March 9 – Climb For A Cure on Safari

Listen to Audio of Wally's Call (.wav)

It’s the evening of March 9th and I’m calling you from the heart of the Serengeti, watching a beautiful sunset. Yesterday morning the group that I told you about earlier that went off on a 2-day safari left early in the morning from the hotel in Arusha with Eric, my safari driver guide.

A little later in the afternoon the rest of us flew to the Serengeti; we loaded a small aircraft at the Arusha airport. Our fellow passengers were two Russians who we dropped off at the airstrip at Lake Manyara, and then we flew out to the middle of the Serengeti. There we were met by Adam and Haruna two more of our Safari guides. I think our group was pretty surprised to learn it starts right off. Just as we drove away from the airstrip we saw a hippopotamus, a crocodile, giraffe, elephant, a lot of antelope including impalas and this all happened after 4:00pm when we got in the land rovers and just drove to our lodge.

This morning we had a really full Safari day, we took off with Haruna and Adam and pretty early in the morning we saw our first hyena, began to see zebras and we saw our first lion, a male lion all of this before lunch. After lunch was really what we have been shooting for today, the migration is going on, the massive movement of zebras and wildebeests through this vast Serengeti ecosystem.

We were lucky enough to get a sampling of what it’s about as the sky darkened and the rain began to move in, we saw the lines of wildebeests walking to the north where they are moving now. We began to drive in the opposite direction, we drove for several kilometers and they were still coming and as you look to the horizon to the south that is all you can see, it went on forever. Really an amazing sight!

Then driving back to the lodge this afternoon we saw in beautiful afternoon light, softened by the clouds we saw three female lionesses. We stopped and just marveled at that for awhile. Now we are getting ready, we just had a quick drink and washed some of the dust off and we’ll meet for a nice dinner in the Safari Lodge this evening. A lot of adventure still to come, we’ll report to you as we continue to move across northern Tanzania and check out the wonderful sights and amazing wildlife and wilderness here.