Phase 4 Safari Day 1

 

Happy New Year!  The day started with a teary farewell to our Songota Falls friends.  

 

Then we were off with our safari driver James. He loves to have someone chatty up front so Suzanne took the first shift of asking questions. James is married and now has 5 children. He and his wife Anna had 3 children and then they took in 2 more when James' younger brother died last year.

He has been a safari driver for about 14 years and has worked with a few different companies.

We headed to Tarangire National Park first. We saw so many elephants that after a while there was no point in stopping as it was "just another elephant!" We also saw impala, baboons, ostrich, dik dik, and a few giraffes. There were even a few distant lions.   We were hopeful that we would get closer to these big cats. Also many folks had seen cheetahs on safari so our hopes were high.

 

 

After a long safari drive on some rather bumpy roads, we were almost to our first lodge of the trip, the Boundary Hill Lodge. We had one more stream to pass but with the recent rains the ground was somewhere between mud and quicksand. James had no choice but to back up and drive another 3 hours in order to approach from another direction.  As for us, after much contemplation, we decided to cross the mud pit with the assistance of 5 Masaai warriors. We all emerged with mud socks and much laughter.  Then we had just a 20 minute walk to the lodge with our Masaai guide Lauri. Now keep in mind that we are in Africa...so the walk ended up taking an hour and we arrived just before dark. We didn't have any luggage so we couldn't change or shower. We headed off to the outdoor dining room for a glass of wine and some dinner.  Interesting start...of course after this, nothing phased us.

 

 

Our driver and luggage showed up at about 9:30. Time for bed. Throughout the night we heard rain. That would prove to be important.