Dunia Camp is a fixed campsite about an hour's drive south of Seronera airstrip. It has a central lodge area for dining and relaxing, and you have to be escorted to and from your tent when it gets dark as there is no restriction on the movement of animals here. This facility is run entirely by women and they looked after us wonderfully. It is totally self-sufficient with its own bore hole for water and solar panels for power, and it had the best wifi connection of all! The most important person here was our guide Neema. She chose where to drive us, was able to identify all the wildlife we saw, was a photographer so knew what would interest me, and provided us with a wealth of information and help. Most importantly, she didn't stick the same routes as the guides who base themselves closer to the lodges near the airstrip for convenience. So most of the time we did not have to compete with other vehicles to get a look at the animals.
Neema was the lion whisperer; she could find lions everywhere so I am going to show you quite a few photos of lions. It seems that lions really do like hanging out in trees, but they are not particularly good climbers.
The only time you will see an adult male and female lion together is for mating, and there seemed to be a lot of this going on!
You'd think that these beasts would be easy to see when they are lazing around on rocks, but often you need a double take to decide if you really can see a lion or is it simply an orange rock?
And the result of all this activity were lots of lion cubs playing in the grass.
If lions are well fed, then they sleep up to 20 hours a day! So you are far more likely to see sleeping/dozing lions than active ones.
It was while we were watching a group of giraffe that we discovered a rhino! The giraffes had been calmly doing their thing when all of a sudden they seem spooked and started running. Neema then searched for the cause of the disturbance and spotted a black rhinoceros in the far distance. She immediately radioed one of her colleagues to let them know of the sighting and we sped off to try and get a better view of the rhinoceros. The rhino was having none of it though and kept low behind the shrubs while running at a fair speed.
We also saw giraffes fighting! They twist their necks around each other's necks for a while, then stand still for a while, then more neck twirling. Thankfully no giraffes were hurt during this action.
We saw large herds of elephants while out with Neema, with some of them looking quite grey as they had had a recent mud bath. Most groups of elephants are made up of females, their youngsters, and young males which have yet to be kicked out of the group. In the photo below, there is a male bull elephant sniffing the backside of a female elephant to see if she is ready for mating. None of the females seemed interested in his attentions though.
On our last morning game drive, Neema said she would take us to her favourite spot for a picnic breakfast. We drove up onto a kopi for a wonderful view of the Serengeti and were greeted by two of the camp staff who had set up a mobile kitchen to make a proper breakfast! These were Faith and Elizabeth as shown below.
As with our walking safari with Wayo, our stay at Dunia Camp was far more than simply looking at the wildlife; it was the people we met who made it special. The staff were encouraged to talk to the guests, in part to practise their English, and the guests were encouraged to talk to other guests around the camp fire. The food was delicious and always included some local dish for us to try. And when we first arrived there, we were greeted by the staff singing to us. And when we left, they sang to us again to say goodbye. And if a guest was celebrating a special occasion, all the staff appeared in the dining area to sing. And they clearly loved singing, and they could certainly sing!
