Lake Manyara National Park

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After we left Tarangire we headed to our next park, Lake Manyara. To get there we drove thru the villages and towns that can be found between the two. This allowed to get a glimpse at the rural Tanzanian life. We drove past banana trees and fields of sesame. Small kids in the villages waved at us as we drove past. We saw women doing laundry in streams, men and boys herding goats and cattle, people on bikes caring huge containers of water from the local water source and women wearing colourful clothing carrying everything from buckets of water, bundles of sticks, baskets of produce or their daily shopping on their heads. It's an amazing skill.

Almost immediately after entering this park we came upon a family of elephants eating in the trees. We stopped to watch, they in turn watched us and then a couple of them decided to come check out our vehicle. They actually came so close that our guide was worried their tusks would rub against the truck's paint job. The closeness of these elephants was exciting, exhilarating and a little unnerving, but considering they decided not to tip the truck over (which they definitely had enough size and power to do) it was one of the highlights of the entire trip. We could have reached out and touched them if we wanted to... luckily we were a little wiser than that. After a few exciting and playful minutes with these giant creatures Selemani, our guide, decided it was best we move on before they decided to drive us in directions beyond our control.

The landscape of this park was quite different from the flat, dry and brown one we left behind in Tarangire. Here there was plenty of green forests, fields and hills housing baboons, monkeys and birds. At the lake we saw 100s of flamingoes and pelicans and the park introduced us to our first Cape Buffalo (one of Africa's "Big 5"), as well as the blue monkey. Once again zebras were always around grazing close by. As we were leaving the park we came across a family of Baboons, they seemed to make baboons of us, as they continuously dropped shells and small fruits on our vehicle from the forest canopy above.



We spent 1 night at the Lake Manyara Serena Safari Lodge. This lodge is located on an escarpment high abaove the park and we had a stunning view. We took advantage of thier infinity pool overlooking the park. It's a pretty magical way to finish your day in the bush.



More pictures below!



Up next....Ngorongoro!!

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