoro we met another troop of Savanna Baboons. This group was extremely friendly and we were able to walk within only feet of the animals. This was very cute as there were a couple of mothers, each with an infant in their laps nursing. From the gate we continued onward for over an hour, passing through clouds, fog and into clear skies again with the local Masai herding their cows.

At last the day's safari segment was able to begin. The major goal of the day was to find the large cats: lions, leopards and cheetahs (though not tigers because they do not live in Africa...). We witnessed many repeat animals from yesterday as we "hunted". We saw dozens of herds of zebra as well as numerous small herds of gazelle. We also saw many groups of both giraffes and elephants. These

groups all behaved much the way they had yesterday. The giraffes seemed to coordinate their staring at us and the elephants just grazed as they passed us by. The largest single difference to yesterday was when we approached a lone elephant, very close, and as we left it took a few steps as if considering a charge (luckily he stopped at potentially considering).

The day also had many new animal sightings. We approached a lake that was completely dotted with flamingos. They were unfortunately not densely packed enough to turn the entire lake pink but there were far

too many to attempt to count. Salt banks that lined the shore prevented us from driving very close to the water. We also had another hippo encounter. This time we were slightly closer to the creatures and the hippos were clearly resting in a pond as opposed to what I can only suspect was mud.

What was, in my opinion, the most exciting spotting of the morning was when we

found a flock of ostrich. At first they were just meandering about, I suppose grazing. However, after a while of watching Ayubu floored the jeep and approached next to the flock at high speeds. As a result the entire flock started running off at full speed. They ran for a while next to the jeep and one clearly ran ahead while another clearly fell behind. You couldn't help but consider the result had we been a predator. Watching the birds run reminds me of the comparisons between the birds and velociraptors that are made in the movie (or book) Jurassic Park.

This leaves us with what was the entire day's clear highlight. Near the end of our travels, in fact as we were headed to the night's new campsite, we found and passed a couple of prides of lions! The first we found we believed to be a solo lioness in the distance. When we drove closer we discovered that the cat was feasting on a dead water buffalo. We watched it for a while, which might have been a bit gross and also did not smell great, and it was really cool. As

we circled the lion we ran across another two who were sleeping in the tall grass around the kill. We believed that these cats had already eaten their fill and were now napping - as so many cats like to do. Not too much further along the road we found another pride of lions though this one seemed to be a pride of all young lions. We were unfortunately unable to get as close to this group as we were to the other, but they seemed to just be resting rather than eating. It was fun to watch the ones we could roll over, or clean their peers etc. What was interesting was one lion clearly had a collar which we found out was the doing of a local research center.

We arrived at our camp a bit later than expected due to the cat sightings (co complaints) and got in just after 5. While storks were an abundant wildlife at our previous campsite this site was home to a huge colony of mongoose. For reference... I spent a long time debating what the plural of mongoose is and upon research have learned that it is "mongooses" but mongeese and mongoose have

both also been considered acceptable terms. They were really cute and made pretty entertaining squeaking noises, but I strongly suspect they are quite nasty if they need to be. At dinner we were served the delicious and long hoped for pumpkin soup that we'd had on the mountain. It was everything we'd remembered it to be. That was followed by a mutton curry and rice which I greatly enjoyed. From there it was off to bed for a morning that would likely be our second earliest of all our time in Africa.