Christine and Keith's Travels: Tarangire National Park, Tanzania, Saturday October 4th

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Armed with lunch packs, and fuelled by very stale bread and jam and tea, we set off on the safari proper. Keith and Derek went into the office to pay at the entrance to Tarangire National Park. I excitedly photographed some enormous elephant droppings and some zebras way off in the distance, little knowing that these would pale into insignificance against the wonders that we would see.

Being the dry season, there was little cover for the animals and many had come in to be close to the only river with water still in it, the Tarangire. The roof of the car was raised so that it was a comfortable standing space for all of us, and we hardly needed Derek’s binoculars, so many and so close were the animals.
We were immensely excited, and learnt a lot about the creatures over the course of the day. The animals that we saw included zebras, elephants, wildebeest, warthogs, elands, giraffes, black bucks, ostriches, impala, dik dik, baboons, mongoose and lions, with a sighting of the very rare hunting dog being a special highlight.

Zebras and elephants strolled across the road in front of us. The zebra stripes were so neat, with each individual patterned uniquely, and they often stood in pairs, with each head looking over the partner’s shoulder, thus achieving 360 degree lookout coverage. They can defer birth by one month if conditions are not favourable. Elephants are right or left tusked, they back into trees and worry them with their bottoms to uproot them for easy access to leaves, they seek water in baobab trees with their tusks and if a baby can walk under its mother’s tummy, it is less than one year old. Females send out a low frequency sound to attract males, and related males will not respond to it. Lions sleep 20 out of 24 hours, and hunt as a team by surrounding prey and chasing it towards their fellows. The females and cubs live together and the males are separate, in bachelor groups.

Some funny moments happened along the way. We came upon a mongoose sentry who was on the road, his role being to alert the others to danger while they were searching for food. He sat up tall on the road, swivelling this way and that, and totally failed to notice our enormous vehicle approaching. He got such a shock when he finally realised that a monster was only one metre from him. Perhaps he will be demoted to other duties now. Another time, Derek and Rosie had been telling us about other trips when people had witnessed lions making a kill; they had luckily been at the right place at the right time. So when we came up to a heavily pregnant elephant, we stopped for ages to observe her and, when Derek asked if we were ready to move on, we said that we were waiting for the birth!
We saw a pride of about twelve lions, relaxing under trees. They took it in turns to walk over to try to protect their recent kill from vultures and hyenas, each time passing only about ten metres from our vehicle. The rippling muscles spoke of power, and we were astonished to see some people walk out of the comparative safety of the nearby picnic area, and down towards the lions’ kill, to get a better look. Crazy!

After lunch we strained our eyes in the hope of seeing a leopard, and especially since another safari group had seen one not so far from the road. We were to be unlucky with the leopards, but all the keen observing led Derek to spot a group of the now rare wild dogs, sitting under a tree. There would have been about seven or eight in the group, and, over the half hour or more that we observed them, they stood up, rearranged themselves and looked towards the group of three cars that formed. The binoculars came into their own, enabling us to see detail. We were so pleased to be able to see such a rare animal. It is endangered because of it being hunted due to the damage it does to farm animals.
I will include a list of the birds and animals we saw in the National Parks on this safari at the end of Sunday 5th in this journal.
We drove out of the National Park and into the Conservation Area. The regulations here are slightly different, allowing for some hunting, safari camps and for the local Maasai people to continue their traditional lifestyle of grazing goats and cattle and some agriculture and hunting. We visited the Boundary Hill safari camp, which is very up-market and expensive, and was a neighbour to the camp, where Rosie worked. Boundary Hill is on the side of a hill overlooking the plains, with animals visible to the clients as they take their baths on their private balconies. It was carefully designed to take advantage of its position, with the under cover dining room having arches which produce framed views in a stunning way. It is co-owned as a development project by a local village and an Australian company run by friends of Rosie’s family. Rosie and Ticha helped with some of the work there, and knew the staff well. An old man called Moses was particularly delighted to see them.

For the first time we saw a young Tanzanian woman wearing a very artificial looking wig; a sight which Rosie assured us would become ordinary once we were in Arusha.

Next we called at Rosie and Ticha’s old camp, called Anatolia in their time. As we approached, tsetse flies started to invade the car, so all the windows were rolled up and the few early arrivals that were trapped in with us were swatted from one end of the vehicle to the other. They have a very annoying bite but they apparently do not carry the sleeping sickness disease in this area, so at least that was reassuring. Rosie pointed out what was familiar and what had changed with the new ownership. We were able to imagine Rosie out here three years ago, checking the swept paths to see what animals had passed by in the night. Rosie had loved her time here, had learnt Swahili and made friends, had tested herself out as a manager. She had met Ticha, and had felt herself in awe of, and in tune with, the natural environment.

It was late and nearing dark when we continued on our way, but we were still excited by spotting zebras and elephants. Sebi and Jarvah, for whom a whole day in a vehicle had been fairly difficult, were asleep. They had both enjoyed seeing the animals, but the experience of being driven around all day in a cage had not allowed for running about and playing, and the safety limits that had to be imposed on Sebi, had been restrictive.
Derek drove from guest house to guest house as we searched for cheap accommodation that would suit us all, but eventually we were settled and ready to go out for dinner. Unlike Kondoa, this town, Mto Wa Mbu, had wide footpaths and a two metre wide ditch beside the road, and the footpaths were wide enough for cars to drive down. Unfortunately that meant that we were constantly moving aside for cars, motor cycles and bicycles, and that the boys had to be restrained again. The restaurant was quick and the food fine, so we were soon back at the guest house.
I wrote a piece for our local newsletter, the Leigh News, but by the time it was finished and we raced around with our memory stick to email it at 9.45, the internet café that advertised ten o’clock closing, had shut.