Safari in Tarangire National Park

We leave Pamoja villa early. There is 2h of drive to our last national park, the Tarangire national park. It's the fourth largest one in Tanzania.

We enter the gate a little after 9am and start our day of game drive. The grass is tall and it's going to be difficult to spot much.

What this park has that others didn't, are giant baobab trees. They are so tall that giraffes can't reach their lowest branches. They tower over the acacia trees around and are easy to spot in the landscape.

The park is a different landscape from the others. It has the Tarangire river in the middle, and that's what we loosely follow the entire day. It's not really plains, it has hills and a few higher elevation viewpoints. The trees are everywhere but not dense like in the Ndutu area.

It also has some nasty tsetse flies. Their bite is painful, and sometimes even through your clothes. They are not everywhere, just in some places. Luckily they hurt on the spot but do not itch later on or, for us, didn't leave a mark. And contrary to popular belief ( that I am sure come from a childhood comic either Gaston Lagaffe or Marsupilami ), you do not fall asleep once they bite you :)

I can't say it was a great day for game drive. We note the absence of herds of gazelles, zebras or wildebeests. We see mostly isolated hartebeests. And so many birds, it's probably where you see the widest variety: eagles, starling, swallow and a lot more colorful ones.

On the notable sightings are elephants and giraffes. In large groups and regularly. We even got really close to a herd of elephant walking in front of us.

And the two new animals today are hyrax and dwarf mongoose. The later, is so very cute ! We saw a small colony, patiently waiting for them to come out of their hiding holes.

It's 4pm and Donald gives us a choice. To continue for another 1h30 or to go to the lodge as we are really near. We chose to stop the day earlier.

Tonight we stay at Tarangire Sopa Lodge. Possibly the fanciest accommodation we have in this whole trip. We might as well enjoy the facilities.

First thing is the beautiful and big pool at the back. In the garden are a lot of hyrax and velvet monkeys.

They are not very shy, and I get to take close up pictures.

The bar and lounge area, where you can get wifi, has massive, extremely comfortable, couches. We settle down there after a dip in the pool. We finalize the bookings of our hotels in Jordan while enjoying a cool beer. From the balcony, we admire our last sunset in Tanzania.