Safari in Tanzania (Post #60)
Jambo! (A greeting people use in Tanzania, Africa)
Sorry it has been so long since we’ve blogged. (Michele here by the way….) We have actually been camping for 2 weeks and then we made several attempts at blogging – and actually did write two blogs – but blackouts in Arusha, Tanzania are common and we ended up losing everything we wrote because it didn’t get uploaded to the server. Oh, and we’ve had some adventures along the way that we will write about. Anyway….
We went on a 6 day, 5 night budget safari in four national parks between October 26 and October 31. We visited Tarangire National Park, Lake Manyara National Park, Ngorongoro Crater, and the Serengeti. Many people might think of going on a safari as a luxury adventure. Well, not so in our case – we did the budget camping safari. Here’s a look at what a budget camping safari means:
While in the 4 national parks we saw a wide variety of animals including “the big five” – elephant, black rhino, cheetah, leopard, and lion. We also saw zebras, wildebeasts, baboon families, giraffes, hippos, warthogs, lizards, water buffalo, gazelles, jackyls, hyenas, crocadiles, hyrax (seal looking thing that lives around rocks), dik diks (small creatures that look like a combination of rabbit and deer), and many, many bright, beautiful birds. We even saw two ostriches mating and two lions mating 8 feet away from our safari vehicle!
The only other adventure worth mentioning was that on the way home, during the 13 hour drive, we ran out of gas and our driver had to borrow money from us to buy gas from a truck that stopped to help us. Always an adventure here in Africa (and we have more of those to write about!) Below are some pictures we took during the safari:
Happy hippos:
Female lion:
Lazy leopard:
Enormous elephant:
Zebras and wildebeasts (these two species were always together)
Warthog eating – isn’t he cute?
Next blog will be about our Kilimanjaro Trek…stay tuned!
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Tags: Category #17: Tanzania
Michele Harmon
> dik diks (small creatures that look like a combination of rabbit and deer)
Don’t you mean Jackalopes? I’ve always wondered where the home range of the Jackalope is.
What type of vehicle were you safari-ing in? Did you get out and try to pet one of the warthogs? Or maybe you stood at the edge of the water and threw some little white marbles out to the hungry-hungry hippos? I would have wanted to go try to tickle one of the zebras, since they’re basically ponies.
I’m excited to hear about your life In the Shadow of Mt Kilimanjaro. Stay away from the “90,000 starving baboons on a murderous rampage, killing humans and animals alike.”