Rise and shine! Today marks the first day of activities since we have finished our travel (at least for now…). Kamden and I woke up bright and early at 6:30am with the cool sight of an African Striped Skink outside our lodge (pictured) as well as a breathtaking sunrise (pictured). After that, I had the chance to try Tanzanian-style pancakes for breakfast—I’m a big fan (they are pretty similar to crepes).
African Striped Skink right outside of our lodge
Sunrise outside of the dining hall of the Ecoscience Lodge
After breakfast, we set out on our first ever game drive on the edges of Tarangire NP. From the popped top of the Land Cruiser to the extreme jostling over bumps I’m surprised we could drive over, it was an awesome experience. Some very cool animals we observed are pictured below:
African Bush Elephant during the game drive
Masai Giraffe during game drive
Plain Zebra with a gash (presumably from a large carnivore of some kind)
One group of animals we saw on this first game drive that deserves its own description were the common warthogs! For this trip, one of my assigned taxa were suids which include the common warthog. It was really exciting to see a group of warthogs (called a sounder) running around with their tails raised just like how I remembered seeing in the Lion King. (I was also assigned rhinocerotids and herpestids but didn’t see any today. The open grasslands we were in were much more suited for seeing warthogs but not rhinos or mongeese.)
A warthog sounder on the edge of Tarangire NP
Later in the day, we went on an evening/night time game drive. It was very interesting to see the environmental changes between the same places in the morning vs. at night. We also had a chance to watch the sunset over a beautiful lookout (pictured) to wrap up our first day of activities.
The view from our lookout during the evening game drive
I came into this trip with few expectations so every activity and experience has been a great and unexpected surprise. We are heading out for a hike tomorrow which I’m looking forward to but for now I’ll rest up after such an eventful first day!
-Milton
