Days 5 and 6: Game Drives, Watering Holes, and Third World Border Crossings

Our first day in the Serengeti was spent on a morning game drive, with free time in the afternoon.  On the game drive in the morning, we didn’t see much.  A few zebras, giraffe and elephants.  We then turned the corner and came upon the ‘Hippo Viewing Loop’.  We stopped at the edge of the river bank to take pictures of the hippos, and we were amazed at the sheer number of them.  There were probably one hundred hippos packed into a very small section of the river.  While we were watching, a male hippo from another school tried to approach the school we were taking pictures of and mate with one of the females.  Of course the dominant male was having none of that, and a hippo fight ensued.  The males would face off and run at each other with their mouths open (and they have huge teeth).  At one point the encroaching male tried to sneak around the side of the dominant male, but he was chased off.  It was really interesting that the hippos could move very quickly in the water.  We watched the hippos for about an hour, and when we left, the fight still had not been solved.  Later we learned that hippos will often fight to the death over control of the hippo harem.  We were ready to call it a day when our driver got a call over the radio “Leopard”.  So we raced all the other safari jeeps in the entire park to the tree where the leopard had been spotted.  In the end, there were three leopards in three trees within about one hundred meters.  When we finally got back to the hotel, we looked out at the watering hole that borders the pool, and it was teeming with life.  There were elephants, zebras, baboons, and antelope all coming for a drink and a play in the water.  The elephants were even swimming around in the water.  Later that evening, the elephants came back for another drink.  There were probably 30 elephants drinking from the watering hole.  It was fantastic.  The next day was a travel day from Tanzania into Kenya, we flew back to Arusha in a 25 seater propeller plane, then took a bus to the Kenyan/Tanzanian Boarder.  Both countries are third world countries, and the boarder crossing was crazy.  There were men standing with big guns, and it was chaos everywhere.  I mistakenly started bargaining with a hawker on the Tanzanian side of the boarder, and he tracked me over to the Kenyan side where we finally made a deal.  Kenya is better developed than Tanzania, and their roads are significantly better.

Day 4: School Visit and Descent into the Serengeti

We started the day with a early morning visit to a Masai primary school.  This school is for grades 1-7, and has approximately 600 students enrolled.  The classrooms were unadorned, not insulated, and there was neither heat or air conditioning (there was no electricity or running water either).  The students sat four to a bench at desks and looked like they were freezing.  After singing their school song for us and listening to a presentation given by the principal of the school, we got a chance to interact with the kids.  They loved taking pictures with us, and wanted to take pictures themselves.  We managed to get around the huge language barrier and had a grand old time making silly faces at the camera while the students took our pictures.  

After the school visit, we went on another game drive where we saw lots of lions and elephants!