Safari Day 3 - Family Groups : March 1

The Octagon Hotel, where we spent the last two nights, was pretty snazzy. Each room was really a hut and had two double beds with netting over them. The bathroom and shower area curved around back, though the water never got warm so we only took one shower. The bar and restaurant were in the middle of a garden with cacti and birds (and bullfrogs, or something that sounded like them). Overall, a nice place, except for the lack of Internet and the blackouts. And the mosquitos, but I covered that yesterday (and covered myself with a mosquito net).

We negotiated to get an extra hour at the Tarangire this morning and left after breakfast at 7:30. Or, you know, African 7:30.

The Tarangire was an hour and a half away, though the roads weren't too bad. The park itself was grassland with a river and trees around, unlike the crater, which was just grassland, and the lake, which was just forest with some clearings (and a lake, of course).

There were some zebra and impala grazing with a bushback right inside the gate. Two dikdiks jumped across our path down the road a bit, and then it was just birds for a drive further into the park.

My goal today was to see a giraffe, since rhinos, cheetahs, and leopards are pretty rare. So, after the ten minute drive, a pair of giraffes were feeding about a hundred yards away. Goal achieved!

Those were two of the six giraffes we saw today, so not a large amount, but what we missed in giraffes we more than made up for in elephants.

The first family we saw had a few young ones, and was slowly meandering away from the shade of the baobab tree and towards another across the road. We waited and got to see the whole family cross the road twenty yards in front of us.

We drove to an overlook with a view of the Tarangire River (which never dries up) and another herd of elephants approaching it from far away to drink. We took in the scene (which included impala and ostrich) before heading that direction.

This group had finished crossing the river by the time we got there and was hanging out under a tree by the road. We got to see the smallest baby nursing as well as some elephant-trunk-on-tree-trunk scratching action. We were both thrilled, especially when they passed within a few yards of the Land Rover.

There were some mongoose and hardbills and "Zazu" birds (from "The Lion King") and more ostriches. The elephants were definitely the highlight.

The low of the day was driving all the way back to Moshi. We felt rushed at the end (he started driving us out of the park without really letting us know, then we ate lunch at a boring picnic area at the entrance instead of while watching any animals, or at least a pretty scene). We were told at the beginning we would get lots of choices, just tell our driver what to do, but we didn't know the choices enough to tell him to do anything differently than what ended up happening.

And so, he asked again if we wanted to go to the snake zoo (again, no), and then we jangled our way back for four hours, arriving well before sunset.