The Serengeti

After our tour of Zanzibar, we headed to Arusha, Tanzania to begin our safari. We began our visit with a brief guided walk through a town called Mto Wa Mbu. This translates in Swahili to "mosquito river" so needless to say, we didn't linger long before heading to Lake Manyara.

Lake Manyara National Park is one of Tanzania's smaller parks but it gave JPB a chance to get his safari legs. Lake Manyara's claim to fame is that the park borders the escarpment which is what the locals in Kenya and Tanzania call the sides of the Rift Valley. It's really beautiful and full of many elephants, baboons, and giraffes.

See the hills behind the baby giraffe, that's the escarpment:


Even if you can't see it, isn't he cute??

The next day, we headed to our main attraction, the Serengeti. Serengeti derives its name from the Maasai word for "endless plain" which is a pretty accurate description of the 12,000 square mile park. The Serengeti is home to the largest land migration on earth each year when more than 2 million animals travel in a circle from the southern Serengeti to the Maasai Mara in Kenya and back following the rains that produce the grass they need.

See below for a map of the great migration:


At this time of year, the migrating animals and the predators that hunt them are in the central Serengeti. They have just given birth to this year's babies and are gathering together to begin the migration. Although we didn't see the full group of animals since they're still gathering, it was still a crazy sight to behold:

See all those white spots? Those are zebra:


And all those dots? Those are wildebeasts:


Now the name "The Great Migration" sounds like a noble, determined, organized movement from one place to another. This is false advertising. In reality, the animals (and wildebeasts in particular) stampede back and forth over the plains until they reach a critical mass and start to starve, then one day they stumble on green grasses in one direction and start to move towards it. We literally watched one group of wildebeats and zebras stampede across the same river and back three times since they're all confused and on edge. The huge congregation of animals brings a lot of predators so the animals are constantly skittish and terrified so that any change of scenery freaks them out. For example, they constantly stampede across roads since it freaks them out that there's no grass:



This is especially entertaining because there are hilarious pile-ups, balks, and general animal hysteria.

Beyond the great migration, we saw many other animals. Since we've already extensively narrated safari, I'll just post them for your viewing pleasure:















Full moon at dawn over the Serengeti:


Team Safari 2k11:


It was a really wonderful experience especially since we got to stay in the central Serengeti overlooking a watering hole. We were so thankful that JPB joined us and that we still had another day of touring left.