Tanzania by Mark and Pam: National Geographic Africa

When people come here to Tarime and to the mission house, we tell them this is not your National Geographic Africa. Tarime is not a tourist town and the area is not a tourist area. If you like to see poor people, mud huts, people constantly walking along the road, to live without electricity and water, not bath yourself for a few days, then I guess I could be wrong.

My globe-trotting Mother came to visit us. We picked her up in Nairobi, did the tourist thing of the giraffe park, elephant orphanage, museum and a cultural exhibition of native dances. Then came the 8-hour bus ride to non-tourist town Tarime.

We visited the orphanage, on Sunday mom and Pam did crafts with the kids and Tuesday we left on Safari to the Serengeti. Now that’s your National Geographic Africa. We entered the park and drove 3 hours on rough gravel roads to our fabulous hotel. We of course sighted all kinds of animal as we drove. I’ll attach photos of some of them. After watching animals in the morning, we drove about 5 hours to our next hotel on the rim of a crater that contains more animals, the rarest being the black rhino.

Please excuse some of the photos. This is where the animals live and it’s not a zoo. And I guess I’m kind of ruined for zoos now. I photographed the animals with a telephoto lens. The first rhino we saw was on the horizon and looked like a blob. You could barely see the outline. We were lucky enough to find a group of 5. They were a bit away, but I got some decent photos.

Pictures speak louder than words, so here you go, enjoy.

We were at the entrance to the park when this guy showed up

Wildebeests, aka Gnu were in abundance. You usually saw zebra with them. Our guide Omi said the Gnu was his favorite animal because they were so dumb. We didn't find our particulars, but apparently the zebra lead the migration and the Gnu are not smart enough to find their own way and tag along with the zebra.

Here are impalas. The dude with the horns is the male and these are his wives. There is only one male to a pack.

This is a crocodile. I didn't spot him at first even though he was only 35 feet or so from me.

The first water buffalo we saw, one of the 'Big 5' and apparently they don't live constantly near water.

We saw a lot of giraffe and some were really huge and tall. I'm posting this picture to give some perspective. He was taller than the tree and note the water buffalo.

I will take a separate post to describe what we saw here. We were fortunate enough to watch lioness' hunt, and this is what I captured. The lions were trying to surround a gazelle. If you can find them, there are 7 lions in this picture. There's a brown blur just left of the base of the tree in the upper right part of the photo. That's the gazelle running to live another day.

This little guy greeted us at our first hotel. Sorry, lost his name.

From our hotel room, this was out back. Nice way to say that if you venture out, it's your own fault if you get eaten.

I wish I could say this was a lion roaring, but it was just a yawn.

One of our first elephant sightings. Bulls, female and baby.

The leopard, one of the 'Big 5' and the hardest one to find. We were really lucky to have this good a view. This is zoomed in as far as I could go and blown up.

We saw warthogs, and every time, they ran away with their tail up. Pam loved em and Omi said the tail up is a signal to 'follow me.'

We saw two species of hyena and they are larger than Pam, mom or I thought. They are bigger than a large dog, say a large German Shepard, and look tough and muscled.

This is what the Serengeti Plain looks like during mid-migration time. Those are zebra and gnu in front and all the dots in the background are also zebra and gnu.

You will occasionally see 2 zebra looking like the are resting their heads on each other. They usually are arranged so they flick their tails it will brush the flies away from the other zebras face. Here are 3 who are apparently learning what to do, but then maybe they took a gnu stupid pill.

A better shot of a gnu.

A zoomed in shot of two lions and a lioness. We were in the Ngorngora crater and seeing male lions anywhere is not the common.

A cheetah, fastest land animal. We didn't see it run, but it was some distance off and then walked closer and posed for all the cameras.

Hippo pools are usually in are close to stagnant water and that is of course where the hippos usually are. There is a distinctive odor associated with where they are.