150 +

Some days are just brilliant.
We went out early morning, our aim is to find the lions we left yesterday. A w9 there a re buffalo tracks entering the block between breakfast point and r20, we saw the tracks yesterday evening and the lions went in the same directions. So we do. We drive the perimeter of the area to find if the buffs walked out, half of the way I spotted tracks. Stopped for a closer look, they are going out of the area but on top of their tracks there are tracks of lions going opposite. We switch the car of and get out to check better, we know the tracks are fresh. After few second we receive confirmation, lions are growling somewhere close by.... the kind of growling they use when the put up a fight over food. We know they are eating... we soon find them, 24 lions feeding on a fresh buffalo kill. The sound is astounding, the light superb. Blood is all over the cats, the buffalo almost disappears in the number of golden furs.
The male already had their share and move into shade but cubs, females and young males fight for every inch.
Hissing, growling, hitting each other, every lion was holding onto a bit of the buff.
It went like this for 2 hours, to hours of feeding frenzy, two hours of chaos, two hours of blood and dust.
The sound increased and decreased in waves, lions so close that I had to be careful.
One young male came and wanted to play with my leg, I had to shout him back and he dutifully did. Was great fun.
The party was not yet finished when we moved off.
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We had breakfast at the old airstrip, enjoyed the shadow that baobabs were casting against the granite boulders, moved off and found Ten, the pride that used to be of ten cats but now is of eleven, we found them the other side of the river, a bit far but now we could cross so we went amongst them and spent a good our looking at them from close quarter.
On the way back to camp we were call into a leopard sighting and was just unbelievable. A female in the fork of a baobab, completely relaxed with us. She was not sleeping but constantly checking something we could not see. After more then one hour we understood what it was... a male baboon came out running and the cat leaped out of the tree and disappeared in the bush.

Back to camp I opened the guest book to find this comment form the two guest that left this morning.. "What a privilege to have been guided by two of the most outstanding guides not just of Tanzania but of the whole of Africa. Thank you Pietro and Festo. We also love the camp, the food and the staff. We have been to 150+ national parks, reserves and conservancies in Africa and this is the best camp we have been to!"
Just watching at the colors of the combretum would have made me happy, a day like this is even too much, I cannot ask more.

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