Serengeti National Park II.

Back on Game Drives

After the ballooning and the breakfast, we spent the rest of the morning out on a game drive. We were by ourselves, since the other three trucks had gone off together early in the morning.

Shortly after we set out, we came across this lioness and cub. The cub was a little suspicious of the lineup of trucks passing it along the road, so it stuck close to mom. She is tagged with a radio collar.

These elephants were winding their way along the river. Apparently, the other group were charged by a bull elephant earlier this morning, but these elephants seemed quite calm. We were quite far away though and they took no notice of us.

This was one of the coolest things I had the chance to see on the trip. We wathed this lioness hunt a herd of zebra for about half an hour. She crept trough the grass and we would see her head every five minutes or so. Finally, she ran out of cover and had to take a shot. Here, she lunges after the herd, who are on the move. They only ran about 20-30 m away and when we left, she was taking up the hunt again.

I had to include at least one shot of these lovely birds. They are huge, with wing spans up to 6 feet!

We headed back to the campsite for lunch and to pack up our things. While we were loading up the tents, a troupe of baboons moved in, looking for remains of the lunch. The largest male made off with a whole loaf of sliced bread. He held the ends closely so that none of the middle slices would be lost!

Here is the largest male with several other baboons in the shot. Initially, they were easily shooed away when we took runs at them, but they were getting nervy enough to make me nervous by the time that we left.

Lioness not too happy that we are hanging about her three cubs. The next one was a bit more relaxed.

On our way back out the park, we encountered the same male and female lion we had seen the day before. They were resting under the tree again. Here the female shows off the fangs! The male is the dark patch of fluff in the bush.

Here is one of the cutest pictures I got. I think that these cubs belong to the female in the picture above. They were resting very close together and the only other female around had three different cubs with her.

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