Tarangire National Park

What a beautiful nights sleep ❤️ whilst not fully in the wild just yet, we did hear the local birds and would you believe it, woke up to rain! Not just a drizzle, proper rain! More rain in Africa this morning than we’ve had all summer in England!

We were told we would be meeting our driver/guide – Freddy at 8am, so our alarm (yes an alarm on holiday) went off at 6:45am and we were up and rearing to go!

Even in the rain, it felt like we were eating breakfast in paradise!

Toast with butter and local honey, with a cup of Kilimanjaro tea. We didn’t want to risk branching out and having eggs or anything that might not sit as well given this was our first day on safari!

We scoffed our breakfast, packed our bags and checked out ahead of time – our excitement clearly on display!

There were about 8 other couples/ families all headed out on jeeps this morning, guides turned up one by one including Freddy. He introduced himself to us, gave us a breakdown of the day, the itenary and what we could expect to see – including a bingo card, and I’m not leaving until I can shout full house!!

He then broke the news that a lot of the animals don’t like the rain and that we might only see 20% of what we had initially hoped!

With that sad thought looming over us, we started the 2 hour drive to the Tarangire National Park, along with numerous other jeeps all headed in one direction, occasionally broken up by a lorry, motorcycle or tuk-tuk!

I naively thought (hoped) we would see ‘wild animals’ along the way, perhaps some zebra just hanging around but as we drove through numerous villages, past farms and tribes taking care of their livestock that naive hope definitely dimmed!

Is there a possibility that the only animals we see are cows and goats?!

As we pull into the park up just in front of the Tarangire National Park gates, we are surrounded by jeeps, easily over 50 over them all parked up, all hoping to see the park which was also known as Elephant Paradise as its home to some of the largest elephant populations in all of Tanzania.

We hopped out for a walk around, whilst Freddy popped the roof ready to see what animals might welcome us once we had entered … if any​ …

We were no more than 10 minutes into the park, where it felt like luck might be on our side, the rain had stopped on the drive, the clouds had started to dissipate and the sun was trying to peak through, and then we saw our first animal – not a cow or a goat in sight, instead an olive baboon!

Then Michael, replicated a sound you might hear at the zoo when a child sees its first animal goes, ‘look, there’s a zebra’! We took about 50 poor quality photos, panicking because what if we don’t see another zebra again whilst we are here!?

We drove on and spotted a Wildebeast in the bushes, again taking another ton of photos just to prove that we had had some success, when we turned a corner, the plains opened up and it was wildebeast and zebra galore! Both sides of the road, in their hundreds, and we felt like utter lunatics for panicking 5 minutes prior in case we never saw either again!

The funniest thing is that by the end of the day we were pointing out zebras and wildebeast like they were cows and goats, they became that common!

Freddy was telling us that they coexist together because wildebeest have poor eyesight but fantastic hearing and zebra are the other way round; so they use each other to survive.

We carry on driving, saying to ourselves that we must remain calm, when we spotted 10 maybe 15 jeeps all lined up – Freddy went full speed ahead to get us a good spot at whatever was happening, when we heard what was happening ……

A male bull elephant, playing in the bog and spraying water over itself, he was putting on a proper show for his fans, and we were lapping it up.

You couldn’t wipe the smile off our faces, here we were, in Africa, standing up in a jeep, being driven around a national park trying to spot animals – Woburn doesn’t come close to reality.

We carried on, grinning from ear to ear, and happened upon a small elephant family – including babies! We waited for a while with the elephants as the youngest was playing a very good game of hide and seek, when our patience was rewarded.

We must have been on a streak, as not long later we found giraffes! 3 of them, with another baby! Lady luck really was shining down on us.

Freddy then drove us to a huge BaoBao tree and was explaining the history of poachers and how they would carve holes into these trees and hide in them before coming out at night to poach. He then told us to get out the car!!!!

I thought driving round the park was amazing, but to get out of the car and walk around, even for 5 minutes was surreal. The size of the tree was incredible, it’s mad to think the history of the hole being carved out too and how tough it must have been to carve as it felt like stone rather than bark, as well as how much work had been undertaken to stop poaching! With all the excitement of the morning, before we knew it, it was time for lunch.

We headed to a picnic spot (again along with 50+ other jeeps), which was a viewpoint based at the top of of a hill, looking out over the park – picturesque just doesn’t cut it! We found ourselves a picnic bench and as Freddy was setting up food, we saw a herd of elephants below playing finding the last bit of water in an otherwise dried up river.

We picnicked next to baboons and vervet monkeys, keeping a very close eye on anything we may have dropped! Then came the afternoon neither of us could have predicted.

Freddy had his foot down to the floor, he was racing to get somewhere but was playing his cards close to his chest – I don’t think he wanted to get our hopes up! We caught up with the elephants that had been playing in the river, we were set back a bit from the crowd, fully immersed in the magic that was ahead of us, but with a reaction neither of us saw coming, Freddy had pinched us a front row seat.

I could have sat here all day. 🐘

After a good amount of time, we opted to allow someone else the chance to see what we had been seeing and carried on with the drive, with our hearts full.

We came across more giraffe, they were becoming as common as the elephants, zebra and wildebeest! When again, Freddy went silent and let his speed do the talking!

We were racing in a way that we both knew something special was round the corner. We clocked the line up of only a handful of jeeps and wondered if this had all been a little anticlimactic. Even when we had parked we were both struggling to see what it was that caused Freddy to embrace his inner Lewis Hamilton when I clocked her….

Camouflaged as camouflaged could be, female lions. Freddy then had the cheek to ask us how many we could see, when I replied with two he laughed and told us another was hiding and he found her because her ear kept twitching! We stayed for a while, a) because we had found lions on day one of our safari and b) because Freddy said that it was strange that there were only three. He said prides would normally be up to 20 including a few males.

No more made an appearance for us today, but the safari is still young, day one and I feel like we’ve ticked off so many animals from our bingo card!

As we started to head back to the entrance/exit of the park we came across a jeep that had gotten itself stuck in sand! Freddy took us over and then hopped out to help them get free – it certainly caused some entertainment!

We were then seemingly rewarded with another sighting of a male elephant, he was so close to the jeep it was unreal!

We also saw dik-diks, Thomson Gazelles, a rock hyrax, beautiful blue birds and a bird of prey, all in all a pretty special 6 hours driving around the park.

We then started our drive to our lodge for this evening; African Safari Manyara Escarpment – where we overlook Lake Manyara National Park. On our way we stopped at a local painters, who showed us how his paintings were made using a knife versus a brush, how they made wood carvings using ebony wood versus mahogany and then walked us though his shop. Michael’s eyes lit up and we couldn’t not walk away without something to remember the day with!

We carried on our drive, and with about 10/15 minutes to go, we turned off the main road onto another track we have learnt they like to call the ‘African Massage’ when the encampment came into view, we knew it was going to make a special day even better!

We got checked in and then explored the site, ending at the swimming pool. We hadn’t had time to enjoy the pool at last nights lodge, so we weren’t about to miss out on this!

A quick dip before another lovely meal to finish a day that I could only ever have dreamt of.

I could use as many adjectives as the English language would allow to explain a day like today, but none of them seem to do any justice. I’m terrified to go to sleep, just in case I wake up tomorrow in Stewartby and Michael tells me it was all just a dream.

What a pinch me kind of day it’s been 🐘🦓🦒 ❤️