African Safari

A safari on the Serengeti in Tanzania has been on my bucket list for a long time. While earlier visitors to the area have gone there to hunt with guns and bring home trophies for their wall, my desire has always been to hunt with my camera and bring home as many photos of animals as possible. As a result, our two-week trip produced almost 800 phots of a wide variety of exotic animals. Take a look at the gallery for a few examples of what we saw.

The adventure began with 15 hours of airline travel from Orlando to Dubai, Dubai to Nairobi and then to the Kilimanjaro airport at Arusha, Tanzania. The first part of the Safari took place in an area called the Caldera, which contained huge herds of zebras, elephants, wildebeests, hippos, giraffes, and other grazing animals to numerous to mention. Where there is an abundance of prey, there were also predators in large numbers—lions, hyenas, vultures, and jackals. In addition, we saw, and I photographed warthogs, baboons and many beautiful and exotic birds.

From the Caldera, our safari trucks crossed miles of desert to the Serengeti. Here the animals were not in huge herds. Numbers were replaced by variety. We captured leopards, cheetahs, crocodiles, ostriches, and dingoes. The main safari is capped off with a hot air balloon safari to see the plain from above.

To actually see, in the wild, the scope of animal life with which we share this planet is an amazing experience. Although my main interest is in archeology and the acts and artifacts of men around the world, this foray into the natural animal world was a broadening experience into the incredible creation our earth is.