It never hapenned!!!!

It never happened, an hour and fifteen minutes is the record!!, and this is what happened; we took a drive down into the crater with a picnic lunch and we decided to start our drive through the famous Lerai forest actually it was a nice day. Just at the beginning of the forest we saw the troop of Velvet monkeys up in the Fever trees acacias and one big troop of baboons it was a windy day I remember, it all started at 11H15 after like a hundred meters of driving I spotted the old tracks of Leopard and wait a second it was a windy day and we decided to track her down and after few meters they disappears in the forest and triggers our attention to look up in trees just in a fork of a Quinine tree and it was just the right front leg that's the one did not blend well as the rest of the body that was the only way for us to spot her. We spend almost an hour with her and she changed her sleeping posture and that was a perfect camouflage hopefully after we left that sighting nobody spotted her again. At the very end of that forest we came across the famous Legend of the crater an Elephant with longest tusk of the whole crater very relaxed and quite visual and then by the Gorigori swamp we saw some Hippos outside the water after the swamp by the Legend tail of the Whale there was a female Rhinoceros with her calf a kind of far from the road but still quite visual and on the other side of the road a huge breeding heard of Buffaloes, just few hundreds meters away there was a mating pair of Lions with one of the black manned lions one of the late dominant of the crater about a year ago they were three of them but now they only dominate the southern side of the crater only BUT we only saw the male and later we saw the female she was in a ditch and in front of her there was a heard of Zebras, in a blink of an eye she basted in a full speed and caught a Zebra by that time the male was sitting far observing her hunting and he came up and joined her but they did not eat much they were already full so, it seemed they just hunt for fun unbelievable just a hundred and fifty meters opposite them there was a single Cheetah but they did not see each other and by that time it was 12h30....BUT, it did not end up in there. After that we went for our lunch stop and we continued with our drive at the North east of the crater by Munge river almost the late evening we came across a beautiful sight of a female Lioness with her two cubs less than two weeks old crossing the road in front of us it was so shame because it seems that was the cubs first time out, first we saw the mother come towards us and I stopped the vehicle and few seconds we heard the mew calls of cubs and the mother with confidence approached the vehicle with the cubs behind but when the cub got in the middle of the road they stuck and puzzled with another vehicle in front of ours and they were so nervous they could not even cross the until their mother came back and hold one of them by the neck and the other followed. The most amazing part was the mother crossed the river and the cubs got stuck on the other side until the mother came back and decided to sleep right there. Few meters to western of that place up in a Fig tree there were two medium sized about four months' old cubs in that tree and then WE CALLED IT A DAY!

Posted: Ngorongoro Crater by eddie isaac, Date: 18 November 2008