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Published: June 30th 2013
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Day 10/11
The next day, we again set of early to drive to Tarangire NP. It was less cloudy than the day before, but still cold, so in anticipation that the day would improve, we had several layers we could take off. At least with the altitude it had meant no possibility of being bitten by mosquitos, its too cold for them to breed that high up. It was a 2 1/2hour drive to the park, and Sylvester had said that we would be making a stop on the way for shopping at one of the best shops in the area. Upto that point, apart from the hotel shops which were very expensive, we hadnt stopped for any souveniers. The men of the party were worried....
Actually, whilst some of the goods in the shop were ok, the staff were rude, so we bought very little. As we contined down the highway towards the NP, the weather was gradually improving all the time and warming up. By the time we reached the park entrance, we had taken all the layers off, and it was t-shirt weather.
We popped the roof up on the jeep and set off into
the park on a mini game drive to the lodge. The park is famous for two things - its large herds of elephants and baobab trees whose massive trunks make them instantly recognisable. Within their trunks they store water, so you occasionally see trees with the trunk gouged out where elephants have gone looking for water.
We headed down along side the river, and saw some really big herds of elephants either coming from the river having already drunk, or heading to the river to drink. Animals from outside the park start to head back there in the dry season as other water sources start to dry, and Sylvester told us that when he had been 2 or 3 weeks previously he had seen no zebra. However, it wasnt long before we saw some herds heading down to the river for drinking. We did notice that there seemed to be more elephants at this park with only 1 tusk than we had noticed at others. This is from where they have broken them on branches.
We were hoping that the zebra would encourage the lions to show themselves, or even a leopard or cheetah. Despite our best efforts,
we didnt manage to spot any. We did however, see baby giraffe, mongooses and lots of elephant calves, along with warthogs, reedbucks and waterbucks.
We headed to the lodge for lunch, and we would be having another game drive in the afternoon, when it was a bit cooler and hopefully there would not be an influx of tetse flies. This was a different hotel brand to that we had been staying in - Sopa Lodge whereas all the others have been Serena Lodges. There is no Serena in Tarangire NP and of the few lodges available, this is considered to be the best of them. We certainly couldnt fault the view from the restaurant at lunchtime out over the park. The food was good, but a more rigid menu than we had been used to, our only gripe was that the beer bottles had shrunk but stayed the same price. After a long lunch, we went to the room to change for the game drive, and there is some building work being done. The room was nice however, but the mosquito net was back so we needed to be aware that we needed repellant on before the game drive
as we would only be coming back at dusk.
We met again at 3.30pm for our final game drive of the holiday. We had ordered cheetah cubs, leopard and more lions, but in truth we saw lots of elephants but nothing on the list! One of the highlights was a baby elephant that was so small it you could barely see it over the top of the grass. We were itching for it to come out onto road, but it was being so well protected by its mother and the rest of the herd we had no chance of that happening.
We returned to the lodge after stopping to take photos of a lovely African sunset, and really we couldnt be disappointed after all we had seen on the trip. As we opened the door to our room, we were nearly hijacked by a hyrax on the roof that definately thought about coming into our room.
At our last dinner together, we had another joke from Gottfried, and 2 guests had birthdays. For this, the staff get together and come out from the kitchen in a long procession singing and dancing with cake. Our server Margreth was
one of the main singers and put her heart and soul inot the performance. As Gottfried and Ulrike were on their honeymoon, we thought that we should ask if they could do something for them. The manager was very accomodating, and the staff duly obliged for them and they seemed genuinly pleased and joined in with the singing. We headed off to bed, as we all had a day of travelling the next day.
We set off the following day through the NP, back to Arusha. We kept our eyes peeled to see if we could spot "anything special" on our way out, but we didn't see anything. We then had quite a challenging drive back, as we spent more time off road on diversions than we did on the actual road. Looking at the road surface that they were putting down, we weren't sure chow long it would last given the extremes of temperature. This made us a bit pushed for time but we still managed to stop for a quick break, and get a bit of shopping in too.
We had an early lunch back at the Arusha Coffee Lodge, as we had to set off
for Kilimanjaro airport, and the Australian couple had a flight to Zanzibar to catch. In the Tanzanite shop, Russ had what was described by the rest of the party as a "weak moment" when he bought a beautiful anniversary present - the others had previously weakened so he was in good company!
We waited for our flight to Nairobi with Precision Air, and this time it had propellers! Our itinerary said it was a 1hr 10 minute flight - 35 minutes later we were coming into land. This meant we had an even longer wait in Nairobi which was not the best airport we have ever been to. The only saving grace was that we had an executive lounge pass, and after a couple of laps of the terminal, there's not much to see, we went to the lounge for a bit of peace and quiet, free drinks and small snacks. Our pass was only for a 3 hour window, but we asked its we could stay longer and they didn't mind. How all the passengers and luggage got on the plane was a mystery to us, as we went through one gate and boarded through a different one
and we weren't even sure we were following the right line. As a result, we were an hour late leaving, then they wanted to feed us, by which time it was 1.15am, and woke us for breakfast - less than ideal.
We were soon back at Heathrow having managed a bit of a sleep on the way back even if it was interrupted, we then quickly got through immigration and Russ even went through the new e-pass system and was through even quicker than me who had a short queue through the normal channel. By the time I had got to the baggage carousel Russ had already got a trolley and was scanning bags in the search for ours, this however didn't make them come out any sooner. We then only had to get to the car and drive a thankfully uneventful 3 1/2 hour journey home. We discussed the holiday on the way home and both commented that we'd thoroughly enjoyed it and vowed to go back to Africa again in the future, although maybe a different part as there's so much on offer.
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