Travelling Hopefully - Lions on Roads, Under Trees and in Zebras

Lions!  I saw lions!  Everybody else saw them too of course but they don't have blogs so I'm claiming them.

Our first encounter with lions was in the Ngorongoro crater and fulfilled every expectation I had of lion sightings.  ie they were a fair distance away and well camouflaged against the grassland which made it difficult to see them at all.  But that was just a teaser.  It turns out lions are dreadful hams and over the next few days the problem would not be photographing lions but shoving the things out of the view screen long enough to get a few other animal shots.

The first rather spectacular example of this came shortly after the disappointing initial encounter with lions.  As we drove around Ngorongoro we noticed a huge cluster of jeeps so we went up to take a look.  A pair of lions had decided to doze on the road and the jeeps were simultaneously jockeying for photography positions and trying to avoid the lions.  This became a little more difficult for one jeep when a lion promptly flopped down under the vehicle and went to sleep.  The jeep could literally not move without running the thing over (frowned on in Ngorongoro which is after all a nature park).  The occupants of the jeep in question alternated between taking photos and wondering if they were going to be stuck there all night.  Eventually another jeep nudged up until it was about a metre away from the offending lion and revved the engine ferociously.  The lion slowly got up and moved about a metre and a half to the left providing the captive jeep with just enough space to get free.

Inside the Serengeti there seemed to be lions everywhere.  They sprawled under trees and padded menacingly around and generally put Big Cats Diary to shame.  On our last day there we were treated to the sight of a pair of lions conducting an impromptu autopsy on a zebra so freshly dead that the vultures hadn't had time to arrive (most likely cause of death? lions).

The very last shot of a lion we got was a heavily maned specimen pacing slowly along and followed, at a respectful distance by three gazelles.  That last bit sounds a little odd but I suspect that once you have the enemy in your sights its a very good idea to keep him there.