Game Driving in Tanzania

Well, we finally got through all of our game drive photos from Tanzania and posted the best ones in our Game Drives – Part 1 and Game Drives – Part 2 photo albums. We took something like 500+ photos in only three days of driving around the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater national parks in Tanzania, but we still feel a little bad that the best-of albums are so big. We were lucky enough to see a ton of animals, though, so we felt like we had to share at least one or two photos of each of them. :)

We spent three days after our Kili climb with our fabulous driver and guide Gabriel cruising around looking for wildlife in Tanzania. We weren’t entirely sure what a “game drive” was really going to be like, but our days went something like this: get up and eat breakfast; pile into our four wheel drive Land Cruiser, complete with removable top panels; drive around on incredibly bumpy, rutted, dusty, unmarked dirt roads (how Gabriel ever got us back to our lodge, we’ll never know) trying to spot wild animals which are pretty much designed to be un-spottable; upon finding said un-spottable animals, proceed to take approximately 200 photos of the animals in their natural surroundings, doing their natural things like sitting around, yawning, grooming each other, and occasionally eating each other; then after noticing 37 other Land Cruisers congregated in one spot across the plains, race over to see what the hubbub is all about, and then jockey for position to take the best photo (ever) of a single hyena sleeping in the grass.

In all seriousness, though, we had a blast on our game drive days. Our first day took us around (but not into) the Ngorongoro Crater on our way to the Serengeti National Park. We saw tons of animals along the way, and we spent one more day in the Serengeti looking for game, taking photos, and trying to soak up the sights and sounds (and smells!) of the Serengeti plains. We couldn’t believe how many different animals we saw out there, and so many of them up close and personal!

Our final game drive day was down in the Ngorongoro Crater, which is an amazing expanse of land and water that covers more than 100 square miles and sits at about 5,500 ft above sea level. There are a few species of animals that migrate into and out of the crater, but most of the animals live their entire lives down on the crater floor hunting (if they’re lucky) or being hunted (if not so lucky).

We managed to see just about all of the popular animals in our three days of game driving, except one: the black rhinoceros. Our best chance was in the Ngorongoro Crater, but there are only 24 rhinos living in the crater, and I guess they didn’t feel like coming out to play while we were there. We’ll just have to come back someday and take another crack at spotting one.

We’ll let the photo captions tell the rest of the story. Hope you enjoy them!

Comments

[Nancy]

I haven't even looked at the photos yet but I am remembering and thinking about the 15 boxes of slide trays we have tucked away of our trip to the same places. Oh my how easy it is to store photos now and oh my! what am I going to do with all those slides and slide trays??? As I remember there is something like 40 or 50 shots of a cheetah racing in for the kill....

[Bill]

Amazing pictures! How was the wifi connection?