The Serengeti

Covering nearly 15000 square kilometers and meaning 'Endless Plains' in Maasai, the Serengeti is where the iconic images of waving grasses and termite mounds come from when we think of Africa. The primary focus of any documentary on Africa or migration in general, the Serengeti is a huge expanse of preserved land running from the border with Kenya well into the heart of northern Tanzania.
Scattered across the land in variable heaps left by retreating glaciers, the kopjes are excellent vantage points for people and predators.
We only spent a single day driving around the Serengeti since the majority of the wildebeest migration we'd come to see was closer to our headquarters in Ndutu, but it gave us some wonderful looks at leopards, elephants, baboons and a plethora of birds.

Getting around

Just so its completely clear that we weren't jammed in conventional tour buses like we would have been in North America, I thought I'd do a quick note on the different vehicles used. Since we had to cross a border and change drivers and companies at the border we had quite different vans in Tanzania and Kenya, but they were the same general shape. Below is our Tanzanian tour van with the roof up.
And this is our Kenyan van, also with the roof up. Each of these typically sat 5 people plus a driver and we typically traded seats as we pleased with room left over to store camera gear and the like. The roofs are retractable for dusty highway driving and pop up with between 30 seconds and 3 minutes work (the Kenyan ones were trickier) for a game drive.
We also had a morning boat tour on Lake Naivasha so I figured I'd include a picture of the sort of thing you take out on a hippo-infested body of water. They weren't bad so long as you're not trying to shoot forward when you're 3rd in line, and the engine only broke down AFTER the angry hippo came after us, so it all worked out reasonably well in the end.

Cheetah

We saw cheetahs throughout our trip, mostly in Ndutu (Tanzania) and the Maasai Mara (Kenya). The easiest way to find them is to look for the line of 10 tour vans all staring at a tiny dot on the horizon. When you scour that area carefully you'll eventually spot a cheetah sitting on a mound or lying in the grass several hundred meters away. Every now and then though we were able to get nice and close to one that was too full of its last meal to be interested in getting far away. There was a group of three brothers in Ndutu that were particularly friendly and lazy at the same time, allowing for some nice closeups.
And sometimes you'd luck out and find one that was actually moving and being active. The cheetah below had quite a sprint and we were able to get some nice burst pictures and video, so even at a distance you can still see how graceful and speedy they are.

Ndutu

Ndutu is a park at the southern tip of the Serengeti in Tanzania and was the first proper park on our tour. It was also Kathryns' favorite park and thus set a pretty high bar for the rest of the trip. We spent four days here and saw lots of cheetahs, lions, gazelles, zebras and hyenas.
The wildebeest migration was passing through the area as well so the ground was littered with them; we even saw a few babies although we were just a little too early for many of them.
The panorama below (click to enlarge) shows our cabin at the very end with Kathryn on the deck. To the right of frame is nothing but wilderness and from our patio we could see zebra, gnus, giraffes, dik-dik, cape buffalo and lots of birds. Our room was actually closed earlier in the year because a pride of lions had setup shop right on our patio and were lounging on the benches there.

Impala

We saw a number of species of gazelle throughout our trip, but one of my very favorites is the Impala. They are beautiful in form and seem designed specifically for speed and grace.
They are socially divided into two groups. There will be herds of bachelor males who are growing stronger and looking after each other, and there are herds of females led by a single male. These harems can have anywhere up to 40 females and the male is kept so busy looking after them and chasing off other prospective males that they can typically only hold that position for a few weeks before being ousted from exhaustion.
But that splintered social group is clearly successful as they were present in nearly every park we visited and in great numbers. They often travel with baboons as well with each species on the lookout for predators and eating different foods so they are not in competition with each other.

Giraffes: Three Kinds of Wonderful

Of all the animals we saw in our trip, the giraffe is the only one tied with the elephant for endless magical impact. No matter how tired we were or how many we'd already seen they were always elegant and enchanting and worthy of a picture. Of the nine types in the world, Kenya is home to 3 breeds.

The most common is the Maasai giraffe (below) which was found throughout our trip. Its distinguished by its irregular blotchy pattern all over the body and down to the toes.
Second up is the Rothschild giraffe which is also one of the most endangered giraffes, in no small part to Idi Amin of Uganda telling his troops to use them for target practice during his reign. Their blotches are less jaggy than the Maasai giraffe and they have 5 horns on their head rather than 2.
The reticulated giraffe was the third kind we saw and is far easier to tell apart than the other two. Its blotches are much more regular in shape and the lines between them are a striking white. The blotches also end midway down the leg and create the look of the giraffe wearing white socks. They prefer a drier habitat than the other two and we only saw them in Samburu, in the north of Kenya.

And yet smaller still...

Just to push things as small as we can before getting back to giant mammals, I thought I'd include a selection of insects/arachnids that we saw on our journey. This magnificent spider was spotted on our very first morning when we were jet-lagged and exploring the grounds of the first lodge we stayed at in Tanzania. The shape of its shell really reminded me of the crest of the queen from 'Aliens' and its striking red colour is very unusual. We saw several of these spiders that day but none after it.
At Ndutu, near the Serengeti, we spotted this tiny mantis on a thorn tree. I was actually taking macro photos of the thorns themselves without even noticing it and then spotted this tiny terror (maybe 1.5cm long) on a further back thorn.
Managing to even find insects at night, we spotted this glow worm (or at least thats what we think it is) casting a beautiful almost neon green colour by the pool in the Maasai Mara. This photo was taken with a flash since it was too low a light for my camera to do well without, so its personal light is gone, but was being emitted from the tip of his tail.