Wandering in the Serengeti

There is nothing quite as refreshing as leaving the noise of the city to sleep under a tent in the quiet of the Serengeti.

That is until you wake up to mysterious noises that make your heart race. Scott was sleeping soundly so I dared not wake him up. What animals was creeping around our tent??? Should I reach for the red horn we were given to scare away animals (or alert the camp staff that they would need to come and retrieve our bodies.)

It was close to time for my alarm to go off so I just cowered under my covers until Scott woke up and informed me that the wind and light rain were probably the cause of my worry.

In the final few days of our time with my brother, David and his wife, Susan, we travelled to Tanzania to catch one of the 7 Natural Wonders of the World, the annual Great Migration of the wildebeests. This cyclical movement of over a million animals (wildebeests, zebra and a number of other animals who follow along) is truly spectacular.

Although the Serengeti is only about 450 miles from our apartment in Kampala – It would have taken us hours to skirt around Lake Victoria and a dozen more hours to navigate over horrible roads, so we decided to fly. Good call. We had a little 8-seater plane to ourselves (as its not quite tourist season yet) and reveled in the low flight over a beautiful part of the world.

We spent five days and four nights scouring different parts of the 12,000 square mile National Park. We would gladly recommend both places we stayed to anyone interested in making this trek! Our first camp was run entirely by women – including our two guides who picked up on Scott’s humor right away. (This commitment to training women in the hospitality and safari industry is pretty novel and we were grateful to support their hard work.)

For 6 – 8 hours each day, we ventured out of camp searching for animals. We would watch, listen and marvel at their movements. We were in awe as a lioness coyly put off her male pursuer. We sat in the middle of a large herd of elephants who seemed very agitated and exceptionally loud. We watched giraffes from our tent. We sat for hours watching lines of wildebeests and zebras file over a hill and congregate on the plains in front of us. We came back to camp one afternoon to two large, uprooted trees blocking our path to the dining tent. A large bull elephant had lumbered into camp in the morning while we were out and decided the trees were in the way.

We woke up on our last morning to the roar of lions just across the waterhole. We chuckled that we had to be escorted too and from our tents after dark by a flashlight wielding guard who was looking for the light beam to reflect from the eyes of any lurking animals. Lion eyes are red in the reflection. I wasn’t really confident that our 5’2” female “guard” at the all-women’s camp would really be able to do anything to protect us in case a red eyed lion jumped from the grass.

Fortunately – we survived.

And we were grateful to have the opportunity to revel in God’s extraordinary creation.

Some in our vehicle didn't like getting this close to the elephants.

Every year a million wildebeests migrate from the Serengeti to Kenya's Maasai Mara looking for food. We were able to catch them on their way north.

The peace and quite of the nightly campfire and distant thunder storm