Safari Day 3

Since we’re staying in a camp in Ndutu (in Ngorogoro Conservation Area), we didn’t have a multi-hour drive to get anywhere, so we got to spend  pretty much the whole day on a game drive. (With even a short siesta in the afternoon.)

We saw two prides of lions, more cheetah, a leopard (which spent the entire day sleeping in a tree), uncountable zebra and wildebeests, giraffes every time we U-turned a corner, and much more.

There were lots of Safari jeeps around the park, most were clustered around the big cats. There were uncountable thousands of zebras and wildebeests so we were usually on our own around those animals.

Safari Day 2

Day 2 of our safari was pretty spectacular. We drove from Karatu to the Oldevai Gorge and Ndutu via  the Ngorogoro Crater (which is actually a caldera not a crater), all located in the Ngorogoro Conservation Area. (A conservation area is different from a national park in that people live there, and also as we found out later there are much looser rules around where the jeeps can and can’t drive.) 

We’re at a camp now in the middle of the conservation area, so the internet is spotty.  Here are some photos of the day, I’ll fill in the details later.

The highlight of the day- a cheetah mom and her two cubs.

Here is a photo of our camp:

We’re at this camp for the next couple of days.

Day One of our Tanzanian Safari

 We had an adventure even before we left Victoria!  There was a snowstorm that basically shut down the Victoria airport, so after a fun night of rebooking our cancelled flights (and then rebooking when they got cancelled again) we ended up taking the ferry to Vancouver and departing from there.

Here we are “before” in the snow, and “after” enjoying a beer after our arrival in Tanzania (two days later).

We arrived in Arusha. We had given ourselves a couple of days to acclimatize, so we visited a couple of local tourist attractions.   First the natural history museum, which included a variety of exhibits about the local history, wildlife and geography.  Here I am inspecting an exhibit on malaria.

Next we visited a local cultural center and gallery, which is just a big tourist trap in my opinion.  (We visited a similar place during day one our safari, I think this will become a theme.

Here is the view from our Arusha hotel. (That’s Mt Meru in the background).

For our first safari day we drove from Arusha to Tarangire National Park, about a 2 hour drive. On the way we saw a herd of zebra, along with a few wildebeast, elan and gazelle all en route not even in the park yet!  (I guess the animals don’t know the park boundaries.). Anyways we had a good view thru the binoculars but they were too far to take pictures unfortunately.

Once we arrived at Tarangire we caught glimpses of some monkeys and impalas so we felt we were having a pretty good first day. And then, elephants!!!

They were hanging out right next to the road so we had a good long visit. After awhile we moved on and quickly came upon a giraffe!!!

Actually there were about 5 giraffes, including these two youngsters that were cavorting playfully.

When we moved along from the giraffes we came across some more elephants!!!

A bunch of baboons playing in the road… 

More and more elephants!!!  We think overall we saw more than a hundred elephants, close by the road or wandering in the distance.

One reason Tarangire is popular with elephants is because there are a lot of baobab trees, which apparently the elephants like to eat.

(The first group we saw were gathered around a baobab tree)

There were a few naughty monkeys hanging around the picnic area at lunch (one attacked Chris and stole a donut) and afterwards we saw some ostrich and a few waterbuck (no good pics sorry).

Then we left the park and drove 3 hours to Karatu, and tomorrow we will visit Olduvai and then Ngorogoro Park and Ndutu.