Tarangire & Lake Manyara

This weekend the team went on a safari. My half of the team visited Tarangire & Lake Manyara National Parks. Unlike the trip from Dar, the cars were nice, had seatbelts, and the driver was respectful of pedestrians. Also, most of the roads to the parks were paved, which I now see as a luxury.

Tarangire was amazing! Animals were everywhere! I almost felt like someone was behind the scenes scaring them up so we could see them, but this was not the case. :) We saw plenty of zebra, elephants (including babies playing in a pond), dikdiks, vetter monkeys, blue monkeys, a mongoose, lots of giraffes, an eagle, storks, Egyptian geese, gnu, a giant lizard-thing and two lions. The lions were the highlight for two reasons. 1) They were only about 20 feet from the car. 2) It’s mating season. Yes, after waiting around for maybe 30-40 minutes and watching the male lion get closer and closer to the female, we got to see nature in action. In Tarangire, the sun is hot and you need to apply sunscreen every couple of hours if you don’t want to walk away looking like a giant beet. There are also tse-tse flies, which are attracted to the color navy blue and hurt when they bite you. Luckily, I only got one bite.




Saturday night we drove to Ngorongoro Forest Tented Camp. Our buddies at TATO had hooked us up with really nice accommodations for cheap (and when I say really nice, I mean spectacular). I stayed in a tent big enough to fit a family of 10. We were perched right on the top of a forested hill, with hot water (two showers – one indoors and one outdoors), an amazingly comfortable bed, and we also got a full three course meal of probably the best food I’ve had since arriving. Yes, it seems that the tourists in Africa are treated pretty well. It’s only when you try to live here for a while that you notice a conglomerate of very small inconveniences that add up quickly.



The next day, we headed to Lake Manyara National Park. There were less animals here than in Tarangire, but more birds and monkeys. In addition to the two kinds we saw in Tarangire, there were baboons everywhere. We also were treated to thousands of pelicans & flamingos on the lake AND hippos! Lake Manyara was a little cooler, since you were in a forest practically the whole time. I really enjoyed both parks and can’t wait to get back after my work with AWF is complete!