Tarangire to Lake Manyara and Ol Mesara Tented Camp

Happy birthday Liam!!  Hope you enjoy the bum pictures we put up on facebook for you!  Here they are again one more time especially for you!

So today we leave for our next camp and park. We will say goodbye to our new friends Robina and Don, but we may try to meet up in the Serengeti in a week, we will be staying not far from each other and maybe we can meet for lunch at a picnic area, we will check with our drivers this morning to see if they think it is possible. Off to get packed up, a quick shower, breakfast and then 1.5 hour drive to Lake Manyara for the day.

We see a beautiful balloon ride happening over the river, they now organize balloon rides at the lodge we are staying at, but at $500 per person we will pass, though it does look cool.

Balloon rides now offered at TSL

 

Todays sighting crossing the path in front of our tent is a huge number of mongoose. 

This is how close the elephants were to our tent, but we missed them, not Andre but the poop!

Good morning Mongoose running beside the tent

You have no idea what to expect here, yesterday we missed the elephants by about 10 minutes when we left.

We have had another fantastic day on Safari. Started off with the 1.5 hour drive really being 2 hours, road construction is horrific. We drive through a town where Felix used to live, Mto Wa Wbu, fun to see the town coming alive for the day. Lots of bananas for sale on the side of the road. A very traditional village, we may be exploring here later in the week. 

Some pictures along the drive

I think this is the only billboard we saw

Preparing for water drainage, definitely not needed right now

Taxi in town

Football game, this is Friday and a fun day for kids at school

Christmas tree in blossom

Banana transport, actually bikes were used to transport some crazy things!

The big bags on the side are packaged bananas ready for shipping

 Manyara park is a smaller park than where we came from. 

I took advantage of these signs whenever I saw them, I am not a great squatter!

 When we first entered the gates we could hear what I thought was a bird, but it was a poor small steinbok antelope that an eagle had captured. It happened so quickly, but we could see the poor thing trying to hide, but no hope we think.

 We then spent a good part of the morning looking for birds. This park has a lot of trees and forests so lots of birding opportunities, and we will not have this when we get to the Serengeti. The bee catchers we watched for quite a while, there were two that kept taking off from a branch, grabbing something from the air to eat, and then returning. One poor butterfly was caught, these birds are really fast. 

Northern Masked Weaver

Weaver?

Grey Headed Kingfisher

Marabou Stork

Martial Eagle

African Grey Hornbill eating a delicious legged something

Little Bee-eater

 

We followed along the road a way towards the lake and we could see a dead buffalo, then we saw the lion. We missed the kill from earlier, but we did watch the lion for a bit. Then Felix said we had to move, went a little further down the road, and a lion in a tree! Andre had read that it was more of a fable that there are Lake Manyara tree lions, but it is true! We spent a while here watching her, she didn't move much, a very full belly. This park is not very busy, so only a few jeeps came by to watch. 

 

Andre experienced a little lens envy here...

We next move on to have our box lunch at a picnic area overlooking the lake. A beautiful spot, we can see giraffe, wildebeest, zebras all in the distance near the lake. Lots of birds flying around looking for handouts. 

Box lunch break, amazing view

Watching an elephant while eating lunch, how often do you get a chance to do that??

 

Following lunch we are now on a hunt for blue monkeys. We had seen one in Arusha Park, but there should be lots here. We stopped many times to watch baboons, a favourite for all of us, and when we got further into the forest we found the blue monkeys hanging out with the baboons. Lots of very tiny baboons, so fun to watch them figuring out life.

Sykes-Blue Monkeys (Kinda likes like Mom)

Sykes-Blue Monkey

Love this one, the framing with the tree is great I think.

This guy was hanging out with the baboons

We also went to the hippo pond, no hippo as it was too hot, but we did see loads of flamingos and pelicans flying around. 

Remains of a hippo

 

Driving to Ol Mesara Tented Camp

Bananas being sold everywhere to everyone, including the bus stop

Taxi line up

We are now at our camp for the night, Ol Mesara tented camp. It was about a 10km drive off the main road to the place we are staying tonight. We are the only 2 people here, I think there are 5 or 6 tents. Our tent overlooks an opening where many goats and cows are being moved by the Masai, you can hear the bells on the necks I think of the cows, I hope this sound goes all night. We are walked to our tent by someone in traditional dress, hope to get some pictures later.

Our tent at Ol Mesara

 

View from the porch on our tent of Rift Valley

View from our tent, we are on top of the hill looking down

Loved it when you saw these boys/men pull out their cells

A very nice supper, it is nice that it is not buffet, and not a crazy amount of food. It is a very young chef here who comes out and presents the food to us with a full description of what we are being served, we start with soup, and then the main course. A very nice presentation and very good.  We both really enjoyed it. The owner Barbra is hovering a lot making sure everything is fine. She recently took in two female cats, and now has 3 kittens running around. Very cute, up and down the trees all around. Dinner is served in a covered outside area, I think

if we wanted we could have had a fire lit, but we are so tired we are off to bed around 8PM.  Too bad we didn't have a bit more time here, I think Barbra would have been very interesting to talk to more, and we really liked it here, one nights are tough!