The car works! Tarangire shook and rattled it, but our little black car took everything in it's stride and here we are back again after 24 hours of fun and adventure in the bush. Less than 2 hours down a much improved road, Tarangire was packed with wildlife from the moment we passed the entrance gate until we drove out with moments to spare before our permit expired this afternoon. Zebra,Wildebeest and Impala were probably the most abundant mammals, but there was a pretty good range on offer (we saw 20 species of mammal, just less than one an hour...) and there was barely a moment without Elephants: They even seemed to fancy joining us in the lodge swimming pool - first the baby, then it's mother! Mama was slightly unsettled by the fact they came back again, pushing past our tent as we were settling the littlies to sleep in the tent, whilst we went off for a lovely civilised meal in the restaurant... The Mancub thought everything was great and loved the view from the main lodge building. All very luxurious - we'll have to get ourselves a tent and things if we want to make a regular habit of visiting parks (which, needless to say, we do!), but a wonderful place to celebrate a new car and, really, a new home. And it was really nice to have some friends from Arusha staying in their camp nearby too, so we enjoyed Sunday lunch with them.
Highlights? Well, as well as the perhaps over friendly elephant and warthogs (one for Grannie here!), the lioness with 5 little cubs on our first drive around was pretty special – especially when she got up and walked them all over closer to us for a better look, before flopping down in a heap and rolling about! And there were plenty of birds too (though not as many as last time I was there, probably because we didn't get to the swamp this time, and there aren't so many migrants arrived for the Northern winter yet) – our Tanzanian list now stands at 154 species, which is nothing really. But still great to see Saddle-billed Storks and lots of old favourites again, and 22 species of raptor is pretty impressive too!
So, just a taster for us all and we'll learn a few things for next time (like make sure we've got plenty of activities for the children when they're bored of driving through herds of zebra and wildebeest...), but hopefully enough evidence that we're in a wonderful area to convince you all to come and visit (rather than make you all sick with envy and stop reading at all!). Hopefully we'll soon have a rather large landrover for my work, that will also have the advantage of seating 7 on safari duty, so loads of room for all! And although we left at 3pm, I'll leave you with the traditional sunset shot, this time behind a baobab with resident vultures (Ruppell's
and white-backed, if you're interested...) roosting in the top... Can't wait for our next adventure now!
The car works! Tarangire shook and rattled it, but our little black car took everything in it's stride and here we are back again after 24 hours of fun and adventure in the bush. Less than 2 hours down a much improved road, Tarangire was packed with wildlife from the moment we passed the entrance gate until we drove out with moments to spare before our permit expired this afternoon. Zebra,Wildebeest and Impala were probably the most abundant mammals, but there was a pretty good range on offer (we saw 20 species of mammal, just less than one an hour...) and there was barely a moment without Elephants: They even seemed to fancy joining us in the lodge swimming pool - first the baby, then it's mother! Mama was slightly unsettled by the fact they came back again, pushing past our tent as we were settling the littlies to sleep in the tent, whilst we went off for a lovely civilised meal in the restaurant... The Mancub thought everything was great and loved the view from the main lodge building. All very luxurious - we'll have to get ourselves a tent and things if we want to make a regular habit of visiting parks (which, needless to say, we do!), but a wonderful place to celebrate a new car and, really, a new home. And it was really nice to have some friends from Arusha staying in their camp nearby too, so we enjoyed Sunday lunch with them.
Highlights? Well, as well as the perhaps over friendly elephant and warthogs (one for Grannie here!), the lioness with 5 little cubs on our first drive around was pretty special – especially when she got up and walked them all over closer to us for a better look, before flopping down in a heap and rolling about! And there were plenty of birds too (though not as many as last time I was there, probably because we didn't get to the swamp this time, and there aren't so many migrants arrived for the Northern winter yet) – our Tanzanian list now stands at 154 species, which is nothing really. But still great to see Saddle-billed Storks and lots of old favourites again, and 22 species of raptor is pretty impressive too!
Very nice! Not entirely sure about camping with elephants though - cows and horses are weird enough early morning in-tent companions.
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