Big pussy cats

Wednesday 26th June 

We stayed at a lovely hotel last night in Arusha – the African Tulip. The hotel was built in 2006 so still very new. Beautiful decor and a very large room. The food was great – predominantly Indian; beautiful butter chicken and beef with mushrooms.

Today started at 8am with a 2 hour drive to Tarangire national Park. This park is known for the number of elephants and baobab trees. Not a huge variety of wildlife to be seen – mostly zebra and elephants. We also saw waterbuck, dik dik, mongoose, impala, monkeys, giraffe and many birds. 

Waterbuck.

Huge baobab trees in the park.

Cute little white fluffy bird but
I don't remember it's name.

But the highlight of the day was LIONS. We were coming up to a waterhole where a lot of zebra were gathered, some in the water. We realised from the 'Toyota migration' there that something was there. All of a sudden the zebra startled and shot away from the waterhole. Hard to see, but there were 5 lions on the far side of the waterhole resting under the trees. We watched them for a while but they were happy doing the pussy-cat cat thing and just chilling.

Zebra in the waterhole -
before sighting lions.

Lions on the ground to the right of the big tree.
(Zoom in)

Elephants headed to the waterhole ....

... and the lions skedaddled.

As we moved off there was a small herd of elephant approaching the waterhole near where the lions were resting. Protocol is – lions move. They didn’t move far but far enough that the elephants had good access to the water.

Lunch was a packed lunch from the hotel enjoyed at one of the major picnic areas in the park. Wonder what you call a huge gathering of land cruisers? After lunch it was more game driving through the park (mostly only elephant, zebra and giraffe to be seen) and then head to our overnight accommodation. As we headed out of the park we were driving through smoke and alongside a controlled burn they were doing to reduce the undercover grass to reduce the fire risk. (For our rally friends – the drive out would have been a magic special stage.)

We are now sitting on the balcony of our lodge and watching 5 elephants wander across down below  - about 500m. We have a fabulous view into the park and across the lake. Weather is  balmy about 23 deg at 6pm.