Safari Day 5 - Life and Death

We elect to leave very early again in order to maximize our active wildlife viewing. We're at breakfast at 6am and in the car by 10 to 7.



The crater is stunning. About 300 square kilometers and an extremely high concentration of animals. We watch hundreds of thousands of wildebeast happily munching grass. Ilya notes that a group of them seem to be converging and we edge closer.

Wow! There is a baby wildebeast that can't be more than five minutes old! The mother hasn't even fully passed the afterbirth. He's glistening wet and struggling to stand. The female gnu (do you call them doe?) are surrounding the baby, keeping it in the center and nuzzling it as it wobbles and crashes from side to side. But in five minutes it's walking around searching for and eventually finding its mother's milk.



We head across the park after a reported lion sighting. This is not our usual sighting, however. There are fifty vultures on the ground and an angry looking lioness facing them. Behind her sits a partially eaten wildebeast carcass. A fresh kill! And to make it better there are three adorable, fuzzy lion cubs behind her.

The mother's muzzle is red with blood and she runs at the birds defending her meal. Each time they back away only to advance on another side.



Today's miscellaneous birds include guinneafowl, kites, ibis, crowned crane, egret, and thousands more flamingo.

After the manditory turkish coffee stop at noon we continue on and approach a long line of trucks on the road. There it is! The black rhino. Only about fifteen in the park and likely fewer than a hundred in the wild we keep our distance and watch this prehistoric creature amble by.



On our way back to Arusha we stop at a Masai village. I've mentioned the Masai - a nomadic herding tribe who live in southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. But i haven't talked much about them. That is because it is a difficult and complicated subject for me. Perhaps best left to another post.



Back in Arusha i take the most wonderful shower and wash my clothes. The dust streams off of me and down the drain. I've elected to stay the night at the hotel with my new Israeli friends and have breakfast with them tomorrow before i head to Dar Es Salaam.