Tanzania Part 3 Grumeti

We left Tarangire Park completely satisfied with what we had seen. We felt that anything more that we saw would just be "extra" and this allowed us to largely relax and not feel that we HAD to get out early and HAD to spend extra time trying to see more.
However, we both had sore backs and other parts too from sitting in the seats of the modified Toyota Land Cruisers were had been in. We needed hot water bottles to sooth strained areas at night.
We had two flights to get from Tarangire to the western Serengeti- Grumeti River Camp on July 19. First we went from Kuro to Manyara and then to Grumeti. The nice thing here is that the air strip is only 5 minutes drive from the camp. The stop in Manyara was interesting because we flew over the lake and saw thousands of what were reported to be Flamingoes below. The airstrip is located on a plateau high above the lake, so when we took off it was like flying off a cliff.
We were met at Grumeti by our guide- "Killian". He was very nice and seemed quite knowledgeable. We went to our tent and then relaxed while watching the 40 or so hippos that live in front of the camp in the river. It was our first siting of hippos in the wild! The camp is right along the river so we heard the various noises they made during the night and day. They are quite noisy at times! They graze mostly at night on the land by the river, but they come out during the day too. We learned that hippos kill more people in Africa than any other wild species. Many of those deaths occur when the people get between the hippo and water as they feel somewhat threatened when out of the water.
In the afternoon of the 19th we went on a game drive with Killian and Cindy and Ken who were visiting from Florida. They were nice people and pleasant company. As we started out we saw some crocodiles- also a new siting for us. We were not seeing a lot of new species, but as we say, we had seen a lot already! As we drove, we saw some vultures in one area and suggested that this might be interesting, but Killian took his time before going there. (We later learned that the presence of vultures most often did not mean much.) As we drove toward the vultures we saw a large family of elephants- maybe more than 15, but they were on the other side of the river from us. Killian then saw a group of lions and then we saw one of the male elephants charge at the lions! This was interesting to see. Killian quickly decided to take us closer by backtracking and crossing the river and we were the first to get there to see the lion pride consisted of 1 male, 3 females and 2 cubs. they were being chased further and further away by the charging male elephant. The elephants had babies and lion will sometimes try to take a baby elephant, so they were being chased away. The full grown elephants had little to fear. We got some good pictures of the lions- especially one that was behind a bush as we drove past. He/she paid little attention to us, in any sort of threatening way, but was annoyed by us, so he rejoined the family.
We drove on and ended the evening on top of a hill where we could overlook this part of the Serengeti ("endless plain" in Masai). This is "savannah"- mostly grassland with few trees dotting the land except along the rivers where it can be thickly forested. As we returned to camp it was getting dark and we stopped when we saw two large male elephants doing battle by pushing and shoving each other to assert their dominance. We had a very good dinner at the camp in an enclosure called a "burma" or "boma" made of old tree limbs placed close together to form a fence. As we ate a large hippo came up on the grass to eat and we watched from about 10 feet away.
We had a good breakfast on the 20th and went out with Killian, Cindy and Ken. We saw lots and lots of wildebeast and zebra. This was the time of the great migration northward and we did see that they were generally moving that way. We spotted the two lion cubs from the day before. They were alone together in some brush awaiting the call of their family. We saw lots of birds and Giraffe. We saw a hyena male guarding the den and a female sitting under a tree nearby. We also saw some jackals, which are smaller than we thought. This day we saw a more common variety, but the next day we saw a pair that is an endangered variety.
In the afternoon we were in camp after lunch when a large group of elephants came nearby. One large male seemed to have a particular need to show his dominance and he marched into the camp and started pulling branches from the trees. He came very close to the main camp building and swimming pool and our tent(!) before heading off down river.
The river here does not flow all year. The hippos stay in the parts that have some water. The camp manager told us that one year the water nearly dried up and one morning they found the pool water was all muddy and one hippo was particularly clean! It rained a day or so later. In another year the elephants pushed over the camp water tower in an effort to get water.
We saw deep ruts wherever we drove and, during rainy season the plains are too muddy to cross easily, so the camp is closed for about 2 months.
On this evening our drive took us to an isolated area where we met up with the other people from the camp for some snacks and drinks in the middle of the plains to watch the sunset. There was an armed guard present in case any predators thought we might be tasty.
On our last day at Grumeti we relaxed in the morning after a good breakfast. We were a little sore from the riding around. We went out in the late afternoon and told Killian that we had seen so much at Tarangire and the other days that we didn't feel the need to see much more. However, we said that we had not seen a "bat earred fox", which we had seen in pictures. We stopped and got a picture of a hippo, some crocodiles and a monitor lizard. Later we stopped an an area where "colobus monkeys" are found and we saw 2 in the trees, thought they were far away. These are only found in a few small areas. As we road around on the plains Killian suddenly spotted a pair of foxes! We were a long way from camp so he drove as fast as he could toward the camp as the sun went down . We had to cut across the plains near the end for a few km in order to get close to camp before complete darkness- this seemed like a "real" safari! We had another good meal at dinner that night. We left on the 22nd. As we packed up to go to the airstrip, Killian said that the pride of lions we had seen 2 days earlier had killed a wildebeast nearby and we could stop to see them. We found it interesting to see "nature" in action, but were glad we did not see the kill take place. We flew off to Manyara with one or 2 stops along the way where we were met by Ernest again.