JAMBO

Somedays you have to do things you don’t want to do and get them done- like taxes! yee haw! They are done and I can enjoy re-living our last few hours at the Tarangire National Park. Hello! Jambo!

More birds…I now understand why some people become birders! We stopped and watched a breeding pair of saddle-billed storks working on their nest. Both would fly down and pick up twigs and sticks and then fly back with them up to their nest. They are the tallest of the storks due to their long legs. The female has the golden irises while the male has brown irises and a yellow wattle. On their chest is a bare patch of skin tinted red whose color darkens during breeding season.

The male ostriches are darker – black and tan and the females are muted browns. They tend to move away as soon as vehicles approach so its hard getting really good photos of them. Sausage trees hang down with what looks like sausages. The birds love them as well as baboons, porcupines, monkeys, elephants and giraffes. The fruit has been used by tradition healers for treating skin ailments, like boils, fungal infection and eczema. It was also used for internal ailments such as tape worm, dysentery, diabetes, malaria etc. You name it, there is a use for parts of this tree including an alcoholic beverages however unripe fruit is poisonous – I’ll let the natives and animals figure this fruit out!

Sometimes one giraffe makes you look much closer. Their individual patterns are so much more intriguing than say stripes on a zebra or spots on a cheetah.

Looking across the swamp…Jess and the two of us at our lunch with rock outcrops but no toilets. Unique flowers that Mzee told me he’d find out about – Mzee??? The toilet paper definitely came in handy here and the brown bags! Our Marin cohorts Ralph and Deborah enjoying the view at another lunch.

We changed vehicles to a little more open concept which was canvas sided with a lifted roof Land Cruiser. They give a little different feel but take the same photos regardless! A pair of waterbucks ..and yes the little black faced monkeys have blue balls. Proof!

Wait…its a type of car, maybe its a Chevrolet – and Michael finally remembers its an Impala, Elephants, and both near the Tarangire River.

Sometimes dead wood looks like people – and we took a second look and backed up so Jess could get a fabulous photo. Termite mounds when they are abandoned often become home to mongoose and other plants that want to grow there – they can even look like a unique type of tree.

Our last evening included a sundowner with champagne and munchies and a night time drive. We didn’t see any incredible hunting but we did see some birds and a serval cat shows the incredible activity during the night.

Our last evening/morning – we had an incredible thunder storm with a deluge. Larkin’s shoe points out the muddy tracks -glad I didn’t meet up with that cat! Michael had a slippery date with the mud too. Even though it looks like Monte Rosso red dirt – it does wash up fairly easy but then every thing we packed was mostly dirt brown colored. Flocks of birds float back and forth across the view – AND sunrise can be incredible as we gather.