Leaving Ndutu we headed to my favourite place in Tanzania, the Serengeti with its magnificent kopjes. We camp in a remote location and do our safaris in areas where hardly any other vehicle goes. It’s just amazing driving through one of the most stunning African landscapes with wildlife everywhere and no other vehicle in sight. On our first evening, two male Lions on a kopje.
Having explored the kopjes nearer our camp and after finding the two male Lions from the previous evening again, we ventured further on to other kopjes. We came across a mother Cheetah with her adolescent cub just as a massive downpour broke out out on the plains. They tried to hunt a herd of Grant’s Gazelle but were not successful. The sky was dangerously dark all over the Serengeti.
The following day we moved to another camp in a remote location, closer to a different set of kopjes. The drive through the plains at sunrise was wrapped in a magnificent layer of mist and it was beautiful to find vast herds of Wildebeests invading the savannah, like ghosts in the mist.
The abundant rainfall of the season had filled the seasonal rivers and valleys in ways I had never seen before. Reaching camp involved a very long drive as the crossing site normally used was completely unaccessible. We had some great encounters with a Lioness on a beautiful rocky outcrop. Photography here is a real explosion of creativity as you have plenty of choices on where and how to frame your pictures. A posing Lioness is a perfect subject.
We dedicated our last full day in the Serengeti to a special rocky outcrop that a female Leopard made a home for her two tiny cubs. We found her sleeping on a Rock Fig Tree on top of the kopje.
She descended in the shade of a tree and laid high up on the top of the rock. Her cubs finally joined her to nurse and greet her.
As the day got warm she eventually decided to take her two cubs for a walk around the rock. We were just alone and had a magnificent one hour of intimacy with this magnificent creature. The cubs were born on the rock and she was taking them out to get used to walking in the open, to follow her around. A truly unforgettable day in her company.
On our last morning while heading to the airstrip I accompanied one of my guests to catch an early flight out of the Serengeti while the rest of the group did a short game drives. They were blessed with a sighting of the rarest of the rare, the Black Serval! Melanistic Servals are occasionally found in forests and woodlands, more rarely in savannah habitat, as their coloring makes them more obvious to prey and predators. However, this male is doing very well in this part of the Serengeti, and it was the perfect icing on the cake for our guests. Photo courtesy of Moira Norrie.
