Don't let the title fool you, we are all good! We just had, well, let's call it "a day". Our day started with a wake up around 5:45 am. We woke the boys up, went to grab a coffee and hot chocolate and then set out in our safari vehicle for our full day game drive. While we were at the camp, our guide could hear some lions roaring in the distance. He told us we are going to see what they are up to this morning. Within 5-10 minutes of leaving the camp, we get stuck in a huge mud hole. Let me remind myself and everyone exactly where we are staying - a tented camp in the middle of the central Serengeti. Our guide tries multiple things to get us out of this mud pit - giant rocks under the tires, he picks tall grass to provide better traction/etc - when all fails he decides to radio the camp for help. No one at the camp answers. He tries again, and again, and again, and again and still, no one answers. Surely, someone will drive around here... Well, someone does pass by from the main road and either didn't see us or didn't want to get involved in our mud mess. Daniel, our kind guide/driver, says to us "are you ok if I leave you alone and walk to the main road to ask for help". Let me give you the picture of our vehicle - complete open air, no doors or windshield with only a canvas roof. Paul hesitantly says, "yes, we will be ok". He walks away for a minute and then comes back because the lions are too close and will come if they see him walking. This is reassuring. We try the radio again, we try a different station, we try "Ranger Ranger emergency", we try calling from our non-working cell phone. NOTHING. We watch the hot air balloons take off, float around as the sun rises and then land. We sit for at least an hour and half (most of which is at dawn when the animals are most active) waiting. Paul decides to climb on top of the roof of our safari vehicle to flag down cars from the distant main road. Many pass by and either don't see us or don't care. Finally, someone comes down to help! The poor guy tries and tries and almost gets his safari vehicle stuck. At this point, 4-6 other SUV's are here to help us! We get a different 4x4 to pull us out and finally we are able to get out of the mud! Yahooooo! Let the day start now!
Well, now we have to go to the airport because its the closest Ranger Station to get our park pass stamped (regulation for the National Park). Because the park passes are 24 hours and we are flying out later than we are entering the park, this causes mass confusion between the Park Rangers and Daniel. We end up sitting in the parking lot at the airport for around 2 hours waiting for all the confusion to be straightened out. We even had to call our previous driver guide to come and help sort this out. He was kind enough to drive 20 minutes out of his way and help. Hey, at least there weren't any lions and we had an actual toilet to use!
After leaving the airport (this is the third time in less than 12 hours we have tried to get the park pass stamp stamped) we head out east to the plains of the Serengeti. As we are driving along, we don't see any animals. Just flat plains of tall, dry grass for as far as you can see. For the boys, it was really boring. It has been such a long day and at this point we haven't seen a lot of animals- minus the lions we saw after getting stuck in the mud. We did venture over and watched them for a few. We finally get to an area and see several safari vehicles parked in a circle around a tree. We stop and notice a male lion sleeping. We watch him for a few minutes but he's sleeping, literally not moving, so we continue on. We then see a few female lions and some cubs from a distance. That was fun to watch and then Daniel tells us we need to start heading back to camp. We have a long drive ahead of us and its almost 1 pm. As we are leaving, Daniel stopped back by the sleeping male lion. He literally has piss all around him because he was too lazy to stand up and pee. He was sleeping and just peed. He seemed very docile and the boys were tired, hungry, and needed to pee themselves at this point.
Just when we were about to drive away, the male jumped up, stared directly at me and starting walking towards me. He stopped within inches of me and was just staring. Daniel quietly whispers, "don't move, be completely still, DO NOT MOVE". He walks another step closer and is bumping our car and he is directly under me. I am squeezing the s**** out of Nash's hand because I'm scared to death. Paul whispers to the driver, "can we move, can we go" and he whispers back "no, just DO NOT MOVE". I did shed a few tears under my sunglasses because I was sure my children were about to see their mother get eaten by this giant lion. I even hear a woman loudly say "That lion could just rip that woman's leg off". Thanks Captain Obvious but I'm that woman and this isn't funny. After what felt like hours (in reality only a minute or two) the lion finally walks away and Daniel gets us out of there. This is the first time I have genuinely been scared for my life on a safari. Most of the time you know the animals are real and can harm you, but they don't really notice you in the vehicle. They see the safari vehicle as one giant object. This male lion was watching me and waiting to see how I responded. He was staring at my eyes. I know I sound insane but it was so intense and I'm so relieved we all got out of there unharmed, especially the boys! The only thing worse than the lion eyeing me up, is him eyeing one of the boys up!
PS- Both Finn and Nash did an amazing job of being statues while in harms way! I was super proud of how they responded for being so young!!!
After driving for several hours, we have finally made it back to our tent. To say we are safe is a stretch but at least we aren't stuck in the mud or near any lions (that we know of).
Kind person who finally stopped and helped tow us out.
'Not another tent' - Paul
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