On Safari Part 2

Time and space did not permit me to complete the telling of our safari in the last post, so here we go with the rest.

We stayed at the Kirurumu Tarangire lodge, if you would like to know more about them, click here. 

We all had a good night sleep, there were no nocturnal visitors, except Clint had an adventure killing two scorpions in his shower stall.  We all awoke refreshed and ready for another day of adventure. That day started with a wonderful breakfast at the camp. Again it was silver service and table napkins all around. A full African breakfast of sausages, eggs, bacon, juice - in fact it seemed anything we wanted was on the menu.

We finally finished and leisurely packed up our things into the truck and headed off for a little game drive in the park (the tented camp site was outside of the park about a 15 minute drive away).

We again saw a lot of different animals, even though we were not there for long. We saw ostriches, Cape buffalo, wart hogs, several different types of bucks and a lot of elephants.  We decided to make for the Tarangire Luxury Tented camp and have a look at that. What a beautiful spot it is in, and what luxury! It made our camp look quite rough, but all agreed, we liked ours more.  We stopped there for a soda and a natter (chat), just relaxing and taking it easy.  

It was then time to head off so we could leave the park before our 24 hour pass was up.  We stopped at the gate and enjoyed the lunch boxes we had been given in the morning. We were accompanied this time by lots of different birds - they were hoping to get a free feed. Quite a few were lucky.

It was then time to head back to Arusha to rest up for the night before heading out in the morning on our next leg of our safari - Arusha National Park.

Arusha National Park is the closest park to Arusha town. It takes about an hour to get there from our house. Anne and I love going there, it is a small and intermit park. You can't see a huge amount of animals there, but being on Mount Meru, the environment changes a lot - it is really beautiful!

We left home after a good nights rest and headed up the mountain. We were really fortunate to see so many animals, birds and butterflies. There are not so many tourist there, so it feels at times like you are the only ones there.  

Zebra and Cape baffalo

The Park is includes Mount Meru which is an extinct volcano that they claim to have originally been taller than the here by Kilmanjaro before it erupted. There is a smaller crater Ngurdoto Crater that is a complete caldera. There was also the wonderful Momela Lakes that provides sanctuary to many different types of birds and a family of shy hippos.

We stopped overlooking the Momela lakes for a picnic lunch

The slopes of the Ngurdoto crater provide a home to lots of different types of monkeys and we were lucky enough to happen on a family of Blue capped monkeys right on the edge of the road. It was fascinating watching them interacting with each other. They were fully aware of our presence, but were not worried in the least.

In Arusha national park you have time to sit and think!

A blue capped monkey

The smallest of the bucks it the tiny Dikdik. There normally are seen in pairs and they are so delicate you would have thought that Disney would have thought of them.

My favourite, the shy Dikdik

Giraffes are the national animal of Tanzania and they are a wonderful feature of the Arusha National park. These animals are huge, but they are able to move so gracefully. These were a group of adults that we happened on returning to their young that they have left in a "nursery" while they went out of the park to feed. We saw they young ones before we went around the Momela lakes and on returning we saw these coming over the him (from the outside of the park) and watched them move to their young. The reunion was very touching.

Giraffe