The Serengeti is undescribable. The vastness of the endless plain of grassland or savanna and the incredible array of wildlife make for memories for a lifetime. We spent two nights in the south and two in the north at Lobo -- five of the most memorable days of our lives. For a wide-angle view of all 16 lions in the big pride we saw on our last day in the Serengeti, click here. And if you are confused about all the different sorts of antilopes, check this.
1 Our first look at the vast Serengeti, the "Endless plain", in the Maasai language
2 Grant's and Thomson's gazelles, the latter with the black stripe on their sides,
3 Shadows across the grassland savanna of the eastern Serengeti
4 Serengeti welcome committee
5 Elephants on the march
6 Female waterbuck
7 Sunrise in Serengeti
8 The rising sun lights up the hillsides.
9 Large herd of African Buffalo
10 Ever feel like you're being watched
11 Ever feel like you're being watched? :)
12 Morning light on the Serengeti grassland
13 Acacia, grassland and kopje
14 Secretary Bird coming in for a landing
15 Secretary Bird, with its funny topknot
16 Even elephants are dwarfed by the Serengeti scenery.
17 Oxpeckers (birds) pecking a giraffe -- does that make them giraffepeckers?
18 Hippos seem to be very social animals. But you don't want to get downwind from their pool. They do everything there.
19 A peaceful hippo pool
20 Beautiful Serengeti scenery
21 Hippo hotel -- or hippo heaven?
22 Lions resting in the shade of acacia trees ... and one in the sun
23 African spoonbill
24 Marabou stork
25 Marabou storks
26 Big crocodile
27 Nice pond, with crocodile
28 Cute and colorful birdie, but what is he?
29 Shelley's starling
30 Rocks and candelabra cactus near the park visitor center
31 Warthogs sometimes kneel to reach the ground in order to eat.
32 Nice tusks
33 Giraffes
34 Wise-looking Yellow-billed stork, oracularly waiting for Egyptian geese to ask him a deep question
35 Egyptian geese. Now we know why it's called a goose step.
36 Reedbuck - note the thick coat
37 Baboon mother and child
38 Giraffe spreading his front legs to eat a low plant; usually they eat from tree-tops.
39 Yellow-billed oxpecker, here "pecking" a giraffe
40 Fischer's lovebird
41 Ol' leopard just hangin' out down in that big tree...
42 It's a sausage tree.
43 Leopard napping in a tree
44 Alert impala
45 This male agama lizard looks like Stickyman, or whatever he is called.
46 Mme Agama
47 View from our hotel room, just before the rain started
48 The lesser rainy season started as we were in the Serengeti.
49 The next morning, there was a dik-dik just outside our hotel-room balcony.
50 Morning after the rain
51 Topi
52 Several topi in the woods
53 Jackal
54 Red-rumped (or mosque?) swallows in a very thorny acacia
55 Small stream or watering hole
56 A hoopoe, which we had only seen in India and in our own back yard (once), though they are supposed to exist in Egypt also
57 A lioness and her cubs dining in the shade of some palm trees
58 Hey, lemme have some too.
59 Lunch
60 Mmm, good
61 Meow?
62 Pleeeeease rub my tummy.
63 Endless Serengti plain
64 Grass and hills and enormous sky
65 Elephant family in the shade of a tree
66 Lazy hippos napping
67 Three giraffes
68 Flat-topped acacia
69 Hippo rolling over to show us her tummy. Yuk.
70 Retima hippo pool. Fortunately, the picnic site was upwind from it that day.
71 Ever feel like you're being watched?
72 Buzz off!
73 Rain coming. And it did!
74 Kopje near Lobo
75 Coming in to the Lobo area -- The lodge is behind that hill.
76 Yellow-billed oxpeckers pecking an ox -- well, an African buffalo
77 Dainty klipspringers -- Their black hooves make it look like they are standing on their toes.
78 Sunrise over Lobo
79 Room wing of the Lobo Wildlife Lodge
80 The Lobo Wildlife Lodge is built mainly of beautifully maintained wood and is inserted ingeniously into the rocks of the kopje.
81 Path leading over the kopje, past the restaurant and on to ...
82 ... the swimming pool, one side of which is the rock itself. Wonderful, but too cold for us.
83 Landscape and clouds
84 Topi with calves
85 Kllipspringers
86 Tommies and warthogs
87 Tommies
88 Running impala
89 We were told we would see lots of ostriches and we did, like this female.
90 Male ostrich
91 Wildebeest posing for the camera
92 Zebras
93 Topi, perhaps younger (lighter color)
94 A small stream
95 Road, trees and sky
96 Land and sky -- both vast
97 Small herd of zebra huddled together under a tree
98 Lobo landscape
99 Manny posing on a rock
100 Some kind of heron?
101 Zebras in the woods
102 Wildebeest, zebras and hartebeest
103 Wildebeest, zebras and hartebeest
104 Elephants do it
105 Over the bridge, to the swimming pool
106 View from the pool
107 Lobo Wildlife Lodge, nestled in among the rocks
108 Rock hyrax on a rock, what else?
109 Lobo plain, seen from the pool
110 American tourist exploring the rock
111 Rocks by the Lobo Lodge
112 Another sunrise ...
113 Another wonderful day
114 Nursing hartebeest
115 Hartebeest
116 Still more Tommies...
117 How big the sky seems over flat countryside,
118 Trees over the road
119 Pretty river with Egyptian goose and crocodile -- You do see the crocodile?
120 The crocodile
121 Impala licking each other; such social grooming permits the removal of insects one animal cannot reach on himself.
122 A whole herd of impala crossing the road
123 Impala in the woods
124 Yawn! Manny said that after she yawned, she would go out to hunt. Well, she just went back to sleep.
125 Baby warthogs
126 Oops
127 Huge croc
128 Croc
129 Crocodile coming
130 This enormous elephant apparently did not like being photographed, as he followed our car with malevolent intent in his eyes. We left!
131 Two of a pride of 16 (sixteen!) lions we saw -- in the rain.
132 Nine of the sixteen (Ok, eight and two thirds...)
133 9 + 5 = 14
134 14 + 2 = 16. To see a wide-angle view of all 16 lions in the pride, click here.
135 Doing his claws just like a house cat
136 Intimate group
137 Herd of elephants playing in the water
138 They like to muddy up the water, then spray it onto themselves as protection against insects and the sun.
139 Giraffe dining on the top of an acacia tree
140 Giraffe
141 The magnificent, vast Serengeti grassland. Everything is so flat, it seems like the air is sandwiched in between the grass and the clouds.
142 A kopje, or rock outcrop that has survived erosion
143 Shelley's starling at the picnic and check-out as we leave Serengeti (sniff...)
