Dearest gentle readers,
This day may have been the best day of my entire life. If you struggle with fomo or travel envy, please stop reading now.
TRIGGER WARNINGS: overwhelming happiness, toxically beautiful pictures, deadly dose of once-in-a-lifetime experiences
After falling asleep to the sounds of hyenas and elephants, I awoke to the melody of birdsongs and a beautiful sunrise. Ecoscience Lodge is absolutely incredible, and the lodgings, facilities, and meals are all top-tier. We started the morning off with a safari just outside the Tarangire National Park. We hopped into some Toyota Land Cruisers and set off to spot as many Lion King characters as possible. And oh boy, what an adventure we had. Shortly after arriving, I achieved my lifelong dream of seeing African elephants. We saw many females with young and a solitary male. Luckily, I brought Philip Johnny Bob along to experience this joyous moment with me! I shed a few silent tears in my state of joy and excitement, and I feel so lucky and grateful that I have pictures to remember it by.
Elephants!
Philip Johnny Bob meeting real elephants
The volume of animals we saw was so large that logging them took up almost three pages in my field notebook. We saw giraffes, zebras, ostriches, wildebeests, hartebeests, warthogs, gazelles, a cape buffalo, and many species of birds. The vegetation was also incredible, and the baobab trees and sausage trees were especially awesome to see. My taxonomic group is Antilopini, and I saw a lot of species! I spotted Thomson’s gazelles and Grant’s gazelles, and I was able to teach everyone how to tell them apart. The Thomson’s gazelle is smaller and has a black stripe on its sides, and the Grant’s gazelle has no black stripes on its sides and a distinctive white patch on its rear that extends above the tail. I also saw common impalas, and the horns on the males were strikingly majestic and Maleficent-like.
Giraffe and impalas
Grant’s gazelles
Warthogs
Injured zebra
I gave my presentation on Antilopini shortly after lunch, and it was fun to talk about a lot of the species that we had just seen a few hours ago. After lectures, we went back out for a night safari! We drove through the wildlife protected area to Sunset Hill and got to witness the breathtaking spectacle of an African savanna sunset. It genuinely felt like we were on Pride Rock, and everything the light touched was ours to cherish and experience. The colors were incredible, and the shades of pink, orange, purple, and yellow made a halo around the horizon with streaks of color joining the concentric layers. It was better than any picture or painting could ever capture, and the stars that emerged after the light dimmed were otherworldly.
Sunset Hill
Beautiful sunset
Frolicking on Sunset Hill was totally worth the tick I got on my leg. My trusty friend Marlo bravely removed it and saved me from the clutches of Lyme disease, and I will forever be in her debt.
Tick (ew!)
On the way back to the lodge, we used a bright spotlight to try and spot nocturnal predators. We were fortunate enough to spot some jackals, and thanks to Marlo’s amazing lecture on equids and canids, I was able to identify it as a black-backed jackal!
After a phenomenal dinner, Dr. Prendergast gave a lecture on Tanzanian cultural and political history, and then it was time for bed. I tickled the geckos on the outside of my tent screens on their bellies one last time, and then I went to bed smiling. Admittedly, I can’t help but fear that I’ve peaked too soon in life, but that’s a problem that I’ll deal with later.
Gecko on the screen of my tent
Truly living my problem-free philosophy,
McKenna
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