Duncan and I just returned from a 10-day wildlife safari in Tanzania. We visited four parks-- the Serengeti, Ngorongoro crater, Manyara, and Tarangire.  Our favorite by far was the Serengeti. The safari itself was beautifully and virtually flawlessly organized, thanks to Mike at Africa Dream Safaris. If anybody ever considers an African safari, I would highly recommend this company.

We spent about 8 hours per day in a land rover with our private guide Mweta in our search for wildlife to photograph. We were like kids in a candy store, getting excited by just about any critter we saw. Most nights were spent at a different lodging accommodations - we had a few nights of private camping, several nights in what is called a 'tented lodge', and few nights in traditional lodges. Our favorite by far was our private camping experience. We had the entire campsite to ourselves except for our guide and the camping staff.

We literally took thousands of pictures over the 10 days and have pruned our photos down to a few hundred. It was difficult to choose our top ones, but here they are! 

My favorite to see, by far, was any type of cat. Lions were most abundant, but we were lucky to see a couple of leopards and also a few cheetahs . This male lion passed within 20 meters of our vehicle-- this photo was one of the more distant shots we took of him. Isn't he a beauty? Next comes our leopard and cheetah. In the next tree over from this leopard, there was another one who had dragged his kill (a wildebeest) up into the tree. The leopard was mostly obscured but we could see the remnants of the kill hanging down, and there was a hyena waiting for any droppings. The leopard that you see was nicely posed on a lower branch of a sausage tree (so named because of the large pods that hang from the tree that look like sausages). The cheetah was amongst a group of three sleeping in brush near the side of the road. We spent over an hour waiting for the cheetah to move just so that the face wasn't totally obscured by the bush. The final cat photo shows a lioness and her cub looking at other potential prey after already devouring a zebra. We saw the aftermath of four different kills - I'll spare you the savage gore photos, but we took many of the ravaging.

We saw many baboons and vervet monkeys - we were particularly captivated by the babies. Here's one of a baboon baby resting on mama's back.  Elephants were quite plentiful, and we liked this photo with their reflection in the water. We caught a few animals in motion - two hippos quarreling over their position in the lake, a female impala jumping a brook, and a pair of grey-crowned cranes flying over Thompson gazelles. I end with a sunset over the Serengeti at our private campsite. It was glorious. 

Brenda and Duncan K.
Netherlands Antilles
January 2006