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Olduvai Gorge and Serengeti National Park Friday, August 25 The male Agama lizard has beautiful colors. This one posed for us near the picnic area at the Serengeti park entrance. |
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Olduvai Gorge and Serengeti National Park Friday, August 25 The male Agama lizard has beautiful colors. This one posed for us near the picnic area at the Serengeti park entrance. |
| After a leisurely breakfast, we left Crater Lodge to head to the Serengeti with a stop at Olduvai Gorge on the way. After a little more than an hours drive, we arrived at the visitor's center at Olduvai Gorge where we got a brief presentation on the geologic layers in the gorge and what had been discovered there. There was also a small two room museum with castings of the human and animal skeletons and foot prints that had been found in the surrounding area by the Leakeys and others. It was quite fascinating and well worth the slight detour. |  |
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We arrived at the Serengeti National Park entrance and had our box lunch. There were many tens of Superb Starlings flying around and hoping to get lunch leftovers. Once we finished lunch, we took a walk on the short nature trail that goes to the top of the hill next to the picnic area. The view from the top was quite nice. On the trail, we saw several male and female Agama lizards. The male is very colorful as can be seen in the photo above. It's hard to imagine how these colors could have been evolutionarily beneficial. |
| We headed from the picnic area toward the lodge where we'd be spending
the next two nights - the Serengeti
Serena Lodge. As we headed down the long, straight road from the
entrance, we saw a couple trucks stopped on a side road at one of the
many kopjes (pronounced copy) in this area. A kopje is a rock formation
that protrudes from the flat plains.
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When we got to the kopje, we saw a pair of cheetahs under a tree.
These would be the only cheetahs we saw up close (we saw another one in
Ngorongoro Crater, but it was far away).
After watching the cheetahs for a while, we continued further into the park and found a leopard in a tree with a fresh kill.
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| Shortly after this, we found two lionesses eating a zebra and chasing off vultures. It was fascinating to watch the interplay between the lions and vultures. Eventually, the vultures managed to make off with a few pieces of zebra. |  |