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Sunday, December 31, 2000It sprinkled about 20 minutes after we went to bed but it didn’t last long. Every time I woke up there were beautiful stars. The thing I miss about that is that you can’t go out in the open to look at the stars! You don’t go out of your tent without looking and should never go any further than the porch. I don’t think any of us have ventured out that far after we go to bed. I didn’t hear lion last night but heard hyena all night. Ben was telling us that you always want to allow plenty of time to get back to camp. You don’t want to be caught out in the plains at dark. You can’t see the landmasses on the horizon and you can lose your way. In this “endless” area that could be bad. I know you couldn’t see hyena holes etc while driving. We saw Kori Bustard in full feather this morning. We’ve seen hyena and jackal and are back in the Wildebeest today. The Hazels are good at imitating their sounds. Bud… why… all they think the beest are missing is the zer…. We were watching the Dung Beetle Derby today. Rusty I think has had that dream fulfilled. It has been interesting to watch Ephata make those finds. Now we are getting good at it. The last thing you think you’d notice with all we have to look at is a ball of dung! Richard’s Pippits were small birds I finally identified today. They fly off so fast and so far out in front of us that it was hard to know what they were. Fulvous Whistling Duck and of course the Egyptian Geese were plentiful. We are seeing lots of baby zebras and today saw two baby wildebeest. We think they are the first of the season. They are all that we’ve seen. The wildebeest all have their babies within a three-week period. That way they aren’t in the food chain over a long period of time. Only so many will be taken and the rest can grow. Pretty interesting how nature works! The herd literally does circle around the baby and protect it. Baby beests can run full speed within five minutes of birth. Pretty phenomenal! We stopped at one lone acacia tree by a small pond to watch some wildebeest migrating and the Sacred Ibis in the water. The treetop was FULL of tiny yellow birds… the weavers. Ruppell Griffin Vultures were around as well. I’m not sure I’m spelling some of these accurately without the book as a resource. We saw giraffe again, 2 bat eared foxes and another new kind of plover. We’re perched up on top of a Kopje right now where there is a nice overlook. The terrain has changed again. Yellow flowers and huge aloe are here. We can see cars on the road and one got stuck off road. Thirteen guys are out there trying to help get them out. It’s been nice to be able to get out of the car and walk around here and explore a little. We decided we liked the area so pulled out our box lunch. It was a great spot. The little Masai boy ran all the way up the hill to join us. He had been tending his herd. We shared our lunch with him. Sherry “broke” for a whiz here. It was a nice protected area and not much threat of more than a bug or snake being around behind you! Dickinson’s Kestrel was a new bird for today. We went back over to the Ngorongoro Conservation area today for a good part of our drive. We saw a couple of hares again. I see what they mean when a rabbit “freezes” to protect itself. They are so well camouflaged it is hard to spot them. As always, the hyenas are spotted. We watched a black heron eating an agama lizard at one of the Kopjes. We were able to spot several cheetahs. A mom with a young one, and then we spotted two that were loners later. We came upon two male lions and a female. Not far from them was the evening zebra kill which had been turned over to four hyenas and hundreds of vultures. We stayed quite a long time to watch the whole ordeal and it really is fascinating. When the hyenas back out then the vultures have “permission” to begin. That’s when the frenzy starts! The vultures make a bunch of racket and they pile up on one another four high. Some will be inside the carcass and I think it’s a major effort to get out. We watched one stagger around in the daylight covered in blood. He opened up his wings to dry out! This was one site you DIDN’T want to be down wind of. The sun was out and it got very warm. Ben waved off the vultures at one time and we could see how little of the carcass was left. We should have timed how long we were there. In only hours all that is left is a grease spot on the grass. The hyena and vultures make an excellent cleaning crew! No waste! All of a sudden we left and the guides took us on a WILD ride!! I guess we’d been too quiet too long!!! We came back by the front gate and around a different area coming back. I guess we got to camp about 3:45. It was sunny and warm. We took the time to begin packing up, figuring tips and unloading stuff on Andrew. This is the end of the Serengeti and we are feeling the end of the trip coming. I brought all this first aid stuff and luckily we haven’t needed it. I gave Andrew anything he thought he could use and all the left over film he wanted. Now we are out in the back of our tents in the chairs in the shade. There is a little breeze and it feels great. We can hear the storm clouds on the horizon again. We’re telling stories and laughing. Laurie’s favorite saying has been “Oh, my gosh” with an attitude. Linda is the master of animal sounds so she’s practicing. She has chicken and guinea fowl down well. Rusty has the reputation of losing things in his pockets on this trip. Every garment has MULTIPLE pockets! We all expected the Serengeti to be browner than we have seen it. I think the timing on our trip was pretty perfect. Seems like the big talk tonight is life and death as we reflect on the hyenas and vultures we saw today. Hyenas are pretty ugly and they were pretty full or else one was very pregnant. We saw jackal and eland in the distance again today. I’ve pretty much left all of our dinner conversations out of this journal… lots of anatomy and gross things come up at the dinner table it seems and of course, there are always tons of laughs. I’m afraid the videotape Rus is making may be unacceptable for school or will have to be censored/edited. Sherry compared the stork’s throat to a penis today so everybody is making comparisons! (It was full of something it ate at the zebra) We got our fill of dung beetles today for sure. Jane Wojecki |
Sunday, December 31, 2000 Woke up early. It was our 3rd night to sleep here in tents. It was raining. I didn’t want to get up. We headed out after breakfast with box lunches for one last view of the large migration. Our showers this morning were taken while it was raining on us. We drove into the vast herds of wildebeest, zebras, gazelles, ostriches, etc. The Wildebeest make a sound like a bull frog. We had a picnic on top of a hill. While on the morning drive we saw two newborn wildebeest, which were likely the first newborns for the season.
On the way back to the camp we came across 4 cheetahs and 3 lions. We watched them for awhile. We saw an interesting sight in a large heron eating a very large lizard. It took awhile for him to get the lizard lined up just right to get it down his throat. We came across a fresh zebra kill that was killed by a pack of hyenas. They were just started to eat it and they were a mess. The vultures were all around as well. After the hyenas had their fill, the vultures moved in. That was a sight. There must have been a hundred vultures fighting over the carcass. They would jump on top of each other and fight each other to get to the carcass. It did not take the vultures long to reduce the carcass to nothing. We were in an area of the park where you are supposed to have a park ranger with you, but we did not. As a result, the guides got a little nervous and decided to head out of the area in a hurry and were looking over their shoulders the whole way out. We saw exactly what we wanted to on our last day herds and herds of animals as far as the eye could see. Everyone got a little sunburn since the sun finally came out. We were back at camp early by 3:30. We headed back to the camp to relax before enjoying our New Year’s dinner.
We had a good New Year’s eve dinner of black eyed peas and cabbage. Rain caused us to leave the camp fire premature before dinner. Ben and Afata told stories during dinner. One of the stories was about an Italian couple that were eaten by lions as they attempted to take pictures outside their vehicle of the lions. Their children were in the car at the time. A German man was killed by a Cape Buffalo as he walked up close to one so that his wife could take a picture of him with it. There was an elephant attack on a van where an elephant rammed his tusk through the driver’s door and through the steering wheel. The guide had jumped in the back with the customers. The elephant had got his tusk stuck and was dragging the van to the river when he finally got his tusk out. The van was totally destroyed and the people fortunately only received minor injuries. He also told us that one of the guides was killed by a crocodile while getting water from a river. We heard lions and hyenas again, just like every other night while in the camp. The Hazels
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