escapewindow | vi: olduvai gorge. seronera. serengeti. 10 oct 2012 (Reply)

In the morning, we left early to get to Olduvai Gorge before the heat, and because Louise Leakey had a plane to catch. We saw the original site and spent some time in the museum. I decided to start using my largely-ignored-til-now full-spectrum/infrared camera at this point, and was pretty happy with the results.

We entered Serengeti National Park and saw a pride of lions sleeping in the shade.

We stopped in Seronera for lunch, where there were hyrax waiting to eat any scraps we dropped. One of them peed in Marc's coffee as he cut my smuggled leftover birthday cake from the night before. :)

While photographing dwarf mongoose, I dropped my 5d2 and broke my 715nm infrared filter. I still had a 590nm infrared filter so I tried that for the rest of the trip, but I'm just not as into the results. The colors are gaudier and I don't have the chops to take advantage of the super color in photoshop. I have a new 715nm filter on its way.

We saw some lion cubs crossing the road with their mother, and watched the pride for a while.

When we heard of something exciting in the distance, we took off, full speed, and decided the hotel could wait a while. We sped along for a while until we realized we were heading right into a storm, and headed back to the hotel. (I later found we were trying for a leopard, which would have been our first.)

On the way to the hotel, we found an elephant in the road, drinking rainwater.

We checked into the Serengeti Sopa Lodge, again with the customary wet washcloth and fresh fruit juice welcome. The view outside our balcony was gorgeous, and included some monkeys on the balcony next door.