I have a balcony seat at a spellbinding show. The stage is a gigantic mud hole, surrounded by thick African jungle and the performers have been front centre for the last hour.
The first to emerge from the wings are a herd of cape buffalo. They appear as amiable as their domestic kin, but are one of Africa's most unpredictable and dangerous animals.
Next, a wart hog makes his appearance. With his elongated snout and enormous curved tusks, he looks like an accident of nature and perhaps he is - his awkward torso necessitates going down on his front knees to snack on grass.
He roots around, then lifts his head, and sensing danger takes off in a rush, tail held vertical - a comical exit.
The next performer is a handsome male waterbuck with ringed horns, accompanied by his family. The females and babies graze placidly until a male elephant strides into the clearing causing a flurry of hasty departures.
Here is one of the Big Five animals that I've been eagerly waiting to see, and they arrive in tribal numbers. Over 20 big mamas with their baby elephants clustered around the mud hole.
Two little chaps, perhaps four to six months old meander off, and a teenage Jumbo mischievously sprays them with water. The mother of one of the little guys flaps her ears at the tormentor and he settles down to grubbing in the soil instead of teasing his juniors.
The night is closing in and the temperature has dropped considerably. We are 7,200 feet above sea level here on Mount Kenya and I seek the warmth of my room.
At night I wake to anguished screams, but there's nothing to be seen in the gloom beyond my balcony. Later we learn that a cheetah had made short work of a jackal.
Our driver-guide steers our Land Rover through rolling grassland picking his way between thorn trees and palm trees with odd shaped Y-branches.
Around a bend, a cluster of giraffes wiggle their ears at us, before resuming their breakfast of acacia leaves.
A little later a barrel-bodied zebra ambles in front of our vehicle: "African bush zebra-crossing!" quips one of our group.
The radio-phone crackles into excited bursts of Swahilii. Our driver-guide hastily heads across the savannah and edges us through a cluster of vehicles.
Showtime! A leopard sits sprawled across a tree trunk. Languid and aloof, head held high she sets the cameras rolling. Her expression says, "I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille!"
The days are breathless with activity. A mother cheetah teaches her three cubs to hunt as we look on, and a little later another lone cheetah feasts on her kill - an antelope.
This is high drama. She is ringed by vultures and they keep tightening their circle, their murderously sharp talons and beaks just inches away from the carcass.
She raises her head and they hastily leap back, but not for long. Eventually, she gives up and walks away, and fur and feathers fly as the birds fight over the remains of the animal.
And the king of the jungle?
Yes, we see him too. The Lion King in all his male glory sitting atop a rocky outcrop surveying his territory. He is one of the only two males we stumble upon, but we do sight several lionesses.
On one occasion, a big cat stalks a group of bushbuck grazing about five hundred yards from our vehicle. We are close enough to see a fly crawling across her nose, but her tawny eyes are so intent on her prey she ignores us entirely.
A group of monkeys set off warning calls and the bushbucks take off at full gallop. You can almost see the lioness shrug resignedly as she turns and disappears into a thicket of bushes.
This is the season of the wildebeest migration and from a high vantage point, thousands of animals freckle the Serengeti plains. They are dimwitted creatures, and we pause to watch them attempt a river crossing.
The bank is steep and the group make it down a little way. Then the leader gets spooked, turns tail and scrambles up the bank. The lot of them panic and follow suit.
Eventually one brave (or excessively stupid) wildebeest reaches the water and begins to swim across - emboldened by this, the entire herd thunder down the embankment and make it safely to the other side.
The Serengeti's moods change with every passing hour - hazy and mysterious at sunrise when we take off on safari, shimmering under a heat haze by midday, and as we head back to our camp each evening, the tropical sunsets are a spectacular blaze of gold, scarlet and purple.
The dusk deepens and then Africa draws her diamand-studded cloak of night across the land.
Travel Writers' Tales is an independent newspaper syndicate that offers professionally written travel articles to newspaper editors and publishers. To check out more, visit www.travelwriterstales.com.
