Adventure of the month

Our last day in the Serengeti began exactly the way a last day in the Serengeti should, with a pair of giraffes calmly eating leaves right outside our tents. They were the perfect animal to wake up to.  Any of the smaller creatures would not have been nearly as exciting and none of the more carnivorous ones would have been quite as welcome. And speaking of flesh eaters, I mentioned to Olly, our tour leader, that once again I had not heard any lions during the night. I had, however, heard baboons left and right with their deep, guttural grunts sounding as if they were coming from pretty close by. Olly let me do my best baboon grunt impersonation a couple of times before explaining to me that baboons make no such noise. Those were, in fact, lions. I, the viewer of many MGM films, disputed this assertion and even threw in some inspired roaring noises by way of persuasive argument. Well, it turns out that those impressive roars are only one note in the lion repertoire, used mai...

You know you are camping in an unusual campsite when the morning discussion goes something like this- Everyone else: "Did you hear the lions last night?" Me: "No! I missed lions?! All I heard were frogs and hyenas. Oh, and baboons. I heard a lot of baboons." The others: "Yes. There were definitely lions. And the group over there thinks they saw a cheetah in the campsite." Me: "Balls!" We were camping inside of the Serengeti National Park and unlike other predator-inhabited game parks I'd been to, there is no fence separating us and the more ardently carnivorous mammals. How this works is still a bit of mystery to me. We were told not to worry, that we're not appealing to them since we generally don't yield a lot of meat, particularly when compared to a buffalo or wildebeest, which is true. But I'm pretty sure I have a good 20-30 pounds on an impala and they're called the 'McDonald's of Africa' by vir...

I have just typed and deleted at least a half dozen paragraphs, all of them trying to express how spectacular our time in the Serengeti was. It is not working. Everything I have written sounds cliche and trite and blah, which I guess would be fine if the Serengeti was any of those things. But it's not, it is so very, very....AAARGHHH (must keep finger away from the delete key, must control impulse, MacBook not so aerodynamic) You know what? I took photos. Lots and lots of photos. They have a currency of approximately one thousand words each. How's about I just share some of those and let them speak for themselves. M'kay?