Tarangire Day 2
Thursday, 17 July 2008
We left our tent camp after breakfast and set off for the park’s boundary and the road to Arusha. Our guide asked what we still wanted to see, and we said we would like to see a Serval and a Lesser Kudu.
We came across a herd of wildebeests, just as we had many times back in Seregeti National Park. Wildebeest in this park are less dark in coloring than their northern cousins.
Another landscape showing there are lots of hiding places for animals.
Sure enough, as we proceed, animals are only detected at close range. This is an elephant that was unseen until we were close to it.
Here our guide stumbled across a Lesser Kudu. One of two requests was satisfied! If we had been a minute earlier or later, we would not have seen it.
This is the same Lesser Kudu, which gave us one last look before disappearing. Nice horns!
One last photograph of a giraffe. And of course, an elephant.
Plus one last photograph of the landscape. This is the spot where the lions were napping yesterday. Right now it is dry season, and the water in the river flows under the sand.
We were about to leave the park, when we came across a Serval cat. Its camouflage is nearly perfect. Our guide had satisfied both requests with this sighting.
We enjoyed our last half day to look at the landscape and the animals in Tarangire National Park before setting out for civilization and the international airport in Arusha. Our trip showed the remarkable ecosystem in Tanzania, and that much of nature has been preserved by sound policy and hard work.
Here is map of the areas we visited on this trip. The trip exceeded our expectations by a high margin and we highly recommend Tanzania for a safari trip.
Next—26 hours to San Francisco, via a transfer at Amsterdam Schipol, 9,751 miles, this time without spending time in Amsterdam. It took a while to recover from these flights!
