We had an amazing adventure today. We left the Maramboi Tented Camp after a delicious breakfast on the deck and drove to the Tarangire National Park. The bucket list started to overflow. First of all, I got to see Baobabs trees in real life. I first learned about Baobab trees when I read The Little Prince in school and have wanted to see one in real life ever since. They are an endangered species now due to climate change and other factors. We experienced these trees throughout the national park, often in conjunction with the myriad of animals we encountered. Our list of animal sightings for today included: the omnipresent Wildebeest and Zebras (we saw hundreds of each), giraffes, and elephants by the dozens. We saw several lions in a variety of activities. Our first encounter was with a female lion who hunted and killed a warthog, then a male lion hanging out, and finally a trio of lions, two of whom moved into the grass and one climbed a tree and had a bit of a snooze. We also saw ringed and dwarf mongoose, Eland, Dik diks, Gazelles, Jackels, Waterbucks, Hydrax, and Impalas.

Did you know that Zebras are from the same family as horses, but you can’t ride them because they have soft spines? Another Zebra fact is that they have great memories and highly honed senses of smell. They can smell rain. We learned that warthogs go into dens at night, but chose to go in backwards because it is easier to escape if you have to run away in the night.

We saw many birds of all kinds today (i.e., lilac-breasted Weaver, long-crested eagle, Fisher’s love birds, yellow-necked desparto, tawny eagle, Roper’s griffin vultures, whiteback vulture, sparling, Egyptian goose, steppe eagle, ostrich, red & yellow crested barbet, and most amazing of all, a Secretary bid). My friend Eric has encouraged me to look at birds as the amazing creatures they are. We relied heavily upon our guide, Wakara, to notice and name these birds for us.

We experienced the circle of life a couple of ways today. The first was watching vultures consume the left over parts of a lion-killed zebra. The zebra probably died within twelve hours at the most of us encountering the vultures feeding frenzy. The birds need to wait until the lion abandons the kill, then they and a couple dozen of their friends’ clean things up, to the bone. Our second reality check came when a lion we spotted a warthog and went into hunting for food mode. She stalked, chased and ate the warthog while we watched. The third encounter occurred while we watched a herd of elephants at a water hole. They group were drinking and licking salt when two juvenile elephants started to push and entangle each other with their trunks. An older elephant intervened and pushed the malcontent elephants apart.

We got back to our resort at 5 pm and had a bit of time to clean up and get organized for happy hour and supper. We have had excellent food for every meal including our box lunch on the safari trail. We stopped at a rest area to picnic and found ourselves defending our rations from baboons and little grey monkey out from under our neighbours’ lunch boxes. People keep feeding these wild animals and so they interact with people who see nothing wrong with zoos.

We are off to the Ngorongoro Crater next!