Africa #13: Tarangire National Park

Elephant Grazing, Tarangire national Park, Tanzania

Heading into the home straight now and Tarangire National Park is our last real stop on the tour. The terrain here is a mix of savannah, light forest and river plain; a bit of everything, in short. The day started out grey and chilly, with a stiff westerly breeze. That actually turned out to be a good thing as it meant that the hippos we found at this hippo pool, to differentiate it from the 4 other hippo pools we have seen, were out of the water and actually doing hippo-ish sorts of things above and beyond bobbing around in dirty water. Mostly, though, even these extended behaviours seem to involve a lot of standing around, bellowing challenges and having occasional fights. Think Brighton and Hove Albion supporters on a wet Saturday afternoon at an away game in Milwall, but with less drinking.

It was fun listening to the noises they were making and watching the young hippos undergoing training for adult hippohood. Basically, the modus operadi here was bite anything close to you, and if nothing was to hand then wander around until you bump into something you can bite and hope it was no bigger than you. Perfect grooming, therefore, for the young hippo eager to reach adulthood and to progress to, well, larger bouts of shouting and biting. The motto of the hippo SAS equivalent must be “he who bites best, wins” because it really was the only discernable core competency of the males with the most clout.

From there we headed off to see the flamingoes – enough were around to form a pink slash across Lake Tarangire – and watch storks and pelicans swooping around the shoreline. There were, as always, a few giraffes around, accompanied by zebra and impala. Throw into the mix various monkeys (baboons, vervet and blue), mongeese (is that the plural of mongoose?) and even a snake or two and you begin to get the African picture.

After lunch, which was a rather fine picnic hamper to make a change from the cardboard-box with sandwiches we’d experienced before, we found a lion that was busy lining up something for its lunch by stalking carefully through the undergrowth. Alas, we watched for a while but it decided to postpone anything too energetic, opting instead to fall asleep in the long grass. Lions really do spend much of the day time hours asleep or awake and contemplating falling asleep.

Time to head back to the hotel. Along the way we had several brief encounters with small herds of elephants, none of which were bothered or even swayed from eating the countryside by our presence. Sadly, we did however came across a large, dead male that was in the early signs of being eaten by the local scavengers, lions included. Little bush craft was involved in this discovery as the carcass was hard to miss given that there’s something about a couple of tons of rotting meat that really seems to grab the attention of one’s nostrils ….

Tarangire Treetops is indeed an interesting place to stay and strongly recommended. Remarkably, the food here was quite the best we’d found all trip and they do seem to work hard to harmonize with both the African environment and the local Maasai people, the aim being to have the hotel add, rather than subtract, from the pristine nature of the place. For example, although there was the inevitable evening show of Maasai dancing, it was actually done well and the guys involved did seem to be genuinely enjoying themselves as they tried to outdo each other on who could jump the highest, a measure, it seems, of Maasai manhood. Wonder what they’d think of the Olympic high-jump contenders?

Africa #12:Lake Manyara

Tarangire Treetops Hotel, Tanzania

We now find ourselves back in more verdant forest once again, echoing Arusha more than, say, the Serengeti. This area has plenty of sub-surface water meaning that trees and other vegetation can grow easily, even outside of the two brief rainy seasons that Tanzania typically experiences. I’m also minded to report that they have very good bathroom facilities at the entrance to the park! In fact, facilities of the toilet sort have been pretty reasonable all across Tanzania, at least compared with what’s to be found in places like India, for example. Most welcome.

This park is famous for two things: elephants and flamingoes, though not in the exact same spot at the same time, obviously, what with one being a wading bird found of water and the other, well, not. When we were there, at least, elephants seemed to outnumber flamingoes, but it’s fair to say that there were also numerous other birds to be seen including pelicans, storks, cranes and waders. We also saw baboons (again) plus blue and vervet monkeys, all hanging around and doing simian-ish sorts of things. Amazing how blasé one gets about wildlife after a few days on holiday in Africa, eh?

Lunch was from a hotel-provided lunch-box, taken while sitting on a bench overlooking the lake. We had the place to ourselves for a while until being joined by another tour vehicle, this time an actual Land Rover. Nice to know that Toyota haven’t completely cornered the market, except … this one, apparently, wouldn’t start with the key anymore, relying instead on the tourists it was carrying getting out to give it a push! Our guide recommended in this case reversing up a termite mound in order to park on a slope, thereby giving the occupants a rest and using gravity to do the hard work of bump starting. This turned out to be a trick that worked wonderfully for the Land Rover, likely less well for the termites whose home was now a casualty of 1970’s UK labour relations strife combined with shoddy engineering.

We spent most of the day exploring alongside the lake as well as further into the surrounding lands before heading off again to the last hotel stop of the trip: Tarangire Treetops.

For a while there, more miles on tarmac seduced us into believing that dirt roads were the exception rather than the rule in this part of the country. The last 30 km of the journey put paid to that notion, taking over an hour to traverse, the last few clicks of which were done behind a water tanker that is part of a constant delivery service the hotel needs during the peak season. This was the most rutted, rock-strewn thing we’d driven on to date, which believe me is saying something! However, it really was worthwhile when we arrived at the eponymous Treetops hotel.

As you can see from the image above, the hotel is themed, if that's the right word, through it's connection to nature, quite literally given that the bedrooms are all constructed around trees dotting a ridge line on one side of the Great Rift Valley (the edge and floor of which comprises the Tarangire preserve). This was a completely unique property when first constructed and still quite an amazing place today despite a couple of equivalents now popping up elsewhere in Africa. And yes, the rooms do feel a bit rickety as they are supported platforms sitting at the end of some long - and poorly braced - poles! Treetops also has an adopted elephant who, so they say, has failing eyesight and hangs around because it's safe and there's food readily available. I think they meant "natural vegetation" and not "green building materials already in use" but you are never quite sure, especially when you hear him wandering around outside in the middle of the night ....