Tarangire Game Drives - August 17

We saw so many more animals and wildlife today in beautiful Tarangire Park. During the dry season Tarangire is second only to Ngorongoro in concentration of animals because of the fresh water springs in the park. Today we had our first giraffe sighting. We also saw a Whistling Acacia; a particular type of acacia which has a symbiotic relationship with a type of ant. The tree has large thorns which protect the ants from birds, and the ants keep giraffes from eating the tree (I'm not sure how, that's what the guide said).

We continued to see lots of birds, zebras, impalas and gazelles. We had a special treat seeing an entire pride of lions that just ate a zebra and dragged it under a tree to guard while they snoozed. As the afternoon wore on we saw playing baboons, gigantic cape buffalo, and rounded out the day with a great sunset. We took hundreds of pictures with our 'bazooka camera' as our guide Donald calls it.



One of the best highlights of the day was seeing a baby elephant, approximatly 6 months old, weighing 500 pounds. And yet even with 500 pounds that baby elephant FROLICKED in the grass, just like a puppy or kitten, it was the cutest thing EVER! Our entire Land Cruiser let out as simultaneous sigh as it skipped towards us.

After sunset we headed back to the lodge and had dinner. While we were walking back to the tent tonight, we shined our flashlight down the hill and saw a dozen set of eyes looking back up at us (why did we have to do that?), and after freaking out determined they were the small deer-like animal called dik-dik.

Margaret has self-determined that she is a Tse-Tse fly killing machine. Tse-Tse flies are known to carry Dengue fever, a disease that one of Margaret's co-workers has, and we are determined not to get ourselves. Today's kill list = 9 Tse Tse flies, 1 bee and 1 house fly. Good thing Donald had fly swatters in his Land Crusier!

During the night an elephant went by our tent and woke us up, it trumpeted lightly to find the rest of it's herd. When you are sleeping in only a semi-permenant structure with canvas and mesh sides it can be pretty creepy!