We left the hotel before dawn with an overarching mission – find some cheetahs. Of the big five we are still missing rhinos, but our guides assure us there are rhinos waiting for us in Kenya, which we move to in a few days.

After about an hour we found one – a mother with five cubs.

The five safari cars maneuvered around the family, moving ahead when possible to set up for pictures. What happened next was sudden – a solo hyena appeared. The cubs dove into a nearby bush while Mom ignored all of us safari tourists and dashed straight to the hyena in order to drive it away.

Hyenas are a cheetah cub’s worst nightmare – they are just snacks. If it were a pack of hyena Mom’s job would have been much harder. After a few minutes Mom came back, then she and the cubs started chirping at each other to gather back together.

They all got together and left the area. We got lucky and they moved across the dirt road as we were getting back on it.

So, mission accomplished by 8:00. Not bad. Don’t worry, today was a long day. We were planning the next step when –

SURPRISE SERVAL!

The darn cat sprinted across the road just in front of our car. This time my camera was mostly ready and I got a few shots as it dove into the bush. *Whew* After that, here’s a grab bag of other animals we found.

We spent about eight hours cruising the Serengeti, often going 30 minutes or more not seeing any animals. You can’t understand how large this national park is – about the size of Connecticut. “Endless Plains” indeed.

We did find a family of elephant on the side of a hill.

There were several times we found small “journey” of giraffe. Yes, that’s what a group of giraffe are called.

Today we passed many rivers, thus found many hippo.

In one river was a GIANT croc. I don’t know what he eats, but he’s real successful at it.

As we returned to the hotel we passed some Cape Buffalo.

The Serengeti is living up to the hype. One more day here.