Saturday, July 18

Serengeti

We've spent over 10 hours per day on each of the last two days out on game drives. We've yet to see a leopard but have seen impala carcasses hanging from the limbs of acacia trees indicating that leopards have stashed their kill for later. We've also seen how young male giraffes fight each other to see who is "better". They bump up against each other and circle each other until they begin to engage in a behavior called "necking". They curve their necks back and slam their horns into each others' necks ... a fairly graceful looking way to fight but potentially painful.
	We also witnessed a cheetah eating his kill. It was amazing how fast the vultures discovered this scene. Within 30 minutes there must have been 70 vultures lined up near the cheetah just waiting for him to leave. When the number of vultures increased to more than the cheetah could bear he took off, leaving the rest of his kill for the vultures. They swarmed it, flying and bouncing on top of each other all vying for a small piece. After several minutes with nothing remaining to eat, they all took off at the same time.
We've had some pretty exciting driving experiences the past two days too. Yesterday we had to drive up a steep, muddy river bank to get to the other side of the river. Both vehicles ended up driving on only two wheels for a brief time as the cars almost tipped over at the top of the bank. And today the other car with our group got stuck in the mud so our group had to help pull them out. In both cases there were lots of cheers to celebrate our success. This certainly is different than California driving!