Jenn's Passage

In Tanzania, 25% of the land is protected in parks or reserves. Serengeti National Park is one of them. While driving between Ngorogoro Crater and Serengeti National Park, we witnessed the famous great migration from Masai Mara to the Serengeti. We watched thousands and thousands of wildebeests, water buffalo, zebras, and gazelles slowly walk in tandem. The massive scale was striking.

We camped in Serengeti National Park with no fencing around us, so it was quite noisy at night. A water buffalo stamped around our tent, hyenas wreaked havoc with the garbage and cackled at us on the way to the bathroom, and lions woke us with their roars. Campers can’t leave their shoes outside the tent because jackals will chew on them. When leaving the tent for the day, we had to zip every flap because baboons have figured out easy zippers.

Harte beasts have heart shaped antlers.

Dik-diks are the smallest of the antelope species.

Impalas have a black “M” on their rear end which is why locals call them McDonald’s.

We saw plenty of topi but missed snapping a shot.

A minuscule amount of the Great Migration shown below.

Hippos are notoriously very aggressive if a person blocks there way. Luckily, we viewed many hippos from a safe distance and enjoyed their quirky behaviors like farting under water, prolonged yawns, and close quarters. Hippos can hold their breath up to 7 minutes. They spend the day snoozing in the water to keep cool and graze on grass on land during the night. When a mother hippo gives birth to a male hippo, she will keep him in a separate location for up to 6 years. At that point, the son must return to the herd and kill his own father in order to stay.

There are over 800,000 Maasai people, mostly living in Kenya and Tanzania. To respect the local people, I didn’t take a photo of any Maasai but found a photo online.