We were tired. The day had started around 3:30am when we quickly prepared for the drive to one of the entrances into Serengeti National Park. We entered the park a little before 7am, after meeting up with our safari guide and settling into the Land Rover.
It had already been a very successful day. We'd seen a herd of about 30 elephants right off the bat. We'd seen one of the greatest wonders in the world, the Great Migration of widebeest and zebra in the region, with thousands upon thousands of animals filling the area as far as we could see. We'd seen a leopard hanging out in a tree. And we'd spent a couple hours circling rock clusters in the prairie areas, finding a number of lions in various stages of their mid-afternoon naps.
It was around 4pm and we were thinking about getting to the lodge and enjoying an evening of food and rest before Day #2. As we were driving along the open fields with tall grass our driver slowed to a snail's pace. We weren't sure what was going on. Had he seen something? Had he received a report that a particular animal had been spotted in the area? Or did he just have a hunch? As I stared out the window I all of a sudden saw the head of an animal in the distance that looked different than the other heads I'd seen to that point in the day. After grabbing the binoculars, I was able to quickly confirm that there was a cat out there with spots. We'd found a cheetah!
The cheetah was quite a ways off of the road, but since there were no other vehicles around, our driver pulled off the road and headed straight towards our exciting find. But we could no longer see her! The head had disappeared and we had to just continue towards the spot we had seen. We arrived at the spot and still couldn't see anything. But then we found her. She was laying low in the grass, hoping we'd miss her. Then we realized why. Right next to her was a freshly-killed Thomson's gazelle, her afternoon meal that she was not willing to part with. We pulled within about 15 feet of her. She wasn't happy, but was willing to put up with us as long as she could keep her meal. She grabbed the gazelle and pulled it away as we snapped away with our cameras and spent a few minutes simply staring at her. It was an amazing moment I'd realized might never happen in my lifetime. We'd found a cheetah and completed our trifecta of seeing all three large, amazing cats of the Serengeti in one day! What a blessing!
We saw five more cheetahs the next day.
No comments:
Post a Comment