Tanzania

The trip of a lifetime, and it lived up to the name: northern Tanzania, from Arusha all the way to the Serengeti and back out to Lake Natron.

It began quietly in Arusha National Park, with a leopard draped over a branch. Tarangire and Lake Manyara followed, then the descent into the Ngorongoro Crater, a whole world of its own inside the rim, with flamingos on the soda lake and storks in the shallows.

Then the plains. Ndutu at the end of February is the heart of the calving season, and the wildebeest and zebras were everywhere, with the lions, hyenas and cheetahs that follow them. Further north the Serengeti opened up into grass that seemed to go on forever. The last stop was Lake Natron, pink with flamingos at the foot of the Rift Valley escarpment.