Tarangire National Park - 18.sept

First and most importantly - today is my dad's birthday :) :) Happy happy birthday dear dad!

Morning started with packing as every day :) Breakfast and then off to town to meet our fellow travelers for the next 5 days, how exciting! Car got packed up by the tour operators office, met the other 3 gentlemen, drove through town to gather food and do the groceries. It was quite a sight to see the market and early morning busy streets. Finally started towards the park all packed up and ready. We have 5 of us tourists plus our driver-guide in one person plus cook. So 8 people traveling. Car was quite badly packed so at first we could not even imagine how we could even do the game viewing in it. Solution was that the cook got off at some point to go directly to the camp and we just rearranged the car ourselves to clear out the floor.

It must have been about 1h drive to the park I'm guessing. Now here the park is more like the one in Zimbabwe, not so green that is. There is plenty of space so one can get some very good views. As my friend was saying, the ones she has been in have been quite bushy, so it is difficult to see the animals. Here there is quite a bit of planes as well so all good. On the planes there are 'baobab' trees scattered here and there, those are most strange looking trees ever :) Apparently they can live for several thousand years, trunk grows to 10 meters after only a century and keeps expanding even afterwards. All in all the landscape here reminds me of one Estonian artist works - so I would call it Navitrolla landscapes :) The skies, the horizon, the trees, the giraffes, the colors even :)

It seems that all our hard work in previous attempts to see wildlife were rewarded today :D Because we saw all kinds of fun stuff. We saw ostriches, warthogs, wildebeest, dikdik, vulture and so on - this is all quite regular and ordinary, but now to the more interesting animals:

First we saw elephants - 6 of them, with 2 young ones. Animals have certain tracks they follow daily, as we saw the elephants quite far away the car was parked a bit ahead so we just watched the animals coming closer. Turned out the car was parked right by the track and we managed to see the elephants passing the road like a meter from the car! It was amazing! Guide did warn us thought that if they have young ones with they get quite protective so it could be dangerous (he had the engine running if the need would come to escape :) ). So this was the first awesomeness of the day. Later we literally ran across another male elephant, he was huuuuge, really really huge and was heading somewhere while passing behind our car again. Was quite scary of how small the car and us in it felt when he passed. He did not even look at us though, just went its own way.

As our guide was telling yesterday the most dangerous animals to humans are hippos (of all one could never guess that), since they have very strict moving capabilities because of their short legs and big belly. So if you happen to be on their path when they get from the water to their food or vice versa you are definitely dead as they move quite fast and they just stomp over you.

The animals concentration is awesome in this park. There are so many different animals and they are everywhere. There was barely a time when we did not see a thing. Mostly when taking a photo of some animal there was another type of animal on the background. Quite amazing! Saw lots of giraffes, zebras by herds of 20-30, lots of wildebeest, many eagles and other big birds, antelope types (can't remember the names of all) and then and then.. guess who we got to see??? Guess!??!!?

We got to see many lions! Apparently it is nearly impossible to see lions elsewhere (as I've heard), but today we got to see many of them. First one we saw up on a hill, perhaps some 200m away, he was graciously lying down on a rock with his paws hanging over and looked down at the zebras, was probably picking out his dinner :) Then next we saw 4 (or was it 5?) lions sleeping by the tree across the river. Must have been about 100m away this time, but they were really boring ones as they were just like carpets flat on the ground. Still, lions, many of them, just lying there in the shade turning sides every now and then. Quite impressive. AND THEN!! Then we drove through a loop and there were 2 lions laying by the road under a tree! It was a male and a female, female seemed to be sleeping but the male was laying down with his head up. They were so close to the road that once we parked the car next to them it was just about 2 meters between us. Strangest thing is that they were not disturbed by the car a whole lot. Briefly looked at us and then turned away. So there we were staring at them and taking photos for at least 20 minutes. At some point the male did get a bit upset though and growled at us :) My heart rate jumped to the ceiling as a result, but then he came down again and all was good. Soon we found out as well why they were separated from the others - they were there to mate. Juuust like discovery channel only in live ;)

Had lunch at the park in a beautiful viewing platform with many elephants and giraffes running around down below. Monkeys did their best on snatching our food as well as those beautiful small blue birds. Left the park in the evening around 5:30 and headed over to the camp site 1.5 hour drive away by lake Manyara. Dinner was served, acrobat show presented, tents set up, cold shower taken and off to sleep up on the hill we went. Tomorrow the wakeup call will take place at 5am so getting to sleep at 10 is a must :)