Tarangire Park

after our two hour drive on beautiful, paved roads we reached the entrance to the Tarangire Park.  The guides popped up our tops and our game drive began.  This park was amazingly beautiful!  Since they have had a lot of rain before we arrived, everything was so green and lush!  It made for beautiful scenery but not great animal spotting as they don't hang around where the grass is high as it is too dangerous for them.  We did see lots of elephants and we really never got tired of watching them. I think the highlights of this park were the beautiful scenery and the amazing baobab trees that are only found in a few countries of Africa!
It was late when we arrived at our resort so we went straight to dinner.  We were disappointed that we were just there one night as this lodge was out of this world!! To make matters worse, we had to leave at 7:00 am the next morning as we had a long day ahead of us!!  We had to drive two hours back over the same bumpy roads to get out of the park.  We had the tops popped and we did stop for a few more elephant pictures because you can never have too many!! (I am thinking you can)

We travelled for a couple more hours and then stopped at a huge shop that sold everything imaginable!  I think that we all did our share in supporting the Tanzanian economy!!

We had packed lunches today so we later stopped for a picnic.  Many of us ate right in our jeeps to avoid the birds that wanted to steal our food.  One group was lucky enough to see two leopards crossing the road, a very rare sighting!  Talk about being at the right place at the right time! I guess it was fitting as it was "the leopard" group that saw them!

In the afternoon we stopped at the Oldepai Gorge where the oldest hominid (Lucy) was found. They date back to 3.5 million years ago.  We had an interesting talk from a guide there about the discoveries and the gorge itself.

Along the way we witnessed two more amazing events.  First of all, we came upon an area that has the right vegetation for giraffes and we saw hundred of giraffes feeding in that area. It was so spectacular as they were skylined which is an amazing sight!!  There is nothing like watching this majestic, graceful animal moving across the land!

Then we came across thousands of Wildebeests making their migration from the Masaii Mara to the Serengeti.  We just stopped the jeeps and watched in awe as they formed a line from horizon to horizon. There were so many babies and it was heartbreaking to watch babies looking for their Moms or vice versa!

A few more hours on more bumpy roads and we reached the Serengeti Park Gates!  I will continue that story on the next blog!