Best safari in 25 years

By Ian Johnson: My recent clients are fanatical wildlife photographers!! This would be there 3rd safari with me - I had planned to concentrate the safari around the southern Serengeti to maximize the opportunity of seeing the great wildebeest migration and the plethora of predators who are always close by!

Due to the late rains we only managed to see the migration for the first 2 days of a 14 day safari. This proved to be no problem! As my dreams of a young boy of ten when I first saw a photo of wild dogs hunting on the Ndutu serengeti plains were to be realized. We managed to locate a pack of 24 adult wild dogs!  On two consecutive days they hunted and killed an adult wildbeest and a calf, offering hours of amazing photography as they are extremely social animals! The safari was to become one of the best I have ever done in more than 25 years!

Every single day we were offered unique and exceptional sightings by the glorious untouched Ngorongoro-Serengeti ecosystem:

• Two mother cheetahs; one with 5 cubs (only 3 weeks old) and a more active mom with 4 cubs of 8 weeks old. We watched them hunt, kill, miss and teach their cubs all the skills necessary for life on the plains!
• We were also privileged to see a very rare mother striped hyena feed a pup at their den with a wildebeest calf kill.
• In total we spent time with 68 lions, 29 cheetah, 24 wild dogs, striped hyenas, jackals, bat-eared foxes, 122 spotted hyena, in between Ndutu and Ngorongoro Crater.
• On our second last day just when we thought we had seen it all we witnessed a titanic battle between 2 male lions and a lioness trying to kill a buffalo cow in Ngorongoro Crater!  I have waited my entire wildlife career to capture images of a male lion jumping onto the back of a buffalo! She promptly used her immense power to toss the 230kg male lion off her back as if he weighed nothing:  The power of adrenaline and the will to live!

The Ndutu area in the southern Serengeti-Ngorongoro conservation area is truly one of the last great places on earth to witness all of Africa's  predators.

For more information on this or other safari options, please do not hesitate to contact us.