Lake Manyara National Park

  Lake Manyara National Park, Tanzania
Thursday, September 4, 2008

Thursday morning we were picked up from Visiwani Lodge and headed back to the office, where we met the other couple going with us on the safari. They were a really nice couple, who had just finished climbing Mt Meru - Maya (Swiss) and David (American) lives in Geneva and this was a postponed honeymoon for them. After going over a bit of paperwork, we met our driver/guide Mhandeo and our cook Jonathan. They had already packed the car, a Toyota Landcruiser, and we were ready to go.

Small baboon

Our first stop on our safari was Lake Manyara, which is a national park on the way to the Serengeti. We got to our camp site just outside the Lake Manyara National Park, where our guide and cook set up camp and made us lunch. We then headed into the national park in our Toyota Landcruiser with the roof open so we could stand up and have better view of the surroundings. Immediately we saw a lot of baboons on the road and they were not particularly interested in moving off the road, so we almost had to push them away with the car.

Confused giraff

We knew the park had lions and leopards, so we naturally kept looking out for these, but unfortunately they had all gone home when we came around. Fortunately we did see our first giraffes, which was very cool. We also saw a lot of other animals: monkeys, zebras, hippos, impalas, gazelles, and flamingos. On the way out of the park we came across a group of elephants having a picnic on a tree just next to the road. We actually had elephants on the both sides of our car as a younger elephant was munching away on some bushes. However another elephant (probably its mother) did not like us being between the younger elephants and the rest of the group, so she walked around our car and started pushing the younger elephant back - away - from the road and us. Very interesting.

Elephant scratching against a tree

After this we headed back to camp and dinner. We had a couple of beers in the evening before we went to bed.