Hi everyone! Total count: 4 lepoards, 5 cheetahs, 59 lions (seriously), and hundreds of giraffes, elephants, baboons, vervet monkeys, hippos, and millions upon millions of zebras and wildebeest! The trip was amazing... first we had an evening in Lake Manyara, which is a park in the Great Rift Valley incorporating five different habitats, from rainforest through to savannah, all in a really compact area (about 5km by 20km I think). It was completely unlike what we were expecting - there were animals on every turn, right from seeing a family of warthogs and then some baboons within 5 minutes of entering the park. We were so excited to see every different animal, so we made sure we took plenty of pictures! We stopped off for lunch at a high point before driving down to the lake itself, and a troop of baboons came marching through the picnic area, about 60 strong. The next day we drove across the Great Rift Valley, up past the Ngorogoro Crater, and down into the Serengeti, where we stayed for two nights. We got up at about 6am every day, and went to bed about half eight because it was pitch black by half six in the evening. It's so much fun riding in the 4x4 standing up with your head out of the top and the wind in your face, looking out for lions. We got so excited the first time we saw lions, because we didn't know if we'd see any, but as you can see at the top we ended up seeing 59 of them! Most of them were in pairs if they were out hunting, but we saw some small prides lazing around in the sun, and one pride of 13! We didn't see any kills but we did see two of them devouring a zebra, and the remnants of a dead Wildebeest near some of them (the pictures are on the website). We also saw one solo male lion on day 3 attempt to catch a zebra that was drinking water at a pond, but he wasn't cunning enough in his approach so it got away. The females usually do all the hunting, and all the males do once they have gained control of their own pride is sit around in the sun waiting for the lionesses to bring them succulent meat. This male must have been on his own, trying to find a pride to take over as that is the only time that they really have to do much hunting themselves. They didn't scare us, even though they were usually only about 10 yards from the vehicle, because they looked so lazy and cute. The only really scary things were the hippos - on the second afternoon, we drove to a hippo pool where there must have been around 40-50 of them. They're neck to neck, usually submerged with only their heads and backs showing, but sometimes squabbling with each other. The noises they make are very strange - a combination of grunts and snorts which ring back and forth across the water. It's one of the few places where you can get out of your vehicle, but you don't want to get too close to the water! There was a little baby hippo which was very curious, and kept swimming up towards us, so we kept our distance because the mother was starting to look a little nervous. The thing that the Serengeti is probably most famous for is the Great Wildebeest Migration - a huge mass of around 1.5 million Wildebeest, 800 000 Zebras and numerous predatory hangers-on making their way back up towards the Masaai Mara in search of fresh grasslands. Our guidebook described is as one of nature's last true spectacles. We didn't expect to see it, but found out when we arrived that they were within about an hours drive from our campsite. It really was incredible, just an endless mass of beest and zebras, stretching right the way across the plains. You could drive for kilometers in any direction and never reach the end of them. It's difficult to imagine that if we had come a week later, they would have moved on and the teeming plains would be empty. Other highlights included seeing four leopards - apparently they are extremely difficult to find, and many tourists extend their trip by a couple of days to try and track one down. Our guide, Moses, said that in 15 years of taking trips to Safari the most he has ever seen in one trip is two leopards. So we were very lucky! On the way back up to the Ngorogoro crater highlands, we stopped off at Olduvai gorge, which saw the discovery by Louis and Mary Leakey of remains of what was at the time the oldest known prehistoric human ancestor, 'Nutcracker Man'. Also recently discovered was as an unearthed trackway with perfectly preserved upright human footprints from 3.6million years ago. Pretty astonishing! On Wednesday evening we camped on the rim of the Ngorogoro crater, which is a massive crater around 20km across formed by a collapsed volcano. It is famous because it is a completely preserved little world, and has the highest density of mammals on earth, including around 15 incredibly rare black rhino. The wildebeest down there stay in the crater all year round (whereas their Serengeti brethren are perpetually on the move). But they still have the migrationary impulse, so they queue in single file and march around the crater lake! Very funny to watch. By then, the only animal we had yet to see was the rhino, so we were very fortunate to spot one within a couple of hours of entering the crater. Our guide and driver, Moses, was excellent. He's a very cool guy, knows everyone on the safari circuit, and has a real passion for the wildernesses. His dream is to go back to college again, and train to become a park ranger so he can live with his wife and daughters in the Serengeti. He was so knowledgeable about the animals, as well as about the different Tanzanian tribes, so he could tell us something about everything we saw as well as explain what the animals were doing. He knows every corner of the parks like the back of his hand, so could always show us something new. Ok! Enough! Hopefully tomorrow we will be able to see a Maasai cultural tour, and then on to Zanzibar on Sunday! Tom