Kilimanjaro Expedition Dispatch
August 25, 2012 – Big Five Game: Most Dangerous and Difficult Animals to Spot on Safari
9 am, early in the morning and in our 3rd full day of Berg Adventures wildlife safari on the northern circuit in Tanzania. As we always do on this day from our lodge in the rim of the Ngorongoro crater, we woke up very early, we ask the staff to knock in our doors at 5:15, we had coffee and quick snacks waiting in the lobby and with David, Santos and Abraham we were dropping down into Ngorongoro Crater as the sun was coming up. It only took us about 10 minutes to find a pride of lions. We watched 10 lionesses along with some young males cups for quite a long time. The sun was getting higher; we took photographs. Teresa kept on saying, “I want to see a male lion, I want see a male lion” and eventually we did see two males. We also found our rhino now. Of the big 5, the big 5 are elephant, buffalo, lion, rhino and leopard. Now that we have seen a rhino, quite close as a matter of fact, we have seen all of the big 5 except for a leopard.
Now we’ve stopped at the Mandusi swamp and David, Abraham and Santos are setting up a picnic breakfast. It is a cool day in Ngorongoro, the clouds are hanging over the rim and everyone is wearing their big fleece jackets and those of us who have purchased the red woolen Maasai blankets as souvenirs are in fact wearing those blankets now for warmth. What an amazing day we are having at Ngorongoro.
Listen to Wally's call
Beautiful morning
We did not see males at first, but soon we found them.
Liz taking lion shots - we will compare our photos over dinner tonight and upload them soon.
Luc and Anika enjoying being rejoined with the team
This lion was posing for us.
And we saw a rhino, just cruising around in the middle of the buffalo and wildebeest. Now we have four of the Big Five, only the leopard to go.
An old elephant
In only a few minutes time after descending into the crater, we found what we'd come looking for.
The pride - they were just strolling down the road.
Soon we were driving very close to them.
This lady was not happy with us.
We felt fortunate to have come into the crater early morning when there was so much going on.