Day 10 - Serengeti to Ngorongora Crater
Early morning drive - saw three lions as soon as we got in the land cruiser as well as a herd of elephand walking past our camp. With the early morning mist, it felt like being inside a painting. 100 metres down the road and we came upon the kill site with the lion pride on their kill. Talk about 'whilst you were sleeping'. Was amazing watching the lions feeding on the carcass, cleaned almost bare within a few hours. We also had the hyenas all around waiting to get in on the action. Really interesting watching the females position themselves to protect their kill and those which were feeding.
Thought it couldn't get much better then that until we saw a male and female lion mating. In the wild they mate continuously every 6-7mins for a week. They looked exhausted although the male only seems to last around 3 seconds. This was going to become a day of the lions after we then came across two females and a male at a watering hole abd had the female literally sit beside our car tyre in tying to get shade. This was a little worrying given we didn't have time to close our windows and we weren't that high off the ground. We could have touched her. It's so easy to forget that these are wild and very dangerous! All we needed now was a huge maned male and a cub!!
Every day we think it can't get much better than this, and then once again we were shocked when we stumbled across a lioness and her cub in a tree. This place never ceases to absolutely blow your mind. One of the other girls said she thought I was hyperventilating in excitement. She was probably right!! It had been an absolute amazing last few days...Silent screaming in delight not to disturb the lions. Apparently it's very rare to see lions in trees, given I didn't know they even climbed trees, this must be the case! She was eagerly watching the grazing zebra and we think trying to teach her cub to hunt. However then as lions do they both lost interest and they went to sleep in the tree. This resulted in our first traffic jam as cars were radioed from everywhere to capture this. Luckily thanks to our highly competitive driver we had prime spot right next to the tree and we were quite happy to sit there for hours watching this adorable cub. We saw lots of other animals too however today was definitely a cat day. You definitely can't get enough of these magnificant animals.
We then drove through to Ngorongora the top of the crater to set up camp. Once again the tents were up and we were again welcomed with pop corn and hot drinks. So spoilt. Think we might be in for another night of wild animals as there is a huge male elephant near our tents and guards with AK 47s.