The final three days of lions, leopards & cheetahs, o my!

Plus, the Serengeti says goodbye & hurry back

Hello ~ I’m Scott and welcome to your 5-minute vacation for May 7th. I share these snippets of our travels in the hope that my photos and stories will allow you to go on a vicarious vacation and “get away from it all,” if only for a moment. I appreciate you inviting me into your inbox today.

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For the final three days of this adventure, the rest of the group went to the beach while we stayed in the Serengeti, eager to see every last lion, leopard, cheetah, zebra, secretary bird, etc. (you get the idea) that we could.

Our final lodge was Mbuzi Mawe, a tented safari camp. When I say “tented,” perhaps you’re imagining something like a pup tent or maybe a larger tent that you used when your parents made you go camping. This tent was not like that.

I think this is more of a “big dog” tent than a “pup” tent.

This big dog tent had tile-covered concrete floors, electricity and a spacious en-suite. If the tents we had used when I was young were more like this, perhaps I would’ve done more camping.

But we didn’t come to hang out in the tent, no matter how comfy. We came for the game drives. Once again, luck remained with us.

After limbering up, we watched this cheetah and its partner successfully hunt a juvenile gazelle.

According to our driver, cheetahs devour their kill immediately because they aren’t very good at protecting the spoils from other predators or scavengers. This is in contrast to leopards who take their kill up into an acacia tree to avoid other predators and scavengers. Speaking of leopards in a tree…

We chanced upon two leopards in one tree. A younger leopard was trying to poach an older leopard’s kill and the older leopard was having none of that. After a brief tussle of snarls and leaves flying every which way, the older leopard was victorious. He celebrated by napping next to his trophy. The younger one skulked to the other side of the tree and settled in for a nap. We hung around for over an hour just watching them pant and sleep.

In the above photo, the victorious older leopard is barely visible with his kill in the upper right corner. The defeated younger leopard is clearly unhappy with the outcome.

Continuing with the tree theme: we found a lioness napping in a tree, her pride almost invisible beneath her in the grass shaded by the tree. When one of the young males tried to share her comfy spot, a couple no-nonsense snarls convinced the youngster to look elsewhere. The young male tried very hard to find another comfy spot in the tree but eventually gave up and joined the rest of the pride in the shaded grass. We spent over an hour just watching them.

Our driver told us that the lioness wasn’t willing to share because her spot caught what little breeze there was, both cooling her and helping keep the flies away.

Other animals had other techniques for keeping cool.

For instance, this hyena found a comfy mud hole.

These hippos found a lovely, rancid pond to lounge and tussle in.

While the bigger animals are attention grabbers, I think the other animals are just as interesting.

I love all the colors on this lilac-breasted roller.

Look at this jackal’s cool ears. I’ll bet she/he could hear me change my mind from 100 ft. away.

This beauty is a klipspringer, a.k.a. “mbuze mawe” in the local language. They are so numerous in this area that our safari lodge was named after them.

As Rosemary unzipped the tent flap on our final morning, she discovered this cape buffalo staring at her. Even from 50 feet away, a cape buffalo is intimidating, especially when the only thing between us and her/him was the tent flap. Assuming that we could get it zipped up in time, of course.

In reality, we weren’t in any danger. We were smart enough (and scared enough) to not approach the animal and it seemed to be genuinely surprised that we were there. After a quick think, the buffalo ~ our guides told us that cape buffalo aren’t the sharpest pencils in the box so that quick think lasted most of a minute ~  scampered off in the opposite direction.

Or perhaps this cape buffalo was just the Serengeti’s designated representative sent to wish us farewell and to hurry back.

After the cape buffalo left, we took our luggage to the land cruiser to begin our 25-hour voyage home. We were sad to leave but as we’ve been told, you have to say goodbye in order to come back.

Next time, I’ll complete this adventure with one last set of photos and a few random observations.

Until then ~

Tschüss!

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