Mark & Jen's 'Around the World' Travel & Photography Blog

Polé polé (slowly, slowly) we drive through the long grasses of the Serengeti, the engine of our jeep a low purr. Mark stands through the pop-up roof scanning the vast savanna for any slight twitch of an ear or flick of a tail. It is day four of our African safari and Mark has yet to see his self-imposed nemesis: the leopard. I monotonously pick my fingernails in an effort to prevent myself from dozing off in the blazing heat. Suddenly, Maluta, or driver/guide, slams on the brakes and turns off the engine. “Binoculars,” he summons, like a surgeon calling for his scalpel. He site up from what I had assumed was just another “drive in the park” for him and cranes his neck out the window. “There,” he points. “Where? What?” we ask. “A leopard,” he smiles.

Our eyes follow the line of his finger to the V of a distant yellow acacia tree. There, resting lazily along the curve of a limb, is a spotted leopard. Mark’s voice turns into a kid at his first day at the zoo: “Look there,” he points. I look, and there it is indeed. The sleek head perks up as he catches our scent. Slowly, he rises, looks at us fully for a minute, then leaps to the ground and disappears among the disguising grasses. We exhale and turn to each other with ice-cream grins. “Sweet!”

Cheetah! / Lioness and her cubs / Is that a leg? / Giraffe!

Our list of animal and bird sightings from the first four days is endless. There is the pride of lionesses and cubs soaking in the dewy morning grass, or the family of cheetahs digesting their recent gazelle kill, panting languidly in the mid-day sun as soporifically as a Thanksgiving afternoon. We won’t mention Mark’s sighting: “Quick, stop! It’s an enormous black cat!” And Maluta and Stephen (our cook) replying with a gut-jostling laugh: “There’s no black cats here.” Maluta doesn’t even ease up on the gas. Mark later redeems his zoological ignorance by single-handedly spotting a serval cat stalking its prey. I have to say, it was pretty cool!

We see zebras and giraffes galore, as well as an enormous herd of wildebeest and all their recently birthed calves. We see hippos and water buffalo, impalas and dik diks, jackals and hyenas, and mongooses and warthogs. We see red-butt baboons and thieving vervet monkeys. A bush baby uses our tent as a trampoline in the middle of the night. A herd of elephants saunter seriously through the tall grasses. Overhead, we see nesting ospreys and circling vultures; down below, storks and flamingos tip-toe across the shallow water as ostriches scamper in the distance. Starlings and songbirds twitter their melodies.

Elephants! / Zebras!

On day six, we creep along the bottom of Ngorongoro Crater. The sun just begins to peak up over the rim, casting a sparkling light on the dewy grass. A group of zebras and wildebeests munch in the distance. We are following the elusive and endangered black rhino as he prepares for his daily nap. Suddenly, the CB radio crackles alive; Maluta grabs the receiver as a slew of Swahili passes back and forth. “Ah-rroy-o. Roger,” he answers, pressing the gas to the floor, kicking up a cloud of dusty rock in our wake. We bounce through the savanna at whip-lash speed. And then we see them: a pride of lions feasting on their morning buffalo kill.

The male lion is munching away. He looks up at our car with bloody whiskers and a piece of torn hide hanging from his teeth. We watch, mesmerized. Eventually, the male laboriously ambles away; it is now the female and cubs’ turn (never mind that is the females who do the killing and yet have to wait). In the distance, hyenas greedily creep forward and little jackals dart back and forth, all hungrily awaiting any leftover scraps. Then the vultures arrive.

The little lion cubs tumble along behind their other, playfully yelping, full and content. The end of one life sustains another. (It took me twenty minutes to move past The Lion King’s “Circle of Life” to conclude this post.)

Wildebeests! / Sunset / Us / Just another elephant…