Serengueti National Park

The Serengeti park offers the classic African scenery of wide rolling plains with acacia trees and large herds of grazing ungulates.

We stayed at a mobile camp which follows the wildebeest migration, and in September this was close to the Kenyan border and the Mara River which divides Kenya from Tanzania. We were lucky enough to see a crossing on our way from the airstrip to camp. The wildebeest can take many hours to make the life and death decision to plunge into this river in order to find fresh grazing.

We also had the the bittersweet experience of seeing a black rhino mother and calf grazing in the soft evening light, knowing that these magnificent animals could become extinct.

I'm not 100% sure if the dry season is the best time to visit Serengeti National Park. There are fewer animals and the landscape is more arid, yet along the central zone (Seronera), we saw cheetahs, leopards, lions, zebras, gazelles, impalas, crocodiles, vultures, marabou storks, hippos, hyenas, buffaloes, elephants, and more. The best part was when several groups of elephants approached us. They went behind our car in groups of 20 to 30 to enter the river next to us. They went in to cool down and cover themselves with mud and then got out to let the next group in. We stopped counting once a hundred elephants had passed us and more were still arriving.

Until you actually see the Serengeti National Park for yourself, you don't realize that places like this really exist on Earth. Thousands of animals live together on this vast plain and your head actually starts spinning. Everywhere you look there are gazelles, gnus, zebras, rhinos, elephants, lions, impalas...it's a Garden of Eden of herbivores and carnivores competing for survival.