Saturday, March 10, 2012

Day Thirteen

Today was safari day...our chance to tour the Tarangire National Park for a couple of hours, at least. We were up at 5:45 am, awakening to the chatter of the birds and the muffled sounds of breakfast being prepared. After a hearty meal, we boarded the safari vehicles and took off into the park. We no sooner pulled out of the driveway when we were greeted by a family of giraffes munching on their breakfast in the trees.

As we bumped along for four hours we were treated to a host of magnificent wildlife, some of which are represented here, although, to be honest...you had to be there!

Elephants were everywhere

More giraffes

Impala locked in combat

Monkeys

Baboons

...Ostriches and too many small, bright birds to name:

 ...as well as immense, unusual trees:

All of this and so much more in just a few short hours...after which we retuned to the River Camp, had lunch, and loaded everything into vans for our return to Arusha and a visit to the Tanzania Cultural Center:

We were given exactly one hour to look around and to shop for mementos of our visit and gifts for friends and family back home. No small task.


Thankfully, our hosts had taken a couple of rooms for us back at The African Tulip where we quickly washed and changed before we were on our way to the Kilamanjaro Airport for the LONG trip home.

 

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"Where is your home?

Where are you going?

What are you doing?

Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change."

--Richard Bach--
*

In my next post I'll tell you how I passed the time in flight.

 Be still,

 Jan

ps: Many thanks to team members who allowed me to share their photos with you,

 especially Glenn Johnson, Diane Whitcomb, and Diane and Jim Wilt. 

pps: Don't ask me what happened to the formatting in this post :(