On Sunday, July 12th, we left The Manor to go to the Lake Manyara Airstrip. No one wanted to leave The Manor because it was truly the best of the two stops we had done. The lodge itself was absolutely beautiful, and the service was over-the-top exceptional. But we had one more stop to make on our sky Safari, the Serengeti Migration Camp.
The take-off from the Lake Manyara Airstrip was breathtaking, because we flew right off the escarpment into open air overlooking Lake Manyara. I was lucky enough to take a video clip of this take-off. Our guide, Adam, said that this is his favorite take-off in the area.
Here's the video clip:
This is the plane we flew in to get to Lobo Airstrip in the Serengeti. It was piloted by another Spaniard who explained that the three of them trained at the same flight school in northern Spain.
And typical of the other three landings, our driver, John, had drinks and snacks waiting for us. The guy at the left in the white shirt was our pilot.
This is Terminal 1 at Lobo Airstrip. We were a bit disappointed with the duty free shopping!!! Later it was explained that eventually they will be moving the registration process for the park into this structure to make it more convenient for visitors.
The Serengeti has many areas of rock, and here, next to the zebra you can see a cape éland, one of the bigger animals of the antelope family.
This pesky little animal is a hydrax. We later found dozens of them at the Serengeti Migration Camp where we stayed for two nights. In fact, they slept on our tent roof and scurried about all night long. I tried swatting at them from inside with the handle of an umbrella, but they merely scattered to another part of the tent roof.
This colorful little guy is called an agama lizard. We saw several during our stay.
As we were driving around looking for game, we came upon this earlier kill up in a tree. Look closely in the lower center of the photo, and you will see the leg of an animal hanging from the branch.
Soon after we saw a bunch of vultures and other birds on the ground. Our guide and driver started looking around, and found a very recent kill along with the animal that killed it. See below.
Here is the guy that made the kill. In fact, take a look to his left and you will see the unfortunate wildebeest that he killed. In addition, you can see where the lion bit into his backside. In order to get the lion to look straight at us our guide played a recording of a hyena loud enough to get the lion's attention. It worked because the lion looked right at us.
Here's another Serengeti dweller. He's called a ground hornbill.
After driving around a small portion of the Serengeti National Park we arrived at our lodging. It's called the Serengeti Migration Camp. This is the bridge leading from the car park to the main "lodge area". The whole lodge is a series of tent roofs over solid structure walls.
This was our "room". Try to imagine a bunch of hyrax animals on the roof of this "tent". Even better, try to imagine Jim swatting at them with an umbrella handle!
The room was very comfortable with a rain shower, double sinks, separate toilet area, and a very comfortable bed.
This was the view outside of our deck on the back side of the tent/room.
This is the main area where guests can sit in comfortable chairs/sofas and use the camp's wifi.
This is the dining tent.
Here's a better shot of our "room".
More photos of the Serengeti after I load more off my camera card!