Tarangire National Park

Tarangire is known for the many Baobab trees that dot the landscape there. The Tarangire River is a magnet for wildlife during the dry season. We however were there during the beginning of the rainy season. There were plenty of seasonal ponds and watering holes so the wildlife was spread far and wide over the park and hard to find. What we did see were giraffes and lots of elephants.

One minute we were enjoying a peaeceful encounter with friendly elephants and the next...

         We were being chased down the road by an angry bull elephant.

Being in Tarangire during the beginning of the rainy season may not have been the ideal time to be there, but we would have missed the bragging rights to some interesting stories, like...

             having to pull these Aussies out of the mud with a winch, or

being the last to leave the park before they closed the lodge due to the road being washed out.  Funny story... the other drivers had their passengers walk over the washed out area and meet the drivers on the other side. Not Frank, our adventurous driver told us to stay put and hang on while he slipped and slided through the mud trying to avoid the washed out road on the left. But we made it and I think being anywhere when the landscape is turning this gorgeous light green is worth the trip.

                                               Me overlooking the Tarangire River

        Next up ... my visit to the AC Daycare and Orphanage Center in Lake Manyara 

The Serengeti

You read about the Serengeti and see it in such movies as The Lion King but you can never be prepared for the reality of it. It is HUGE. It is miles and  miles and miles of uninterupted grassland. It is aptly named "the Sea of Grass." We explored it for several days and it took all day to drive across it. If the Ngorongoro is closed this is completely open and seemingly limitless. At times it seemed devoid of any wildlife and at others teeming with wildebeest and zebra.

Zebras, Wildebeest and Thompson's Gazelles gather here by the hundreds of thousands waiting to start the annual Great Migration which will take them to the Masai Mara in Kenya. The numbers  of animals that we saw for miles and miles for as far as the eye could see was incredible.

There always seemed to be a storm brewing somewhere off in the distance, but luckily we hardly encountered any rain.

Kopjes are called "Islands in a Sea of Grass." They rise up in the middle of the open plain and provide habitat for a wide range of plants, animals and birds.

 It was thrilling to ride in the truck searching the area knowing that at any minute anything could pop up. And it did.

              First a lion on the side of the road and right after about a half mile down the road...

a leopard in the tree. The tail hanging down was the only clue that he was there.

And birds, oh my, there were so many birds!

Ostriches

Kori Bustard

Von der Deckken's Hornbill

Black-Bellied Bustard

d'Arnaud's Barbet

Next up...the little known Tarangire National Park

Ngorongoro Crater

      Looking into the Ngorongoro Crater from our lodge

It was 5:30 am and slightly drizzling and extremely foggy when we left our hotel to drive down into the crater for our early morning game drive. Visibility was about non-existent and knowing that we were driving on a very narrow slippery road down 2000 feet made for a very scary ride. It seemed to take forever. When I looked out the window it seemed we were shrouded in clouds. I don't know how Frank could tell where he was driving, but he got us to the bottom safely and soon thereafter the sky creared and we were treated to a sunrise in the crater.

From the floor of the crater in early morning

Standing in the center of the crater all the facts I had learned about the crater became amazingly real. This place was created by a giant volcano that exploded and collapsed on itself 3 million years ago. It is 2000 feet deep and the floor is an unbroken, unflooded caldera that covers 100 square miles. The rim of the crater rises up on all sides. The place is a geological wonder. It is believed by many to be the true garden of eden. While most of the area is open grassland there is also a salt lake and a fresh water stream that feeds a tropical forest, as well as a few other small lakes.  As the sun rises over the rim of the crater the scene comes to life and birds and animals appear everywhere.

  The first we saw was the majestic elephant.

Black Backed Jackal

In the forest we were treated to this graceful Pin-Tailed Whydah,

and this handsome Waterbuck.

Back out on the open grassland we saw this mother and juvenile Black Rhino, a true find.

We saw this and much more before breakfast. By 9 o'clock our stomachs were growling so we stopped by a beautiful little lake and had "breakfast on the bonnet." Sometimes it is more about where you eat than what you eat. In this case we enjoyed our hardboiled eggs and beef sausage near a lake with hippos and herons.

Coffee in the Crater

After breakfast we headed out again and for the next few hours were delighted with close up views of lions, wildbeest, zebras, hyenas, elands, Thompson's Gazelle, hippos, jackals, cape buffalo and elephants. We even had a distant and brief view of a cheetah. Of course we also saw lots of birds. Here are a few of the hundreds of pictures I took.

Augur Buzzard

Zebra

Lions! I learned that lions do an awful lot of just lying around and sleeping.

The lions were so close to our truck it should have seen scary, but they were so slow and sleepy they didn't seem to pose any threat.

I actually saw enough lions to satisfy my desire to see them.

Zebras in front, Flamingos in the back.

                                                               Grey Crowned Crane

                                             

White- bearded Wildebeest

By the time we left the crater it was light and I was able to see what I missed driving into the crater in the morning fog. Although breathtaking, I'm not sure if it is better to see or not see the drive along narrow steep roads. At any rate, we returned to our lodge where I sat with a double gin and tonic and recorded the days events. This had to be the best view of the trip.

As the clouds shifted and cleared, I could actually look back down into the crater and with binoculars see the elephants roaming the plain.

up next...the Serengeti.

Tanzania

I've just returned from an amazing adventure to Tanzania. This trip was actually a year in the planning with a cancellation and postponement, but we finaly got there and it was worth the wait. We got lucky and were treated to a private safari, just my husband and I and our driver Frank. In a week we travelled to Lake Manyara, the Serengeti, the Ngorongoro Crater, Olduvai Gorge and Tarangire. We saw an amazing number of animals and birds. I was able to add a little more that 100 birds to my life list.

This was our drive vehicle.  The roof hatch rose up so I could stand and look around in all directions.

Views from the roof hatch put me right in the scene.

Many of the animals we saw were right in the road ahead of us...

or lying in the road so that we had to drive around them.

Lions are what I wanted to see the most, and we saw a lot of them. We saw them from a distance...

and we saw them from very close, just alongside or in the road:

we even watched these two mate.

There were giraffes and

elephants and

Cape Buffalo and

Hippos and

Zebras.

I expected to see all these and was not disappointed. The sheer numbers of animals was unexpected. The wildebeest were gathering and waiting for the right weather signals to begin the Great Migration from the Serengeti to the Masai Mara, so we saw hundreds of thousands of them.

There is no way that I can sum up this whole trip in one post. I am going to come back later and tell you about each place and my experiences there one at a time. So, please accept this little token for now and come back later for the Ngorongoro Crater.