Serengeti Plains

The Serengeti Plains were named by the Maasai because when they were in search of water they were walking through the plains for along time and called it "siringeti" which means 'endless plains" in Maasai language. It is a very appropriate name because it seems endless: it is 14,763 km squared, and it is the size of Connecticut or Northern Ireland!
As we entered the Serengeti we saw a huge bull elephant - he was at least 6 tons and he walked right in front of our jeep. We had to be very quiet. Awesome! We headed further into the central plains and saw extremely strange rock formations. They stuck out on the flat horizon. They are called kopjes (pronounced copies) and were formed because of volcanic activity in the area. The two most exciting things we saw on our first day in Serengeti were 2 leopards up in a tree (this was our number 5 of the big 5) and a pool of hippos with their mouths open, including 2 on land.
We stayed the night at mobile tented camp called Kati Kati. It was cool sleeping in a tent in the middle of the plains with the sound of lions around you. The next day we went out and saw more new things. It was fascinating when we watched 2 ostriches doing a mating dance and I learned from our guide that one ostrich egg can feed 15 people, and only Egyptian eagles and vultures can crack the eggs open with a rock. The most exciting thing, however, was when we saw a troop of baboons and two of the males were fighting to be dominant. We also saw a large Nile crocodile sunbathing on land and a monitor lizard, which is one of the biggest lizards.
We stopped at Serengeti National Park Visitors Centre ( a very interesting exhibition) and there were many, many rock hyraxes. Did you know that the rock hyrax's closest relative is the elephant, even though he's the size of a small ground hog!
We were mainly looking for lions in the Serengeti, but sadly we didn't see any. On our way out of the plains, the road was very muddy because of the rain, and at one point we almost got stuck and had to drive into the grass. We were not able to go back because of the risk of getting stuck, but I think I saw a toad the size of a large guinea pig - but it could have been a rock! Just as we left the park we did see a cheetah sitting proudly on a rock looking around for prey.

I did enjoy the Serengeti a lot, but I didn't find it as exciting as Ngorongoro because of the large spaces between seeing animals. This might be because the migrations were early, and most of the wilder beast, zebra, antelopes and their predators were already on Ngorongoro Plains.