Seringeti game drives

These are a selection of pictures from our first game drives while staying at the Serena Lodge. We will adopt the policy that an animal we've seen will not be pictured again, unless it is strikingly better than before.

This is our lodge. We stayed here three nights.

Our room was nice and included a usable balcony. Those

white things turned out to be mosquito netting!

On to game drives. We had not seen a hippo yet, but our first trip to the hippo pool was rather disappointing. We waited a long time for one of these beasts to surface. They didn't and we eventually left.

This wasn't much better -- at least we saw pieces of heads.

Lions are the laziest of all the cats. After they have fed on a buffalo or wildebeest, they are really filled. They can sleep like this for three days waiting to get hungry again so they will want to hunt. These hardly moved until Katau started up the van and drove right up to the sleeping pride. The one on the left finally lifted his head and gave a half hearted grunt -- just enough time to get this picture. That lion above reminds me of Maple, our cat, sleeping on our deck.

This huge animal is a Cape Buffalo. This one is old and probably dying since he is not part of a herd. Lions frequently prey on them and this one is probably not long for this world. We were told that Cape Buffalo kill more humans than any other animal in Africa.

I know, we've had baboons, but not one with such a nice red tusch!

Or one with a baby riding on his/her back?

And we went back to the hippo pool at just the right time.

They are sunbathing -- they don't do this very often.

I would thank you to stay right where you are, mister Hippo. Don't get any ideas to charge!

These are the first really good pictures taken of nearby warthogs. They are such muddy, grubby beasts.

Not sure if this qualifies as a wart hog pic or a gazelle. The gazelle was running very fast but the camcorder got it.

We went to a very nice and informational visitors center here in the heart of the Serengeti.

And all around were some very friendly hyraxes.

A very small nose, not like his close relative, the elephant.

This is a Dik-Dik. Very hard to spot with it's color.

Lookit those Guinea hens scratch up the dust.

Now isn't this a "best yet" giraffe?

There were countless vans with people staring at this tree. The word was that there was a leopard in the tree.

After staring at the tree, we left but came back an hour or so later. And there were clearly leopard parts hanging down on that tree.

We were too impatient to wait, along with most other vans. But our group's other van stayed and they were rewarded. These pictures are from George's video which he sent me from Florida. Thanks, George.

Patience won out. He eventually came down and left.

And George used his digital telephoto to get this.

This Caracal Cat with the long pointed ears finished out our day. These are extremely rare and hard to spot with it's grass-like color.

Phyllis got her certificate for riding the balloon over the Serengeti -- the only one in our group that was brave. You can read it below. Congratulations, Phyllis.