Last Day in Tarangire and First Day in Serengeti, December 29th to January 1st, 2023

We started our day early at our eco-lodge near Tarangire National Park.  We awoke early to go on a game walk through the bush.  We were accompanied by 2 park rangers sporting a 457 bolt action rifle with a .50 bullet large enough to take down an elephant in one shot, and the other guy had an AK-47.  The walk was very interesting, showing us many ways to track the different animals (the elephants are the easiest in that they leave a giant path and rip down branches as they go).  The whole time we were walking, I was imagining some large cars, for some reason only attacking the rangers with guns, and I, with my restricted firearm licences, had to pick up the bolt action and put a couple in the big cats to save everyone.  A very realistic scenario that I was running over in my head.  

The game walk did not end up finding us any large cats, which was bad.  After we walked over to the car, we headed back to the ranger station, and along the way, we saw 2 lions sitting close to the road, which was less than 200 meters away from where we were walking.  Turns out it was a good thing we didn't see any lions because they would have been a lot closer than we would have liked them to be.  We toured around the park, seeing a ridiculous number of elephants and giraffes.  Tarangire was the elephant park, as most of the park ran very close to the rivers.  We spent a good amount of time just touring around through the park and headed back to the eco-lodge that night, where we ate and went to bed at 9 pm on New Year's Eve. 

We woke up early the next day to head towards the Serengeti.  The drive was long as we climbed up the Great Rift Valley and drove through the Ngorongoro conservation area, a UNESCO World Heritage site with an extremely unique biosphere and animals that live in the protected area.  However, people still live in the conservation area; the Maasai people, historically nomadic, occupy a large part of northern Tanzania.  We descended onto the other side of the valley, where we drove for hours across the Serengeti's endless Savana.  It was insane how far the Savanah would go, in places making it impossible to see anything but the endless grass, not even being able to see the mountain ranges in the distance.  The Serengeti is massive, being similar in size to Fiji.  We did some spotting when we got to the park, seeing lions on our first day before returning to the camp later that night.  The camp is a nice tent lodge with built-in floors, toilets, showers and beds.  It's cool because you feel immersed in the park around us, no fences or anything, just Maasai people defending us from the lions.  So far, the food has been good, and the beds have been comfortable.  It's also soothing to hear the crickets dose you off to sleep every night.  

Elephants at Tarangire National Park