[This is post #20 of 21 posts about our 2024 trip to Africa. To go to the first post in the series CLICK HERE. At the end of the last post there is also a Directory with links of all 21 posts.]
It was Friday, September 20, Day 11 of our grand Africa adventure. Since our flight was to depart late afternoon on Saturday out of Kilimanjaro International Airport, we would be leaving for Arusha first thing Saturday morning. That meant today would be our last safari day.
After breakfast and then choosing our box lunch buffet style, we were off. We were headed for nearby Tarangire National Park.
Tarangire is known for its high density of elephants that gather along the Tarangire River during the dry season, so we hoped to see elephants. Like every other day on this trip, we saw what we hoped to see and a whole lot more.
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| Elephants along the Tarangire River |
At 1,100 square miles, Tarangire NP is very large. We only drove through a small portion of the northern part of the park.
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| Tarangire NP. Our Day 11 track is blue. |
Even before we got to the park there was notable wildlife including parrots in a roadside tree. I know it is just a bird, but it seems special to see wild parrots.
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| Red-bellied Parrot |
Termite mounds. One of the first things we learned when arriving at Tarangire NP is that it is known for its termite mounds. While Fazal went inside to handle paperwork, we checked out the termite mound in the parking lot.
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| Termite mound in the Tarangire NP parking lot of the Main Gate (Tarangire Gate) with the Frog for scale |
The mounds are an architectural marvel. Th termites construct them from clay, saliva, and excrement. They mix in other soil types, as needed, to get a strong structure. Not only are the mounds huge and as hard as concrete, but they have a complicated internal structure. There is an internal chimney which takes air in from lower levels. The fungi are grown in a below ground nest. The fungi produce heat in the nest which rises towards the closed chimney. The heat is exchanged via the chimney and its smaller tunnels that lead to the surface. Carbon dioxide and oxygen are exchanged near the surface of the nest and workers may open or block individual tunnels to regulate temperature.
There may be as many as a million termites in a single mound, divided among workers, soldiers, nurse larvae, and a single queen. While the workers only live a few months, the queen can live for 20 years or more. By the way, termites are not related to ants. They are more like cockroaches.
Digging of tunnels to build the mounds opens up the soil and use of the otherwise indigestible plant material produces nitrogen, phosphorus and other ingredients for improved growth of surrounding plants.
Abandoned mounds are home to many small animals. The mounds are also apparently a place to hang out if you happen to be a baboon.
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| Baboon on a termite mound near park entrance |
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| More baboons |
It was interesting to watch them eat. Although many of the trees and bushes have significant thorns as a defense mechanism against the giraffes eating the leaves, the giraffes use their flexible tongue to work between the thorns.
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| Giraffe munching on leaves |
Like we had seen on the hippos in the Mara River, there were oxpeckers going after the bugs on the backs of many of the giraffes.
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| Yellow-billed oxpeckers hitching a ride on these two young giraffes |
The video shows how fast the birds move.
Baobab Trees. Tarangire NP is also known for its iconic baobab trees. The trunks are enormous, 33-46 feet in diameter. The trees can live for more than 1500 years. The oldest known baobab tree lived to nearly 2500 years.
Baobab trees are important for their many potential uses. Their often hollow trunks can be shelter for animals or humans. The bark stores significant amounts of water during the dry season. Even elephants will eat the bark for water if no other source is available. The pulp from the fruit, often called monkey bread, is edible as we discovered when we visited the Arusha Central Market earlier in our trip.
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| Baobab tree |
Due to their unique shape, they are sometimes called an upside down tree. The whole time we were there I kept thinking about the trees in Wizard of Oz every time I looked at them.
Elephants. It was not long before we started to see lots of elephants. Most were hanging around eating, which is what elephants do most of the time. The average adult elephant eats about 300 pounds of food a day.
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| Scratching his ear? |
However sometimes things happen. For example, in the video below the elephants for some unknown reason became annoyed by the approaching ostriches. Not surprisingly, the ostriches turned around and moved away.
There were many groups of elephants. We watched the group below cross the road in front of us.
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| On their way to the field across the road |
Everything was going smoothly and the entire group crossed the road until the last elephant, the bigger one of the two in the following pictures, decided to pick a fight. He is a male in musth, a state of heightened aggression and sexual activity. As part of that, he had a sticky secretion running down his cheeks.
We did not know how serious the fighting between these two males might become, but it went on for quite sometime. Given their smallish tusks, they may have not been too old.
Below is a video of part of the confrontation between the two males. The smaller one submitted and walked away, but the larger one went after him again. Interestingly, the larger group seen near the end of the video seems to be ignoring them.
More Animals. As we drove around we saw a variety of animals scattered about. There were quite a few buffalo. As always they seemed to think they were in a stare down with us.
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| Buffalo and cattle egrets |
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We kept running into zebra.
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| Lots of brown fur still on this little one |
There were lots more giraffe.
Serengeti without the Crowds. Tarangire NP is part of the larger Tarangire Ecosystem. According to Wiki, the Tarangire Ecosystem hosts the second-largest population of migratory ungulates in East Africa and the largest population of elephants in northern Tanzania.
During the dry season, the animals congregate around the Tarangire River. We did not see any wildebeest, but we saw lots of elephants and zebra. Although predators must certainly be around, we saw no lions and only fleetingly saw one leopard. One site referred to Tarangire NP as "Serengeti without the crowds". It might be totally devoid of animals during the wet season, but we certainly saw a lot during this short dry season visit.
More Zebra. As we were moving towards the exit we encountered even more zebra.
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| Lots of zebra as we were preparing to leave |
It seemed to us on multiple occasions that zebra are on alert and more skittish than many of the other animals. That seemed to be the case here when something suddenly spooked the herd.
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| Spooked by something |
We were not sure what scared them, but it may have been these two having a disagreement.
Coming of the Rains? Just as we were leaving we saw a baobab tree that was starting to leaf out. It was the only one with leaves we saw all day. According to myth, baobab trees can predict the weather. Leaves start to appear when rain is imminent. Many locals throughout our visit were talking about the coming of the rains. We thought it was wishful thinking on their part after many months of the dry season, but maybe according to this tree they are right. Maybe the rains are coming.
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| Baobab tree leafing out--predicting the coming of the rains? |
Back to Camp. We returned to camp and spent the remaining time getting things ready to leave in the morning. We wanted to make sure everything was packed appropriately for getting on our flight the next day. Since this camp was larger with more amenities than most, we were even able to buy a bag in their gift shop to use as a different carry-on. Our previous arrangement was too heavy for me to lug around comfortably during our layover in Doha.
As we made our way to the pool area for happy hour we encountered this little guy outside our room.
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| Vervet monkey on the path hanging around outside our room |
I don't know how many rooms there were at Maramboi Tented Lodge, but it seemed a lot bigger than previous camps based on the much larger size of the dining area.
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| Dining area at Maramboi Tented Lodge. Due to the high lake level, the area to the left of the railing was all under water while we were there. [https://twctanzania.com/tarangire/maramboi-tented-lodge/] |
We enjoyed some downtime at happy hour, including talking again to a couple from Indiana. We had kept bumping into them over the past week since they were also on safari with Africa Dream Safaris and seemed to be stopping at many of the same places.
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| Sunset over Lake Manyara during happy hour at Maramboi Tented Lodge |
It seemed like it was going to rain, so we started the walk back from the pool and retreated to the covered lounge area adjacent to the dining area.
Sure enough there was a brief shower. Although all of our meals at the camp had been outside, we expected that to mean they would move dining inside.
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| Dining area at Maramboi Tented Lodge after dark [https://twctanzania.com/tarangire/maramboi-tented-lodge/] |
Wrong. Dinner location was not moved. The rain had stopped so dinner proceeded outdoors as planned. Hakuna matata.
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| Our reserved table during the soup course was still quite damp from the brief shower |
Surprise! It was another great meal. We were winding down after another long day when we were met with one more surprise, a serenade from the staff.
We had heard the song they were singing multiple times on the trip. Known as the Jambo Bwana ("Hello Sir") song, it was apparently actually written for tourists in the early 1980's but has become wildly popular. The lyrics change depending upon location (Kenya, Tanzania, Kilimanjaro, etc.) but are roughly as outlined here.
That seemed like a wonderful way to end this epic nearly two week adventure to Africa. We were now definitely ready to settle in for the night in preparation for our departure in the morning.
But wait, there is more. As I was preparing to take a shower the Frog, who was reading on the bed, pointed to the curtains near the front door and said, "Is that dark spot a tear or something on the curtain?" I went to look. No, not a tear...a bat.
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| Picture from earlier in the day showing the area near the front door. |
We called the front desk, thinking they would come immediately. Not.
The bat stayed put for quite sometime, then flew to the side curtains. I was in the back trying to get more appropriately dressed when it lit on the mosquito netting around the bed. Then, as best the Frog could tell, it dropped down and was possibly under the bed.
By this time it had been at least a half hour and we called the front desk again. Finally someone showed up. We looked under the bed with a flashlight but didn't see anything.
Our fear was being trapped inside the mosquito netting overnight with the bat. The camp guy took the bed completely apart and turned everything upside down. Still nothing.
Probably unbeknownst to us the bat had retreated to the very high peaked (and thatched) ceiling. There was nothing else to do but put everything back together and get ready for bed. Tonight the mosquito netting would also be bat netting.
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| Our room with mosquito netting for the bed, as seen earlier in the day. A bit of the steep thatched ceiling is just visible. |
I guess there was some symmetry to these night time animal mishaps. Our first safari night the buffalo disabled the electricity. Tonight the bat, who may have been more concerned than we were, caused us to tear the room apart. In the grand scale of things, neither one of these was a major problem. Hakuna matata.
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