Hightailing It Out Of Tarangire...

On our way into Tarangire, we noticed that a lot of the traffic going the other way seemed to be in a big hurry. David explained that there is no grace period on the park fees. If you arrive at 12:37 on a Tuesday and leave at 12:38 on Wednesday, you owe two days park fees. This is a big deal, especially when you are paying for a guide and a driver, as well. Currently, the charge is US$35/day/person, plus vehicle fees, and there are fees for walking safaris and night drives (both of which we did) as well. So you really don't want to be late! You can find a link to the current fee schedule on the Resources page.

Two days later, we found ourselves in the same situation, trying to make sure we were out of the park on time (we made it by less than an hour) but trying hard to appreciate all of the amazing things we were seeing. We were also being pushed by our schedule for today - a stop at the Rift Valley Children's Village and then on to Mysigio camp in the Ngorongoro highlands.

This day did bring a number of interesting sights, however. Remember a few posts ago when I said that the sight of the baby elephants in the swamp would come back to haunt us? Well, we had heard in camp that there was a kill of a baby elephant in the area we saw the strugglers, and that this kill had happened within the hour or so after we passed by. The people who relayed this information to us said that when they passed by the body was surrounded by a family group, and each member walked up and touched the body with its trunk before the entire group finally left. There was a good chance that it was one of the babies we had seen. It didn't take us long to find the kill - the vultures were a sure sign:

This image doesn't really convey the violence of the scene. The vultures were squabbling with each other and tearing at the flesh while the maribu stork stood calmly by like an evil lord overseeing his minions. Judging from the amount of damage that had been done to the body, I would guess that the kill had been done by one or more big cats or hyenas. Lions probably would have been in a group, consumed more of the kill and continued to stand guard, while a cheetah wouldn't have the capability of making a kill this large. A leopard is a solitary hunter but would not have been able to drag a kill this large into a tree. My money is on the leopard or hyenas. The smell, even from 20 yards away, was... well, if you've never smelled a dead elephant that has been sitting in the sun for a couple of days, count yourself lucky. Even after we moved on I had the smell in my head for about 10 minutes.

We saw another kill somewhat later, this time a giraffe:

The smell of this kill was, if anything, even worse than the elephant. Vultures are interesting birds; they get a bad rap, but serve an important purpose in the web of life in Africa. The bald head is thought to serve the dual purpose of heat regulation and helping the bird stay clean during feeding. Vultures also have exceptionally powerful stomach acid that allows them to eat diseased and rotten carrion that would kill other scavengers. Very little in the way of calories goes to waste in the african bush.

This is the sight that gives me the willies, though...

Elephants were omnipresent. This bull didn't seem to be very happy that we had disturbed his morning constitutional...

We finally got to see our first lions up close. This pair of young males had probably been kicked out of their prides, and had teamed up to make hunting easier. It is a little disconcerting to have a lion looking so directly at you from a distance of 25 yards. It made me wonder what it was thinking... brunch, maybe? Lions are massive animals. Even at their young age these guys probably weighed in at more than 300 lbs apiece, and could go as high as 550 lbs when mature.

A little later we saw a family group of several females. In this picture, the standing lioness (possibly pregnant?) approached from over the hill and greeted one of her sisters with a headrub (and was answered with a snarl). The lioness laying down had a collar on, which is the only evidence of wildlife research we saw during our stay in Africa.

On our way out of the park we also (finally) got a close look ot some cape buffalo. These are massive, powerful animals that even the big cats are hesitant to confront. A pride of lions might take an adult, but a lone hunter would be hard pressed. You can tell how old the animals are by looking at the horns; the older the buffalo, the more the horns grow together on the crown of the head. The one staring at the camera is a fully mature bull.

And so we said goodbye to Tarangire from a high vantage. The park is vast and beautiful, dry in this season, but still teeming with life. Now, for a bit, it was back to paved roads and on to our next stop at the Rift Valley Childrens Village...