Africa Trip 2024 - Day 6, Breakfast with the Lions

 [This is post #10 of what will be multiple posts about our 2024 trip to Africa. To go to the first post in the series CLICK HERE.] 

It is now September 15, Day 6 of our African safari.  Our long trip the day before had brought us to Mbuzi Mawe Serena Camp, which is at the northern edge of the Central Serengeti. 

Stylized map of the Central Serengeti.  Mbuzi Mawe Serena Camp is the red circle in the upper center immediately above Retina Pool.  Our next camp was Karibu Sametu Camp, the red circle on the far eastern edge of the Central Serengeti. (https://www.africadreamsafaris.com/maps/central-serengeti)

In many ways the Central Serengeti is what most people visualize when they think of an east African safari: wide open gassy plains with a few dispersed trees, kopjes (granite outcroppings), and a diversity of permanent resident wildlife,  Among the variety of wildlife, this is the region especially known for big cats: lions, leopards, and cheetahs.  

Multi-part day and what a day it turned out to be.  We wanted to explore the immediate area.  However, since we were only staying at this camp one night, we would need to make the drive to our next camp.  Therefore today would be really two parts with an interesting lunch break thrown in.  

The morning was a close by game drive, the subject of this post.  Our lunch break at the camp involved some interesting critters, so that is the subject of the next post.  Finally the afternoon would be the drive to our next camp, with stops to see anything interesting.  We saw even more great things along the way and is the subject of yet another post.  

Three posts for just one day?!  Yes indeed.  We saw all three large cats just today.  Not only did we see them, but we got to see them doing some really interesting things often right next to us.

Up dark and early.  One of our goals for the day was to see some lions.  Lions usually hunt at night and sleep much of the day.  The best time to see them moving around, since night time travel in the park is forbidden, is dawn or dusk.  We were therefore up before daybreak in preparation for an early start.

It was still dark outside when we made our way to the central lounge area (i.e. lobby).  As with all of the camps, that meant we needed to call for an escort to avoid any problems with animal encounters.  We had heard lots of animal noises throughout the night, although we did not know until later that much of that was due to the local hyraxes (more on them in the next post).   However it was clear as we pulled away from the camp later in the morning that there were a large number of African buffalo very close by.  I am glad we did not have any up close encounters with them, with or without an escort.

Looking back towards camp as we left in the safari vehicle we could see several African buffalo very close by, including this guy.  Note one of the camp buildings in the background.

Since we were leaving before breakfast was served, the camp staff kindly provided us with coffee, juice and muffins to tide us over until we got to our boxed breakfasts later in the vehicle. 

Looking for Lions.  Once on our way, we did not stop for much since we were anxious to find lions before they settled down for the day.  We did see this hornbill near camp.  According to iNaturralist this is an African Grey Hornbill, one of 24 hornbill species found in Africa.  Seeing a hornbill brought back memories of Zazu, one of my favorite characters in The Lion King.

African Gray Hornbill

Fazal immediately started driving up and down several of the roads in the area.  He was looking for the lions.  Since I did not know what to look for I just took everything in as best I could  There were lots of gazelles and other grazing animals, but I did not see much of anything else. 

Below is a video of part of our wanderings.  There are several things to note in the video.

• The road, like all roads in the Serengeti, is unpaved and rough.
  
• This is primarily open grassland, although the grass is quite dry since it is near the end of the dry season.
• There are some trees.  What I did not realize until later is that the trees are mostly along a small creek.  The road roughly paralleled the creek.  The creek was dried up in most places, but there were a few remaining "waterholes". 
• Although they are difficult to see unless viewing the video full screen on a computer monitor (downside of shooting this with an ultra wide lens on my GoPro), there were lots of grazing animals that scattered as we approached.  These were primarily Thomson's Gazelles, often referred to as "tommies".
• Although there were animals, there were no other safari vehicles anywhere in sight.
  

Although I had not realized it since I was too busy looking at everything, our gps track showed we had been at this for over an hour.  Fazal tried not to show it, but he was getting frustrated. 

Lions returning from their overnight hunt.  Finally he spotted the lions heading north.  I did not see them, but he quickly moved us to a location ahead of them next to the treeline and south of where he knew the waterholes to be.  He suspected that is where the lions were headed.  Sure enough, here they came headed straight for us, three adult female lions.

And then there were cubs,lots and lots of cubs.  I was so busy taking pictures of the lionesses coming from their overnight hunt that I totally missed a huge set of cubs pouring out to meet them.  

 

 The lionesses had left the cubs overnight in the trees near the water with a "nanny lion" while they went to go hunt.  The cubs were overjoyed to see them, as can be seen in the picture and video below.

 

 

At the very end of the video you can hear a roar.  It was a fourth lioness returning from the hunt.  It was hard to get them all in one picture, but by our count there were five adults (four that had gone hunting plus the nanny) and twelve cubs.

The lions spent quite sometime socializing with the cubs and with one another.

 

Meandering north to the waterhole.  After a lot of socializing, the lions finally starting meandering further north, much to the concern of the Thomson's Gazelles nearby.

 

 

 

They eventually ended up at a waterhole which was 0.6 miles north of where we originally saw them, i.e. the group hug location.  

Lions at the waterhole

Fazal kept moving us to different locations so we could see the lions clearly.  Our gps track is shown below superimposed on an aerial view of the area.  It looks kind of crazy at first, however the darker north-south green line is the tree line along the seasonal creek.  The creek actually splits at the waterhole into two branches, one going northeast and one going northwest.  Over the course of multiple hours that morning we spent time on both sides of the creek. 

The location of the lions' group hug is towards the south. This picture is only a very small portion of our track.  Before seeing the lions we had gone 2.5 miles further south along the treeline.  The waterhole is further north.  The distance from "Lion Group Hug" to "Waterhole" is about 0.6 miles. 

GPS track with waypoints for key animal sightings morning of 9-15.  North-south darker curvy green line is the tree line along the seasonal creek.  Distance from Breakfast waypoint to Lion Group Hug waypoint is 0.6 miles.

Lions on the move again.  After watching the lions at the waterhole we went further north.  In the picture below the lions are leaving the water hole and walking north towards us.  By this time a few other vehicles had shown up.

Lions leaving the waterhole

The lions were not concerned at all about the vehicles.

The lions continued further north...directly towards us!

Some of them thought the shade from our vehicle was a good place to rest.

I saw a cub walking straight for the front of our vehicle.  With so many lions nearby I did not want to hang out the window, so I stuck the camera out the window, aimed in his general direction, and hoped for the best. I got lucky and got the picture below.  I love the expression on his face as he seems to be trying to figure out what a safari vehicle is.

One of the cubs checking out our vehicle

For whatever reason the lions only stayed next to us for a few minutes then moved on to catch up with the rest of the pride.

On to join the rest of the pride

 It wasn't easy getting that many cubs moving forward.  They were just so playful.

 

Herding cats

 However the mothers prevailed and got everyone in line.

Time for Breakfast.  They finally settled down in the shade of a small tree.  None of their actions since the lionesses and cubs had reunited had been the least bit hurried.  It had taken them an hour to slowly meander northward to this site 0.6 miles from where we first saw them.

 

We moved a bit closer so we could watch, then decided this was a great place to sit back and dig into our box breakfasts.   I couldn't believe we were sitting there eating breakfast just feet from this pride of lions. 

Of course we kept switching between eating and taking pictures of the lions doing their lion things.

I would never want to come in contact with them when out of the vehicle, but from here they so much reminded me of  the many cats we have had over the years.

Yes, they lick their paws like all kitties seem to do.

Yes, they lounge in all kinds of weird orientations like all kitties seem to do.

Cat napping.  Check out the size of the paws.  The one on the left showing the pads belongs to the cub.  Momma's paw is that gigantic one in the center on top of the cub.

We move on.  It had been more than two hours since we first saw the lionesses heading towards us from their overnight hunt.  At that time we were the only vehicle in sight.  However more vehicles had gradually arrived.  Now there was quite the crowd gathered around the sleeping lions and more vehicles appeared to be coming.

Crowd of vehicles around the sleeping lions

Elephants.  To get away from the crowd we moved south and sure enough spotted something new and very exciting...elephants!   First a bull elephant and then the matriarchal herd were working their way northward along the tree line.

Bull elephant ahead of the herd.

The bull elephant had obviously been in some water.  Given all of the mud on his tusks, he probably had been digging in the mud to find water.  In addition to using it to cool off, elephants need to drink about 50 gallons of water a day.

Most of the herd.  Note the two young ones play fighting on the left.

Lots of little ones

Small, medium, and large, with extra small tucked in behind

They passed us...

Elephants passing by

....then we passed them.  We continued leapfrogging them as they slowly moved north along the tree line.

We jumped ahead, but they soon caught up with us.   The dry creek bed is in the foreground.

We moved just a bit, then to my surprise the mother and baby came right up to the bushes in front of us.

Mother and baby grazing immediately next to us.

Despite being the largest land animals, elephants are herbivores and only eat vegetation.  An adult elephant eats an average of 300 lb of food a day.  That includes all types of leaves, twigs, tree bark, roots, bushes, grass, and fruit. 

Elephants have a sweet tooth.  We could see them eating a variety of things at this spot.  However the mother was particularly interested in the two bushes on each side of us.  These are bushveldt gardenias which, at least this time of year, have white colored fruit about the size of a baseball.

Fruit on the bushveldt gardenia

Apparently elephants have quite the sweet tooth and will go after fruit whenever they can.  She was working hard to pick them off with her trunk.

Elephant with a bushveldt gardenia fruit

Below is a video of the mother and baby eating in front of us.  The baby is eating low hanging leaves and grass, but the mother is more focused on the fruit.  Near the end, at approximately the 28 second mark, she grabs the fruit with her trunk from the bush on the right, starts to put it in her mouth but drops it, picks it up and gets it in her mouth this time.

What happened?  Suddenly these two and all of the other elephants quietly turned and started walking at a right angle away from the tree line.  There was no panic or even particular hurry, but they all immediately stopped what they were doing and started to move away.

Elephants suddenly leaving

They seemed so content chomping away on the bushes and grass.  Why did they suddenly turn and leave?  According to Fazal, they had gotten far enough north that they smelled the lions and decided to take off to avoid a confrontation.   Even a pride of lions could probably not bring down a healthy adult elephant.  Indeed the lion would risk being killed by the elephant.  However, lions might try to attack a very young elephant even though it would be fiercely defended by the adults.  With all of the little ones in this herd it seems the adults decided it wasn't worth the trouble to get any closer to the lions.

Back to the Lions then to Lunch.  By this time the crowd of vehicles around the lions had thinned out so we watched them for awhile longer.  The nanny lion left to get something to eat.  We thought we might see her chasing some of the tommies or warthogs we could see in the distance, but she went further than we could see.    

The lions continued to lounge around.

That was likely to continue, especially during the heat of the day.  As one guidebook noted, lions spend 20 hours out of 24 conserving energy unless the opportunity for easy to catch prey presents itself.  We therefore decided to head back to camp for lunch and a little down time before loading the vehicle for the trip to our next camp.  Turns out lunch was a bit more entertaining than expected due to this little guy and his friends, hyraxes.  That is the subject of the next post.

The Frog with a hyrax