Safari Day Five

Breakfast of fruit, pancakes, fresh juice, toast and coffee. Cooked food also available, but the idea of a big cooked breakfast is not so appealing when you know the day consists of being shoogled non stop for several hours.

We saw a young Asian couple at breakfast at the tented hotel, and they were tucking in to everything, including the quiche laid out for help-yourself lunches. Later in the morning we saw a parked 4WD, with an open door. A very unusual sight in a National Park!! And the girl was being sick. Lesson learned, methinks.

Today we went down into the Ngorongoro Crater. What a drive! Right round the rim and then down on to the grasslands. We had hoped to see rhinoceros. They are very rare, of course, but we did see two. Well, I think we did. Marco assured us they were, but they looked suspiciously like big rocks.

We saw loads of ostriches, wildebeest, zebras, elephants, Cape Buffalo, birds of prey, millions of flamingos, hyenas, Thomson's gazelles with lots of male/female high speed chases going on. At the picnic site there were hippos in the big pond, and black kites swooping around overhead.

Yesterday Marco had told us of some clients he had and they did not heed his warnings of eating their lunch in the vehicle. The woman was about to eat a sandwich, when suddenly several kites dropped out of the sky and grabbed it. Unfortunately they also grabbed part of her mouth.

We ate in the jeep.

But we saw plenty of folk sitting out having their lunch. I was watching one kite, and it suddenly swooped and grabbed a man's lunch. He was lucky it was only his chicken drumstick it grabbed!

There was a posh group next to us, with two men in uniform setting up a table, chairs, lots of silver covered dishes, properly cutlery, wine... in thirty degree heat in the middle of the day??

I had high hopes of a kite swoop, so I sat in our vehicle, camera at the ready on my knee, and waited. Sure enough, a kite took several low swoops down, but decided not to. Would have been a great shot!

The small birds here are glorious. We had a bright yellow weaver in the jeep with us.

Highlights today were watching a mother warthog slap around in absolute bliss in a mud pool right by the track, while her two babies ran away a bit and waited for her; seeing a lone serval cat walking along right by the road. Like a small leopard, and unusual as they're nocturnal. I didn't get a photo... Horror of horrors, my camera refused to function!!! I think dust must have got into it. You can't avoid it. Even if you shut the windows when another 4WD passes the roof is open all day.

I had a very miserable drive back, wondering if there was a Canon shop in Arusha.
However, back at our luxury hotel, I've used my puffer in all the crevices, and it seems to be all right... Fingers crossed.

Last day tomorrow. :-(