Day 7 - Tarangire National Park

---

At 7:00 we met our new guide, Leonce. He was a young guy, in his early 20s. We hadn't seen a guide that young but we were very pleased to be rid of Mike so we happily climbed in to the Land Cruiser.

Today is voting day for the Tanznia presidential election and people standing in line waiting to vote everywhere. It was quite thr sight to see a voting booth on the side of the road, with no homes anywhere in sight, that had a line of 40 people. This election is a really big deal.

From the lodge to Tarangire National Park is about an hours drive. We got to know Leonce on the way and he did a good job engaging us and teaching us on the drive. Tarangire was only established as a park in the 90s which is weird. Gotta start somewhere.

Once in the park it took a little while for Leonce to understand this wasn't our first rodeo (safari) and most of the animals we had seen many many times. By now most of the animals had become very common and we didn't need to stop every 5 minutes to get more pictures.

The bugs in Tarangire were pretty bad and of course we had run out of one of our cans of bug spray and had forgotten to bring the other. One of the types of flies carries a really nasty disease so we tried to keep from getting bit.

The terrain in the park was a bit different with a lot of larger Acacia trees. There was also this really cool looking, haunted house type of tree, the Baobab tree. We learned that the inside of the trunk is hollow and that poachers would carve a hole in the trunk, hide out until dark, and then go kill elephants for their tusks in the middle of the night. Leonce showed us one of the trees that had been cut.

We had lunch at a beautiful overlook of the Tarangire River. Baboons, Water Buck, Elephants and Giraffe roamed the grounds below. There were some monkeys that hung around the picnic area and liked to steal food. One of them got on top of our van and Leonce had to scare him off.

From the overlook we could see a Lioness hanging out in the shade of a bush near the road. After lunch we took off to go see her. When we got to that bush she was gone and we were bummed. She had to be nearby so we started searching and discovered her 100 yards down the road heading for the river.

It was on now! The Lioness was on the hunt. She stealthily made her way towards the river where a large herd of Wildebeest and Zebra had just come down to the river from the other side. We watched as she snaked her way to some shade in a bush and analyzed the scene. Wow! She was really going to try to take down one of the animals and we were right there to watch.

A few other vans showed up and the anticipation built. Then it started. She crept closer to the river on her belly ready to break out in a full on sprint at any second. And then...and then....UGH....an idiot guide pulled his van right in front of her. She tried to creep by the van but movement in the van spooked her. When she got spooked she revealed herself and a stampede was on as the animals raced away from her. Unreal. We couldn't believe we were that close to seeing a lion try to chase down an animal only to have it ruined by a terrible van driver. Moronski!

Defeated, the Lioness retreated to a shady tree. The vans gave up too and slowly peeled off with one of the other guides giving the Moronski an earful.

Leonce asked if we were ready to leave and we told him no. We had been searching the park all morning to find a lion and one was right here. Why leave?

We were the last remaining van and the Lioness just laid in the shade. But then another Lioness showed up and joined her in the shade. The hunt was back on!

The herds were massive so not all the animals had stampeded away during the initial hunt. Some still remained a little further down the river and clearly the Lionesses were still interested. The started sneaking their way in that direction and then something weird happened. They just stood up and walked out in the open down the road next to the river. This of course caused mass hysteria as the rest of the herd ran back away from the river.

We were really confused what was going on as we followed the two lions down the river. The lions then crossed the river and we saw it. There was a third lioness who had killed a baby zebra and was dragging it to the shade of an Acacia tree on the other side of the river. The two lions we had been following had smelled the kill and knew they did not need to hunt. That is why they walked in plain site to meet up with the other lion.

The lions were about 100 yards away as they ate the baby Zebra. A small herd of Zebra were behind the scene, perhaps the mother of the lost. One of the lions had apparently eaten that day already because she didn't stay long with the food.

We watched the scene for a few minutes and then the rest of the vans started showing up. Before long there were dozens of vans.

Leonce asked if we were ready to leave but we stayed. A herd of unsuspecting elephants were walking down the river drinking and eating as they went. They didn't see the lions until they were right on top of them and that caused a ruckus. The Elephants started trumpeting and circled the babies. Apparently elephants will fight to the death to protect their little ones.

The lions could have cared less about the elephants. They were happily enjoying lunch. That didn't put the elephants at ease though. Elephants can seem really smart but also seem really dumb. This was a dumb moment.

We had spent most of the day watching the lions so we didn't see the rest of the park, but we were very fine with that. It's not every day that you get to see a lion hunt, even if the hunt was never fully executed.

On the ride back to the lodge the voting booths were still hopping, although some of the more remote ones had shorter lines.

We were back at the lodge at about 4:00 and got to relax the remainder of the day. We had internet so I was able to get one blog post up. The election news was on the lodge tv and all of the staff were glued to it. Almost everybody in the rural areas we were visiting were in favor of the opposition. Even the little kids on the dirt roads would show a peace sign when we drove by (a peace sign is the opposition sign).

We were in bed by about 9. Around midnight we were awoken by a celebration. I guess the opposition won?

---