Serengeti National Park
The first big safari day! But first you have to get into the park. We arrived at the Kleins Gate entrance around 7:30 AM and finally managed to get in around 9:00 AM. We didn’t have campsite reservations in advance so there was a lot of calls from the personnel at the gate to some place in the ether before we finally had confirmed sites. We spent three days in the park and spent the first day exploring the northern part of the park and spent the night at the Lobo public campsite. The next two days we explored the central and western part of the park. We spent those two nights at the Nigiri public campsite.
The reputation as the premier wildlife park in Tanzania is well deserved. So many animals! Some of my favorite photos are below.
The park was busy and there were times where multiple safari vehicles would stack up around animals. This was particularly noticeable close to the park headquarters/visitor center. If you notice that happening, it is usually worthwhile swinging by to see what they are seeing.
With that said, some of our best animal encounters were away from the heavily trafficked area. So don’t be afraid to venture out on your own. You may miss some animals, but the encounters you have may be more meaningful. In fact, most of our lion encounters in the Serengeti were when we were travelling on little used tracks or were way away from the heavily trafficked part of the park. This included coming across the fresh cape buffalo kill in the western part of the park and then a separate encounter with four lionesses crossing in front of us in the central part of the park. In both cases, we hadn’t encountered another safari vehicle for an hour or more.
One thing to consider before entering a park is how long it will take you to get out of the park from your campsite. Most of the park passes are for 24 hours so if you enter the park the first thing in the morning, you need to be out at the same time the next morning or you will be charged for an additional day. And you can’t start driving until 6:00 AM. We never ran long but can see how it could happen.