First Safari Day - Arusha National Park

First day of safari!!!!!!

Slept like babies last night, well at least I did. Andre woke up to dogs barking a big commotion followed by gun shots, I didn't hear a thing. Turns out an elephant made its way into the little community of farmers right beside us and they called the rangers to get it away from their crops. Before we went to bed Paul told us this has been happening a lot lately and asked if we wanted to be woken up if it went on, I told him if it was a parade yes wake us up. At breakfast he told us he wasn't sure whether to wake us up, Andre told him he heard the commotion but when he heard the shots he was afraid it may have been poachers so he didn't get up. Paul says not to worry we will hear many more night noises once we get going.

Up for breakfast and well overdue showers this morning. Our driver is to pick us up at 8:00 to start the day.

Today is at Arusha Park, about a 3 minute drive to the gate entrance from Twiga Lodge. When you enter any of the parks the first thing is your guide goes in and pays and registers where you are. We had a chance to get out and walk around a little (after our 3 minute drive) Looks like it is going to be a beautiful day, not too hot, but nice and sunny. 

 

Andre is very excited for his first animal sighting, hard to believe we have been here a day and not seen any wildlife, first thing inside the gates is some zebra! So now the checklists start, zebra first. 

First animal sighting - zebras in the distance!

We understand this is not one of the biggest parks, but we really enjoyed our day. The highlight for us both were the flamingos. Thousands and thousands of flamingos surround the small lakes in this park.

Because the lakes are so small the flamingos are very close to the road so we are able to get a very close up view. There are a couple of viewing points where we are able to get out of the car for some amazing views. 
 

Great view of the flamingos that line the lakes

Felix pointing out something from one of the stops

View of Mt Meru from inside park

We were fortunate and had some AMAZING view of Kilimanjaro from inside the park

 

This park also has colobus monkeys, the only place we will see them on this trip. We came across some jumping from tree to tree, really amazing. They have beautiful white long tails, kind of look like giant skunks in trees. 

Colobus Monkeys

Great fun watching them jump from tree to tree

We also spent some time watching the different baboons, great fun. The young are so curious, fun to watch catching a ride on their mothers backs. 

Helmeted Guinea Fowl

Lovely Marsh Sandpiper picture :)

Sacred Ibis

Auger Buzzard

 

Lunch most days will be made of a box lunch that we take out with us on our game drives. Erika says that when we get going on safari our lunches will consist of a boiled egg, a piece of chicken, banana always so she does something different here, we had a delicious lunch of sandwiches, samosas, banana bread, way too much food, we shared with a local man that was in the picnic area that we stopped at.

Our first of what will be many box lunches, no chicken, egg, or banana to be found in this one! Box lunches are literally lunches in a box!

We ate lunch today with our guide Felix, he seems to really like his job and is very happy when we ask questions. I think we are very easy clients, we are excited about anything. When I think back on the day and the first place we stopped to look at 4 or 5 flamingos and were so excited because we were so close, then 5 minutes down the road there were literally thousands of them it is so funny. At lunch we asked Felix what his favourite animals were, his are the cats and baboons, he said we will find lots of cats in the Serengeti. Baboons are everywhere I think. The animals to be most afraid of are the water buffalo if you come across one or two on their own, he said in a group they feel very safe and nothing to worry about. The other animal to be afraid of is the hippo, in the water they are fine, but on land they are crazy.

After lunch we are to go on a walking tour with a ranger from the park. We wanted to get a bit of exercise after such a long trip so had asked our tour operator to book us some walking tours as well. Our ranger Sunday (he was born on Sunday so was named this by his parents) shows up with his high power rifle so off we go. He first went over some of the skulls on display at the start of the walk, then we cross over a little brook, he goes over some of the flowers and trees with us, then I look around and see water buffalo. Great, this is right after Felix told us this is the animal to be afraid of, but there are a lot of them, so we are fine right. I ask Sunday about this and he says we are fine as there are lots of them. There are also warthog with the buffalo, I guess they travel together a lot.

Walking tour with ranger

Cape buffalo at the beginning of the walk

Jasmine

Beautiful trees and flowers on the walk

 We follow along a path at a very very slow pace, I asked Sunday if he had ever climbed Kilimanjaro because he was walking so slow, which I guess is required at Kili to acclimatize, turns out he guided there for 2 years. He has now been Arusha for 4 years. The path we are following is the start to climb Mt. Meru, we follow along for about 30 minutes and come to a beautiful waterfall.

Beautiful waterfall at the end of our guided walk in the park

I think we found it especially beautiful to enjoy the spray after walking through the midday heat. We passed some other walkers with their guide on the way out, it is basically a circle loop that they had come from the other direction. When we came out to where to buffalo had been we say that they had separated. There were 4 bachelor buffalo under a tree that we needed to pass by. I told Sunday I didn't like he, he said he didn't either, great. Guide school needs to teach these people never let the tourists know you are afraid. We didn't even follow the path exactly here, we gave them a very wide berth. Well obviously nothing happened, I am writing this, but on our next walking tour I hope we do not see more buffalo. 

We had to pass by these cape buffalo on the way back from our walk - did NOT like this part

We gave the buffalo lots of space!

We did see some baboon cross right in front of us on the way back, and when we looked across the field to the other side of the circle where we started there were giraffe right there! The other tourists were walking right in front of them, shoot we picked the wrong way to do the circle, oh well we will see more I am sure. 

Giraffe on the opposite side of the walk from us!

Baboon on the way back

Back to meet up with Felix, a few more pics along the way out of the park and he delivered us back to Twiga Lodge for the night. When we arrived Paul was up on the lookout and told us to hurry as there had just been elephants over the fence. Gee, we spent the whole day in the park and didn't see any elephant. I was able to spot an ear behind a tree, but Andre didn't see anything, saving that for tomorrow I guess. Beautiful views of Kili from the lookout and the park today. A nice supper again tonight, great visit with Paul and Erica, kinda seems like you are with friends instead of guests, except you don't do anything, they wait on you for everything. Off to bed, hoping to get up tonight for a parade of elephants being chased out of the village.