Our next stop was another tented camp, this one with guards to escort you around the site after dark to protect you from lions etc. Didn't get that with Eurocamp.

Bariki was the chattiest of the guards. In many countries, we might have dismissed his behavior as classic 'flirting for tips’ but Tanzanians genuinely like to chat. Godfrey talked at leangth about how amazed and confused he was when he went to Kenya and people didn’t say hello to him on the bus – this was the craziest concept to him – why would you not chat to someone who is near you, regardless of whether you know him or not?

On today’s game drive we were hippo hunting and stopped at the Banagi River first of all to see many hippos bobbing around, then to the Retima Hippo Pool, where you can leave your vehicle to get much closer. What a wonderful sight! Hippos seem to have a great life wallowing around, on top of each other in the sun. We were party to particularly exiting pieces of Hippo action:

1) Dead hippo at the back of the pool being eaten by crocodiles (not so exciting for the Hippo I grant you, and the live ones just didn’t care!)

2) Lone bull hippo, tries to crash the party on some other bull hippo’s patch – cue exciting chase, loud grunting/barking and lots of splashing. Note: females seemed nonplussed about whole episode.

Next on the list of massive and exciting wildlife experiences, we join a couple of other cars very close to a large male elephant (tembo is Swahili). Suzie notices the rest of the herd is off to the left, and while the other cars *stupidly* drive off (we’ve seen an elephant, yawn, lets go…), Godfrey turns about and goes off to a little side road where the rest of the herd were most definitely there – just, you know, around 40-50 elephants, from say 2 herds, migrating in opposite directions.

And so we stood in the middle of them all – Matriarch to new baby ones holding their mummy’s tails with their ickle trunks- for hours. Just us, no other cars. Most of the elephants took no notice of us at all, apart from the original bull elephant who came walking up the road towards the car. Us and the huge elephant, eye-balling one and other. Him feeling around the car to whether we were up to no good or not, prodding the jeep with his enormous trunk. He passed us by eventually meeting a friend and locking tusks with him for a little while. Awesome. Fact.

Oh and we also saw the following:

- Female lion stalking zebra, zebra also sees female lion stalking zebra and runs away

· Young male lion under try – about 6 feet away

· Female lion up tree

· Leopard up tree quite well hidden (cue funny conversation in nearby car, with Anne from Lancaster not seeing the leopard, then after a good 10 mins discovering she was looking at the wrong tree!)

· Big, big male lion trying to seduce a female – roaring and snarling, big sharp teeth ensue – she was having none of it!

· Female lion with 7 or so cars surrounding her while she was trying to hunt, we drove on quickly

· Lots and lots and lots more migration – still amazing

Lunch was at Mawe Meupe (white stone) picnic spot where we saw how the other half do picnicking – full dinner service, shipped in to the middle of nowhere by truck, silver service, your own loos, the full sha-bang!

NEXT DAY

Rather than going to the Lobo area, northern Serengeti, where the migration is meant to be, we stayed in the Seronera, and went into the eastern Serengeti. We had the place to ourselves pretty much. Here there was shorter grass and more cats, particularly more lions. We spent some time very, very close to two females, one climbed down in to a hole to get some shade. The experience Andrew asking over lunch "why don’t the lions eat us?" Godfrey replied “they have plenty of food already and they just don’t know how tasty we are. If they ever do find out, we have to kill the whole pride”. Man, we must be VERY tasty!

On the drive to our next Lodge, Godfrey stopped the car and asked whether we’d ever seen a dung beetle in action. Of course we hadn’t, but the little blighters are amazing! Tiny bug in control of a massive ball of poo, pushing and pushing with all its might. When he can’t see where he’s pushing it to, he simple climbs up on top to admire the view and then gets going again.