Tarangire first full day

OK our first little fight last night. I was too afraid to sleep with all the tent blinds open, and of course Andre wanted everything open. I won, it is my birthday present that we are here, so there.... Many noises when we first went to bed but after that a pretty quiet night, or at least we slept through everything.

First thing this morning I went out on the little platform outside the front door of our tent and I could see the heads of baboons coming up over the hill in front of me. I jumped back into the tent and watched what had to be a troop of at least 20 baboons cross within a few feet of us. From very young, to the bigger males, unbelievable. 

Sunrise View from Tent

Baboons coming up over the hill right in front of me!

 

Off to breakfast then we meet Felix for our first drive of the day. It is much cooler this morning, probably not even 15, it was cold enough to put on a sweat shirt when we first woke up, but it will not take long for the sun to warm us up. We saw no one out for the first hour or so, mostly we stopped to look at birds, trees, hardly any big animals around yet. Felix tells us first thing in the morning we will not see them, but as it gets warmer they will start heading towards the water to drink. Probably the hilight of the morning drive was is coming across 2 lion on either side of the river bank with a zebra pretty much all eaten in the shade under one of the lions. 

Poor zebra

Happy lion

 The lions were full and not moving much and all of a sudden there was a big commotion on the other side of the river from us, a cheetah was just beyond the lion and was trying to catch one of the impala. The cheetah had scared the impala towards the lion, so it decided it might get another easy meal, but missed as well. We couldn't see the cheetah from our vantage point, but we moved further along the river and had a pretty good view of it, though quite far away. Some elephants were now heading down to the river as well, Andre wanted a good shot so asked Felix if we could move a little once the other jeeps had left, lost in translation and Felix drove us back to where we had first seen the chase. Next was amazing, we could see that there were 3 babies and 2 mom elephants coming down the river from further up and would need to pass right in front of one of the hidden lions. You could see that the elephants sensed danger, they put the babies between the adults and moved forward, the lion wanted nothing to do with them and came up the river bank directly in front of us. Amazing. Yes, we are actually seeing this live. I still can't believe we are actually here. 

 

Elephants chase the lions away

Very tiny baby!

This park is not too busy either, the busiest we've seen is when the cheetah was spotted, I think it was quite rare to see them in this park. At the cheetah there was about 10 jeeps watching, where the lion came up right beside our jeep later there were 3 of us. Our guide sometimes talks to others when we pass him on the road, but so far we haven't seen him using a radio. Some of the companies have so many jeeps out here, Leopard Tours seems like every second jeep, and they seem to be radioing each other. I personally like the peace and quiet. When you stop to see something Felix always turns the vehicle off, and the noises are amazing. First thing this morning the bird calls were fantastic. Often when you stop for something, it actually is something else that you spot and hang around to watch. The dik dik deer here are so fun, they are maximum 5 kg, nearly the size of a very big rabbit, and they are deer. So much smaller than even a newborn fawn. I can't imagine what a baby ones size would be. 

Dik Dik, full grown and so small!

 

Another highlight of the morning is for sure the elephants mud baths. 

Fun to spray everyone!

I love mud!

Nothing like a roll in the mud

More mud

Towards the end of our morning drive we head down towards the river for the most amazing sites. Hundreds of wildebeest, zeebras, ostrich, warthogs, and elephants can all be seen at the river bank.

 Of course the very most fun to watch are the elephants. Not only do they drink, but they are having a grand time covering themselves in mud and scratching on the rocks. The babies plunk themselves right down in the mud and are pretty much a muddy mess when they come up. This is how we ended the morning, I have no idea what Felix has planned to top this morning, but we have now had lunch, a little nap, are enjoying the view until 4PM when Felix says we will go out again.

Juvenile Tawny Eagle

Love this tree and elephant picture!

Follow the leader

A couple of notes about where we are staying. There is no electricity during the day, for a couple of hours in the morning and evening there are power bars put out at the front desk for everyone to charge whatever they need up. It is very funny looking at all the electronics, how times have changed. The power bars are packed, with I think around 60 people staying here, and no electricity in anyones tents this is our chance to charge up. Andre and I are lucky, we must be the only north americans here because we are the only ones using our voltage power bar. It is nice, we don't need any converters, we can just plug whatever we want in. Andre has 3 cameras he is keeping going, I have my ereader, and the laptop. Andre has an electric razor, but haven't seen that come out yet :). What we don't charge here can be charged in our jeep, so all is well.

The other funny thing here is last night we had to have had a first time ever waiter. Poor guy, very broken english, and maybe has never eaten in a restaurant before. First I said I just wanted water, then Andre ordered a beer, then Andre said he would have water too, and I then decided to order a glass of white wine. This just sent him over the top. The poor kid he looks about 15. Anyway getting across 2 water was so difficult, but it didn't take long to figure out why, he came back to the table with 2- 1.5 litres of bottled water for us. Now we had to figure out how to return one, I can't wait to see what our bill says when we leave. At breakfast this morning we have the same waiter again, but this time someone comes over after he asks us if we want coffee, she tells us that he is a new waiter, we told her we knew. Today for lunch we are back at the lodge instead of a box lunch, yep the same waiter again, we now just go right to him as we love it, this time we ask him if we can sit at the table by the window, no because there are no napkins on the table yet, but he says if we wait 5 minutes he will go get some, ummm no that is OK we will sit at the window table 3 over from this one. Maybe Andre could get a job training waiters, it is not too hard to pick up the napkins off one table and move them to the next, so funny, love it!!

Grey-headed Woodpecker

OK, Felix has outdone himself again. This afternoon started with us leaving and me asking if we will see more giraffe in other parks as we haven't seen many here, turn the corner and a giraffe, thanks Felix. 

 We spent a bit of time here then moved on and came across some monkeys. We stayed here for a while watching a new mother and father passing a very tiny baby back and forth, so very cute, sure hope the pictures turn out. 

Tiny baby being passed back and forth between Mom and Dad

 We moved along again and watched some elephants in the water, then a bit more and we saw one younger elephant eating on its own. We stopped here and watched for a good .5 hour, so fun. The elephant would wrap the grass around it's trunk, then kick it's trunk to pull the grass out by the roots, then would bang the grass on the ground to get the dirt and dust off before eating it. This was repeated over and over, so fun to just sit quietly and watch. 

Elephant kicking the grass loose from the ground that she has twirled around her trunk

From here we were heading further along the river when another jeep stopped us to tell us there were lions on the other side of the river, so off we go at breakneck speed. The guys in front got by some elephants but of course as we got there they decided to go onto the road. A large tree overhangs the road and the elephant were eating the fruit that was on the road, and did not want to move, elephant traffic jam. Felix went fairly close to them a couple of times, but no way were they letting us by and they started being a little aggressive to each other and then to the jeep, time to back away. So, we watched for about 20 minutes, then one left, and the others followed, off to find the lions. It is pretty easy to find when there is something extraordinary, there will be a number of jeeps there. It is now close to closing time at the park, so there were only 3 jeeps there watching a male and female lion sleeping. Wow. As the jeeps were getting ready to leave they both got up, a quick breeding, then back to sleep. Nothing like the baboons, who take about 3 seconds to breed, the lions took about 30 seconds. Quite amazing to see this on our first day of lion sightings. 

Afternoon delight!

Greeeaaaat!

Back to the lodge and we meet up with a couple that I knew from the trip advisor boards that I have been watching would be staying at the same lodge as us. They are from just outside Vancouver, and they said funny enough in Kilimanjaro airport the people in front of them in customs were from Fernie, 2 ladies, Joey know anyone here now? We went to supper with them, fun to talk to others and compare what we are both doing. They are in Tanzania for a month, will spend some time with chimps and then at the beach for the last week. Tomorrow night we are planning on doing a night 

game drive, and they are as well too I think. Off to bed around 10, can't wait for tomorrow.

Very busy at the river

View of the terrace

 

Sunset.....