Ngorongoro - Serengeti

After a quick breakfast and packing our own lunch boxes at the Ngorongoro Farm House we headed out to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area for today's game drive.  It was very foggy on the mountain as we drove in, but the fog eventually cleared as we descended into the crater.  We saw lots of different animals in the morning including zebras, wildebeests, a huge flock of flamingos and some other birds, hyenas, warthogs and ostriches (with the rare sight of two mating in the distance).

 

Our biggest sightings of the day though were of lions.  We came across 5 females lying around different sections of a watering hole, including two right next to each other along the banks.  We then came across a male and female who proceeded to mate two times while we were watching them.  The lion kept following her around, although the mating didn't last that long.  Finally we saw another 3 females who had a fresh kill.  Two of them were wandering around all the safari vans along the roadside and even rubbing up against the tires!

 

We ate our lunches near a lake that had quite a few hippos in it.  It was nice to get out of the van and stretch our legs a bit.  After eating we headed back up out of the crater and drove around the perimeter a bit more, stopping at an observation point to get the view of the crater we couldn't see first thing in the morning due to the fog.

 

Our two and a half hour drive to the Serengeti was entirely on unpaved and dusty roads.  Since our vans are a bit like hot boxes with the roof closed it meant that it wasn't the most comfortable of rides.  We checked into the Seronera Wildlife Lodge, where we will be staying for the next two nights.  The rooms are tiny- in fact our luxury tent in Masai Mara was bigger!  However, since we are staying in Serengeti National Park it should make our game drives easier.  The restaurant and bar area are really cool though and built into the rock on the upper levels of the property (complete with little cave paintings).  Tomorrow we get to drive around the Serengeti, which should be amazing.