Within minutes of entering the park itself, we spotted a cheetah and her cubs hiding under a tree. Unfortunately, they were a bit too far away for our lens to do them justice, but through the binoculars we were able to watch them play & frolic together in the shade.
After leaving the cheetahs, we shortly came across an even cuter group - a bunch of lion cubs hiding under a tree just off the road! Even more intriguing was that these cubs were completely unattended - the mothers were off hunting somewhere and had left the cubs to play together!
According to an article we read that night in the Smithsonian magazine, the Serengeti's premier lion expert claimed to have only come across unattended cubs a few times in over 40 years in the park - so we felt like this was quite a special find!
After watching the cubs play for about an hour, we headed towards camp and came across a line of safari trucks staring off into the distance. Following their gaze, we spotted two leopards together in the same tree! It is rare to find leopards together - they are solitary and only come together to mate - which these two proceeded to do WHILE IN THE TREE!
The sounds of their mating were quite harsh - guttural grunts and growls - and it was lovely to watch them through the binoculars (highly recommend a good pair for anyone going on safari!)
Leaving the leopards, we were treated to a wonderful afternoon of elephants, giraffes, lions and vervet monkeys.
The vervet monkeys have a very unique set of reproductive organs - talk about blue balls! Apparently, the females find this colour very attractive - sea foam green is IN!
Returning to the camp at sunset we were extremely happy with our first day in the Serengeti and excited about what was to come.
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