Kilimanjaro Expedition Dispatch

July 1, 2008 – The Tarangire Adventure

Hi, this is John checking in on Tuesday morning July 1. We just spent the night at Tarangire Tree Top Lodge which is an unbelievable experience and we spent all day yesterday traveling through the Tarangire national park, it is hard to describe the experience we went through because it was so unbelievably unique and unbelievably Africa: giraffes, elephants, zebras, wildebeest, impalas, baboons and ostrich. We spent a wonderful night in the Tarangire Tree tops Lodge. We had a tree top hut out in the Serengeti Plain and last night, we watched an elephant eat dinner right in front of us. We feel like we are a million miles from anywhere.

Hi, this is Ellyn, one of the many things that make the Tarangire Nation Park really unique are the Baobab trees. They have many different kinds of trees here. We tried the fruit of the Baobab tree, it is a very hard shell and it’s really hard to break. That’s the food the monkeys are able to break themselves. They break them against the tree branches. Another tree is what they call the ‘sausage tree’ the fruit looks like salami hanging from the tree. We saw termite hills as tall as 15 feet and one hill we manage to see three mongooses peaking there little pink heads out.

My favourite part yesterday was watching the mama baboons with their babies clinging to their underside as they walked. We watched two females stop, sit and groom each other and the baby. We speculated that they were two sister baboons.

Sometimes the animals were so close to our jeep that we could see their eyelashes, for example; the elephants and the giraffes. Another wonderful image was the dikdik, a really small antelope sitting quietly while a tall giraffe stood behind it. I think there is no man made pattern which can equal the natural beauty of the unique strips on the zebra and the spots on the giraffes. Many birds and bird nests hanging from the trees and many kinds of birds.

Another highlight; last night we were treated at our lodge to a very special event. The staff came out singing in Tanzanian style all around the room carrying a cake, we assumed it was someone’s birthday but it turned out that the cake was for us! The staff made a chocolate cake for us in the shape of Kilimanjaro and it was so much fun. After they sang and presented us with the cake a group of Masai from a Masai tribe who work at the lodge, also danced around the room in a warrior like dance with their shrill noises and showing us their traditional jump which they compete with each other. They danced for us around our table, it was really spectacular. Hope you are all well.