The penultimate post..

Apologies for anyone who wanted to see the last two posts, obviously we've been running around a little since we got back and I've sort of forgotten. Anyway, I thought I'd finish the last few weeks for my own records. If you want to look at the photos go ahead. Kili and Zanzibar will follow on shortly.

Following on from the primates of Uganda, we had 4 days viewing the myriad of wildlife living in the Northern Serengeti. The basic format of each day was to wake up early drive around for a few hours, do a bit more in the afternoon before starting to drink at around sunset. As a concept I think it'll catch on one day...

To get there we had another short flight in a Cessna Caravan, something which I think Bec was beginning to really really enjoy. Well that or hate to the point of tears. I forget which.

This plane was destined to be mine. Can't be many people known as Keg around...

Think seeing this next to he pilots chair really helped Bec's confidence

As did airports like this..

Still, it did provide some stunning views

The photos of these expeditions are below. All you have to do is add the soundtrack of a larger than life driver and musically interesting Masaai spotter to get the real sense of being there. The day I hear the Jambo, Jambo Bwana song again will have come to soon.

First up is a pride of lions who hung around the same sort of area most days. In fact the sheer numbers of lions in the region was one of the most surprising things as far as I was concerned. There were big groups of them seemingly wherever we went.

Lion posing #1

Lion posing #2

Lions posing #3/4/5

Later on we came across a mother cheetah and her two cubs with a fresh kill (and one or two vultures). 

Two cheetah cubs

Don;y you hate it when your mother cleans stuff off your face?

There's a real art in not giving a shit..

One this guy didn't have, as shortly after this he did a nice mock charge which woke Bec up a little

The first leopard we saw. Shortly after this photo it jumped down the other side and disappeared into the long grass.

We also got a glimpse of a black rhino, something which is apparently very hard to do in the Serengeti nowadays sadly.

After 5 months with Bec it was nice to have someone I could talk eye to eye with.

We didn't swim.

Hiding their children from any attempt at photos appeared to be a popular game among elephants

Not a bad place to start drinking for the night

Or to stop for breakfast

Running hippo. I think Bec wanted to keep it.

Cheetah brothers. Apparently they're really good hunters. Sadly they also seemed to be good at doing absolutely nothing.

One of the many herds dotted around

Hyenas rarely look cute do they?

Just taking lunch to work, no biggie

A better view of a leopard. It had jumped away and hidden earlier but slunk back after all the cars had gone, so we went back and disturbed it a second time...

There really were too many other pictures to put here, so I'll just put 2 I liked:

From the Serengeti we had a short flight to Gibbs Lodge, near the Ngronogoro crater, something I'd wanted to go to since I was very small (smallish?). Before going there though I took a short walk to something called the Elephant Cave, where elephants have made a cave while digging for minerals.
Sadly though the cave collapsed a little while back:

Elephant "Cave"

There was a nice waterfall though

And a bushbaby or two came to dinner

The crater itself was sadly not quite what I hoped it would be, with too many cars allowed in, and as a result the wildlife being more tame than one might expect in a national park. Still, the scenery around the rim is stunning, and there were some beautiful views:

Lions doing lion things

Elephant/hippo spa time

Another black rhino, just a little far away

A view from halfway up the rim

And the other way

Then the cloud which hid the view for most of the day rolled back in, so we left

In interests of fairness, here's a couple of views showing who else you spend your time with in the crater:

Next up: Kili...

Ape perfect week and apologies

So it turns out African wifi makes keeping this up to date basically impossible, especially factoring in time spend in the Serengeti and on Kilimanjaro... Thankfully Bec is having a post-trekking beauty session, allowing me the chance to finally try and catch up. I'll do Uganda now and hope to finish up with Tanzania soon...

After the amazing hospitality encountered in India, we hoped that ten days trekking and viewing wildlife in Uganda might provide the opportunity for us to get a bit fitter before we attempt Kilimanjaro. In principle this was a good plan. In practice however the trekking has been incredibly easy (if a touch humid) and each meal seems to consist of at least three courses. Ah well, at least Bec will be able to tell me what the summit looks like when I roll back downhill...

 In fact getting to the gorillas was harder as it involved trying to fit into a tiny box. As you can see I was happy to be out:

My legs hurt

 I don't think either of us were filled with confidence when we saw this on the passenger seat either:

Quick, find the chapter on emergency landings!

Before heading up to the gorillas we stopped by to visit some pygmies, pretty much just so Bec could take this photo:

I hope he didn't mind

We also visited a local school. Thankfully I had the presence of mind to take a photo of Bec dancing, and she didn't manage to reciprocate...

Kids are awesome

 She did however take this gem of a man reviving a kite which had knocked itself out on a pane of glass in the hotel. I just hope no one takes this approach if I ever knock myself out:

Poor bird

The gorilla trekking at Bwindi was the obvious highlight, and achieved the unusual feat of meeting very high expectations. The trek is much easier than anticipated, and you really don't need to be fit to do it. If you're a real porker you can pay an extra US$200 to get carried up by porters...

The gorillas themselves were amazing, hopefully these photos do them justice:

Preparing to head through the undergrowth

The silverback getting a touch closer than I'd prefer

Laid back lunch

Elephant footprints in the forest. Thankfully/sadly none were around

Some more of the support team. The guy in the beret had the most amazing voice ever. Would be a perfect Bond baddie.

From there the next stop was Queen Elizabeth National Park, which is home to tree climbing lions (apparently the only place they seem to do it although I've seen numerous claims in other places...), although a couple of hours looking up trees didn't provide much more than some neckache as we drove past. We also got a bit of attitude off this guy:

The motorboat safari was far more successful, and an excellent way to spend 2 hours:

Wine through a straw = class

Jesus elephant

The next day we dropped into the other worldly Kyambura Gorge, which features a semi-habituated group of 24 chimps. We spent a couple of hours with ten of them, but they were more interested in getting drunk on ripe fruit than coming down to the ground to see who was intruding upon their breakfast. The real highlight came when the guide said he'd take us to find the hippos which live in the river, only to find they'd moved from where he thought they should be. Bec then proceeded to quietly panic, resulting in her wanting to stop, but realising that would put more distance between her and the man with the gun... When asked if they might be on land he replied "hippos are always in the water during the day", to which a more animated australian voice replied "well they bloody weren't yesterday!". Thinking about it the elephant and lion footprints which we saw at the start of the walk probably didn't help matters either..

The gorge itself

Anti-ant chic

You may notice a lack of chimp photos here. For some reason they decided they'd rather stay up the trees, leading to some wonderfully bad photos. We got some much better photos at the next place so...

The next stop was to a lodge near Kibale Forest, within a beautiful area of old crater lakes looking towards the towering Rwnenzori Mountains. Once again the reason for visiting was to go trekking with chimps, and this time we got to see them on the ground. By the end I'm pretty sure Bec felt like she'd seen enough of them on the ground and wanted them back in the trees, especially as one aspiring alpha male candidate ran down the path we were standing on and and smacked our guide on the leg. It was at that point that Bec decided she'd seen enough chimps for one holiday...

What you looking at?

Oh, I see. Look away then.

For some reason he found Bec very funny

Giant snail! I bet you were all waiting for this..

The rest of the time has been spent dodging thunderstorms and sampling a brand of rose which is so nice that Bec is fast asleep despite the fact that we were supposed to be going on a walk around the farm. On the plus side, I get to pretend like I'm sad not to have done it, and also can now follow Wimbledon while writing this*. Genius.

Next up, the Serengeti and Ngorongoro crater...

R&B

*You may notice that some of this was written a while ago. Well it was (I'm now in Doha airport on the way home), but I've had to wait until now to upload the photos, which, lets be honest, are the only reason people are here anyway).