Something has happened to Tracy. Yesterday she was an animal lover, nature lover, all animals are cute, baboons being one of her favorites. Last night's baboon encounter has changed her. She's angry at them. She hates baboons. She has created a pile of rocks, if they come even remotely close to our camp, she throws rocks at them and hurtles swears and insults at them. She has changed.
We woke up this morning with the sunrise. Last night we went to sleep with all kinds of strange and amazing animal sounds. Hyenas, leopards, buffalo, elephant and more we didn't know what they were. I slept soundly, but Tracy kept waking up. It's great sleeping in a tent, hearing all of the night noises. When we woke up, four buffalo were no more than 50-60 metres from our camp, sleeping. A small group of hyenas were a short distance off in another direction (that would explain why we heard them to clearly last night). We were the only ones in the public campground, which Tracy didn't like.
We had our little table and chair setup to overlook the grasslands, and tourist were driving by throughout the morning. At least two of them, when they saw our little campsite, with our little table and two chairs, Tracy and me standing there observing our domain, grabbed their camera and took pictures of us and our campsite. We were the tourist attraction! They were probably staying in some fancy lodge and were fascinated by people sleeping in tents amongst the wild animals. They were probably jealous.
It's incredible and amazing to wake and see a plethora of animals roaming in the vista from the campsite, including zebras, buffalo, giraffe,wildebeest, hyenas, various antelope and more.
The baboons came back this morning, watching us. Tracy was our protector, though, and kept them at bay with her rocks. After they left, black-faced monkeys arrived and watched the cook as he was making breakfast and watched us eat. They are quite a bit less scary than the baboons, and Tracy was less aggressive with them.Jumping on our truck, around the trees at our camp, on the cooking shelter. The cooking shelter has a wired windows and doors, with latches, so they hung around the door and in the windows peering in at us as we ate. It was quite awesome, actually.
Then a large female baboon came back, and it's obvious the baboon rules over the monkeys. The baboon would push his way around the monkeys, scaring them off if they were in her way or got too close.
Around 10:00am, we left for another campground, Pimbi campground I think. We're now in the central Serengeti region, which is quite a bit more popular, so was quite a bit busier with more tourist trucks around. On the way there, we got close to a family of elephants right near the side of the road, including one teeny, tiny elephant baby sticking right by mom's side.
Once again, we're astounded and we got some very good luck in seeing things.
Another lion family, no males around, but a bunch of females and about 10 kittens. After observing that for a while, we didn't go more than 5 minutes and we got a leopard in a tree. That means we've now got all big 5. Moved on, and not 1-2 minutes later, a cheetah in the field. He'd stop and stand and observe, then move on, then jump on a mound and sit and observe everything again, then move on. There were quite a few other tourist trucks around these parts, and we'd seen tons of stuff yesterday, so our guide decided to go off to some areas where there weren't any other tourists. What a treat! We got up and close and personal with a couple of giraffes. Then we hit another jackpot, a cheetah female with 5 cubs literally right by the side of the road. We were the only tourist truck there, so we got the treat of observing them. This is very rare for cheetahs to be so close to the side of the road. After we observed them for 10 minutes, our guide called on the CB radio to the other tourist trucks, and the rush was on. About this time it started to rain, so we closed the roof and the cheetahs decided to move on. By the time the other tourist trucks started to arrive, the cheetahs were in the field and hard to see. So, we got a treat by seeing them first.
We also saw a snake, African python I believe it was.
More ostriches, zebras, wildebeests, various antelopes, etc., etc., etc.
Back to the campground around 5:00ish, and we had another amazing day.
Hahaha re Tracy and her rocks, so funny.
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