Warning to sensitive readers: this post includes a few photographs and text depicting predator eating prey in the wild. If you find that unpleasant, close your eyes!

Also, this post is part of a series all about Andrew’s safari through the Serengeti, click here to start from the beginning.

As the Land Cruiser rumbled it’s last fifty feet into our Great Migration Camp, our new hosts - Alex, Francis, and Zebbadiah - stood ready to greet us. Francis and Alex were dressed in their chef’s whites, one holding a tray of fresh orange juice squeezed from Tanzania’s seemingly perfect, sweet and tangy oranges. The other held a basket of piping hot, white wash clothes. Before we disembark the truck we are already receiving a chorus of emphatic, “You’re welcome!” I abandon my pile of bags to swipe the cloth across my face, neck, hands and ears, the evening air cooling over my grease free, dust free façade. I tweak my mustache, just so, and Pete says “Don’t bother, there’s nothing you can do to improve that thing.” I pluck up a gingered orange juice and drink it down with gusto.

We are shown to our tents, each facing outward across the ridgeline. Inside, waited a cozy foam pad covered with heavy, warm sleeping bags and woolen Maasai blankets. Leslie arranges our packs to her liking just left of our bed, as Alex hands them over having insisted to carry them for us. Outside the tent, a small shade awning, with two metal jugs each perched in a three legged bucket stand. “We will bring you hot water in a jug every morning, and you can wash your face. White hand towels and a shower towel were rolled into the shape of an Elephant's and laid against the pillow.

We meet our friends and Zebbadiah back at the dining tent for a quick tutorial on how to live in the bush without being eaten by Hyeenas. Zebaddiah shows us the wine bar and the beer cooler, “Ahhhh....a cold beer!” I say as Leslie scowls at the enthusiasm that will not be denied this time. “A half a beer. I’ll share one with you.” Her scowl deepens.

“Surely, you don’t expect him to go this entire Safari without a beer?”

“But the doctor said...”

“Pawwooo, pshposh,” a wave of Pete's hand and a shake of Jen's head, Leslie relents as I knew she would and we settle to share a half of a beer while Pete and Jen take the first round of piping hot showers. When it is our turn, we find an ingenious little setup. A metal tank warming over a wood fire held our share of water. Alex would fill a bucket and climb a ladder to a bigger metal tank built over two square shower compartments. He poured buckets of water into the tank, and our showers were ready. Open to the starry sky, but closed neatly around us by plastic velcro curtains, it was every bit the luxurious camp shower I’d ever want.

Leslie changes into her camp fleece and meets me by the campfire, cheeks rosy and hair wet from her own hot shower. Alex bends down to a small, round metal tube next to the fire, coals glowing red beneathe it to pull out of a sliding drawer a perfectly cooked thin-crust pizza. “Wow!” Leslie says, leaning forward to see better. “That pizza is perfect!” Alex smiles and nods, over the course of the next five days we learn Alex is a master baker with this bush fire oven. Offering us braided, golden bread rolls, fresh baked loaves of fuffy morning toast to add butter and honey, and of course, this perfect pizza. “That’s amazing!” Leslie says. And it is, I’ve cooked my share of dinners over campfires and it’s an art in and of itself.

Our dining table is set with a wood cutting board displaying Alex’s pizza for appetizers. Shortly thereafter, Francis brings in a cast iron full of butternut squash soup spiked with flavorful chilis. We open a bottle of wine to share with the Steelies, and drink it down with our second course of chicken curry. For dessert, a pineapple pudding. All delicious, especially with my apetite now returned in full force. Leslie pours after dinner teas all around, and we sit by a crackling campfire listening to Zebaddiah tell Safari stories and sharing our own adventures already gathered over the course of the last few days.

In those comfortable silences that fall between the flames of a campfire, the whole of the valley is filled with the clinking of glass windchimes. "What is that?” Leslie asks.

“It is the croaking of tiny frogs,” Zebbadiah explains.

“It's beautiful,” Leslie says, yawning. "I think I might have to turn in and listen to them from the comfort of my pillow." I’m not ready to turn in, though. It’s been so long since I've sat by a campfire, the smell of dry wood and brown leaves mingling with smoke.

"Lala Salaama" Zebbadiah says, wishing Leslie a good sleep in Swahili.

Zebbadiah and I stay by the fire, sharing the windchime frogs and that vast semi-circle of stars. This feels so familiar, a life not that long past for me - the weekends recharging around campfires between my work weeks. Zebbadiah and I trade stories of childhood - he, living in the village with one TV to share between all. Zeb is 29, and now considering proposing marriage to his girlfriend of several years. He lives months at a time at this bush camp, guiding safari guests like ourselves and managing the camp crew.

The next monring, Zeb piiles us into a new and different truck. Still a Toyota Land Cruiser, but this time without a roof at all. The morning air is chil, the sun just barely cresting the horizon as we wander our way toward the Mara River. The Great Migration is the largest migration of mammals on earth. Approximately one million and a half Wildebeest, alongside their zebra friends complete the whole loop every year, chasing the rains the Wildebeests can smell from many miles away - perpetually in search of the greenest pasture. The most amazing part of this trip is when wildebeests pile up by the thousands at the edge of the Mara River to cross its crocodile infested waters, en masse. This is what we came all this way to see.

“Are we guaranteed to see a crossing?" Pete asks as we drive our way closer to the river.

“Not guaranteed, no." Zeb says, “It depends on the day, sometimes there are multiple crossings, sometimes none." We arrive at the river and park in the shade of a tree, Zeb peering through his binoculars at teh Wildebeest milling about on the other side of the riverbank. There are a handful standing in the dust at the water's edge, more standing at the top of the shelf where the grass begins to grow, and many others distrubted into the meadow, bleating at each other. “These aren't ready to cross, yet. They are thinking about it, though.” A truck rolls by near the edge of the river on ourside. The radios light up with Swahili chatter.

“What are they saying?” Jen asks.

“Oh, they are all telling that truck up there he is too close. The Wildebeest won't cross to this side if we are too close. So we wait back here, and once there is a critical mass going, then we can drive forward to get a better view. Until then, all we can do is wait.”

Little did Zeb know, we are the luckiest car full of Safariers ever to Safari. Zeb decides this crossing point is unlikely this morning, and so he shifts gears and we head to a different section of river. We are stopped overlooking this point when we get a call on the radio, one crossing point further down. The Wildebeest are congregating! Zeb takes off like a shot, racing over lumps and bumps, every bit the skilled rally car driver Machine was! We’ve hired a whole TEAM of rally drivers! The chatter on the radio becomes even more frantic as we drive, and Zeb's foot lays heavier on the accelerator. By the time we reach this crossing, the Wildebeat are jumping in droves into the muddy, flowing depths, swimming, running, bleating, nose to tail with their brothers, a hippopotumus watching the lines of Wildebeast stream by. Our truck slides to a stop at the edge and we jump atop our seats to get the best look.

Splashing, bleating, the smell of grass-eating mammals working hard, swimming to survive. The ones who reach our side of the rivier jump out of the water and sprint into the meadow, kicking their hind legs with joy and dancing in the grass.

“Oh my god, is that a crocodile?" Pete asks, pointing to two eyes just skimming the surface of the water.

“It might be a hippo....” but just as this suggestion is lofted to the group, the "possible hippo" swings its enormous scaley tail, and we are certain it is not a hippo.

“Oh no!" Jen says from behind her video camera, “It is a crocodile!...go the other way, little baby Wildebeast." A smaller wildebeest has taken a route away from its brothers, swinging wide into the ripples of faster moving water. Was it pulled there by the current? Why did it go that way? That way, it did go...

"I think you may get your wish, Pete." I say, knowing his outstanding request for a live kill stood unanswered.

“You think?" Pete says,

“Oh no!" says Jen.

“No, baby!" Leslie cries out.

The crocodile and the baby Wildebeest are nose to nose for a moment, just long enough for the baby to look into the eyes of the crocodile it’s body will nourish. After this moment passes, we all replay Jen's video, we flip through Leslie's camera, searching for the moment of fear or realization etched on the Wildebeest's face. It's not there, though. This little Wildebeest met its fate as bravely and as calm as any being could. With no discernible reaction, neither of surprise or dismay, the Wildebeest's head is taken into the crocodile's jaws. The crocodile swims to deeper water, dragging the Wildebeest with it, and sinking under. Gone.

“Oh, wow.” Is the general consensus of our vehicle, in the aftermath.

“Its the circle of life, people," Pete says.

"This is like living inside the Discovery Channel," Leslie says.

Maybe sensing the untimely demise of one of their own, the Wildebeast on the other side of ther iver pile up on themselves, the front row having to be shoved from the back now to enter the river. .

“Don't stop now, this is the safest time to go! That crocodile isn't hungry anymore!” Pete's cajoling falls on deaf Wildebeest ears, though, and the line dwindles to a trickle of few willing followers. The remaining group of Wildebeests turn around and head back to the pasture above.

It wasn't even 9 o’clock and we had already seen our first Wildebeest crossing! With crocodile breakfast! “Machine said you guys are lucky, but you guys areYou guys are LUCKY!" Zeb says. We pull back from the river and park beneathe the shade of an umbrella tree. Zeb unloads the truck and lays out five chairs, a table, cookies, thermoses, a selection of teas and instant coffee. We relax, absorbing the satisfaction of achieving yet another several marks on everyone’s bucket lists.