11/10 Manyara

Monday, November 10

Safari Day! Seba made us a picnic lunch and off we went with Fredy. It started out as just Susi, Jack and myself for the first hour or so. We picked up Jessie and her friend Jen at a place just at the top of the Rift (as in The Rift Valley) where they had stayed on Sunday night. Menyara is just at the bottom of the Rift so we were there and in the Park by 9am. 

The vegetation here was totally different from Tarangire as parts of it are rainforest. Just driving through it the air smells wet, the birds chirping and singing away and tons of baboons everywhere! We saw lots of animals and birds - here is a list of what we saw:

Vervet monkey

Baboons

Banded mongoose

Lots of elephants (up close)

Lots of giraffes

Hippos galore

Zebras

Warthogs

Impala

Coke's Hartbeest

Wildebeest

Thompson's Gazelle

Agama Lizard

All just amazing and beautiful. I think the highlight was how close we were to the elephants and at one point I think there were 8 or 9 giraffes in the same area. Wait until you see the photos!

And birds - here is a list of new birds we saw. We did see many of the same birds that we saw at Tarangire  - so this list is in addition to some of those we saw:

Cinnamon chested bee eater

Red billed hornbill

Jackson's hornbill

Rufus chested swallow

Fish eagle

Violet backed starling (just stunning!)

African grey hornbill

Tawny eagle

Wooly necked stork

Grey headed king fisher

Crowned plover

Crowned crane

Sacred Ibis

Hadada Ibis

Geater Flamingo

Lesser Flamingo

Common Bulbul

Red Billed Oxpecker

I got a lot of pictures of the birds - but as I only have my 10x optical zoom camera with me, the verdict is still open as to whether the birds will really be identifiable!

Jack and Susi are a great pair for bird watching. Jack spots them - he's amazing - and then Susi knows where to find them in her amazing field guide to Northern Tanzanian birds. And then I try and photograph. Teamwork.

We stopped for lunch at a great view spot, sat down on some benches and enjoyed our egg salad sandwiches. All of the sudden, Jen said that she didn't feel very comfortable with this one baboon getting closer. She had hardly finished saying it when the baboon jumped up on the bench next to her. You have never seen so many people run away. Fredy grabbed some rocks and started throwing them at him and a park ranger came over with his gun in hand. 

Baboons can be very dangerous! They can really hurt you. 

With disaster averted, we enjoyed the rest of our lunch and continued along with the safari. The hippo pool was really cool! There must have been 50 hippos lying in the water - snorting/grunting/yawning/rolling. Awesomeust! And all around them, including on their backs were tons of birds!

Near there, we spotted at least 10 vultures flying overhead. They are huge and when you see them up close are pretty scary looking things. All I could think of was the scene in The Jungle Book with the vultures singing their sinister song from the tree tops.

The elephants were also amazing - we were so close - some of them were almost right up at the safari car. It did rain a little while we were there - which was a bummer - but it didn't last long so we popped the roof back up. The roofs pop up so that our heads are sticking out of the top. We must have looked pretty silly!

It was a great day!

I also managed to do a workout with Sara and Ellie - Tae Bo - Just KILLER!!!!