July 5, 2007 – Jim Meets His Match


The team enjoying a view from the top during the safari

Hi this is Jim Barr calling from the edge of the Ngorongoro Crater – we’ve just checked in after 48 hours of spectacular safari time. This is the way to go. Berg Adventures puts on an unbelievable safari adventure that took us through the Tarangire National Park, one of 14 national parks here in Tanzania, Africa.

We’ve seen hippos, elephants, lions ... no cheetahs yet. We’ll be looking for them tomorrow on our last day of safari. We have seen wildebeests, zebra and just a tone of different animals – think of Elk Island National Park just outside of Edmonton, Alberta and the buffalo, but on some serious steroids.

I mean this driver of ours and guide, David, has done an exceptional job for us over the past 48 hours, putting so close to the animals that we, ourselves, the five members of the safari team have been concerned that we were absolutely too close.

Rob is surprised when met up with 15 to 20 elephants coming in our direction along the river bank
Rob is surprised when met up with 15 to 20 elephants
coming in our direction along the river bank

Like what happened yesterday – we came up to a river bank were there were about 15 to 20 elephants, and these are African elephants. These are big guys.

They started to approach the road where our jeep was parked; they made their way across the road but not before stopping about five feet from the front of the truck to check us out. Now let me tell you when you have a two tone monster of a beast such as an African elephant starring you down, it definitely gets the heart rate up.

We spent a beautiful night last night at the lodge, the Sopa lodge in the Tarangire park. When we woke up this morning, Dave had already been out and he had seen some circling vultures. He told us there might be a kill in the area and sure enough there was.

We came across a wildebeest that had been taken down by a pride of lions. We got a chance to watch these lions lay out in the sun after getting their fill on these magnificent animals. This is completely different from visiting a zoo. There’s no cage, there’s no gates, there’s no anything. These are just wild animals doing what they do best.

We came across a wildebeest that had been taken down by a pride of lions - Lunch time!
We came across a wildebeest that had been taken down by a pride of lions -
Lunch time!

We’ve had some amazing adventures here on safari, and I’m really looking forward to tomorrow where we will be dropping into the Ngorongoro Crater which is home to the largest collection of wild animals on our planet, including black rhinos so we’ll definitely be looking for them tomorrow.

I’m so looking forward to sharing the photos with you. I’m going to sit down tonight and send some of those over and hopefully you’ll be able to see them here on this dispatch page.


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