The Serengeti National Park, Tanzania.

We drove into the park by the western gate and stopped to get our permits. The parks in Tanzania are very strict on the time you spend there and charge accordingly - there is a daily fee for cars, each person and for camping and it amounts to about US$300-400 per day. But getting the permits was like getting a visa at the border - slow and painful. The new computer system was down and each permit had to be done individually and by hand. But we amused ourselves by looking at the baboons which inevidably congregate where there are people, and at the black-faced vervet monkeys whose males have the most incredibly coloured, not to mention prominent, sky blue balls.

Our drive in to the campsite was a slow game drive through the western corridor for 140km. Our closest encounter with the local wildlife was with the Tsetse Fly. They appeared suddenly flying all around the car and through the windows. If we speeded up, they could keep up with us up to 30kph! They were like March Flies, easy to slap but then they would recover and fly off again, could bite through clothing with a real , and of course they carry African Sleeping Sickness - though we are assured this is qute rare. Around the campsites and gates are blue and black flags hanging in trees which are impregnated with a chemical that kills the flies when they land on it, so the camp was mercifully free of them. But Russ happened to be wearing black shorst and a blue T-shirt of the exact hue!

The Serengeti is all that one imagines: vast plains and grasslands, wooded areas, hippo pools and mountains in the far distance. It was not hard to spot game of every variety. Of note, we watched a cheetah for quite a while, came across a huge herd of elephants across the road in front of us, saw part of the massive migration of the wildebeest and zebra, watched hyena stalking prey and saw lions resting in the cool mud of roadside drains. David Attenborough certainly captured it all in his docos.