Day 239 - Starting Safari!

Today was exciting! It was the first day of safari, we got up and had breakfast with our fellow tour members before boarding the Toyota Land Cruiser safari bus, our first stop after leaving town and heading through Arusha was a mall (or shopping centre if you're not from North America), this was much more western and sanitised than the markets in town, while most people were stocking up on sweets we were enjoying seeing familiar English brands that didn't make it to Australia or New Zealand.

Driving through Arusha

Parked up inside the secure tourist Mall

With our western lifestyles supplied the next stop was Shanga https://www.shanga.org/ this is a social enterprise that employs handicap Tanzanian's particularly those who are deaf. We were given a tour of the crafts that they make; one of our party was able to communicate with one of the workers using American sign language which made it feel like we were interacting with more than just the guide, we saw weaving, glass blowing and beaded jewellery making. Joanna really liked a blown glass elephant, but unfortunately there would have been now way for it to survive the journey around safari and back to the UK.

Spinning wheel

Weaving machine

Glass blowing

One of our tour group having a go at glass blowing

The cute elephant

The Shanga centre

With the visit over we started the several hour drive to Tarangire National Park our first game park, this was on a mix of smooth roads and very bumpy unsurfaced roads, (this is known as an African massage!) with the drive complete we stopped at our first nights accommodation. We were apparently staying in tents, although if it's got an on-suite I don't believe it's a tent. After dropping our bags we headed to lunch with our group before the first game drive.

Typical Tanzanian country side

Our Room

Our bath, you could have a whale of a time!

After lunch it was time for the first game drive, although we weren't told this, the idea of this one was for those of us who had just joined the tour to get the 'ohhh a Zebra stop the car' mentality out of our system!

Anyway time for some pictures with descriptions

At the entrance to the nation park

The roof popped up ready to spot

Our first spot, a blueball monkey

Up close

Impala

Zebra

Warthog

Birds

Giraffe

Bird

Wildebeest

Baboon!

A fully grown adult dikdik

Our first elephant!

Suckling

The herd

Ostrich

More Elephants!

WaterBuck

Spot the Giraffe

Look at that tongue!

Vulture

David testing out the binoculars

Joanna on the lookout

Hi There!

Classic elephant shot

The other vehicle in our group

A Boab tree

Spot the lion

A bird

An ostrich

A jackel

We stopped for a toilet break and to check a out a view point

(the toilets flushed and were clean! better then Australia and NZ!)

On the way back to the camp we had some good sunset photos

On the way we passed a village, some cattle also came to say hello.

Our accommodation wasn't fenced in, so after dark we were given strict instructions that we could only walk back to our lodges if accomponied by a maasi guard.

Until next time for day 2, another picture heavy day.

David & Joanna