Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Our Travels Through Tarangire

On the last leg of our trip through Tarangire, we came upon this herd of elephants.  Elephants have poor eyesight, but an excellent sense of smell.  They are lifting their trunks to identify our scent, which they did not like.  Moments after this photo, one of the elephants started to charge us.  Our guide gunned the jeep forward and stopped.  When we saw the elephant still charging us, he gunned it again and put plenty of distance between us and the elephant.

Our cabin lodge in Tarangire sat among the boulders at the top of a hill overlooking the valley below.  This is a picture of the glorious sunrise peeking through the clouds, taken from the front porch.

Grant and Garrett in a hollowed out portion of a baobab tree.  We learned a ton of information about these strange yet magnificent trees.  Garrett did a science fair project about the baobab tree when he returned to school after our trip.

This elephant was one of our favorites to photograph.  She seemed to pose for the camera, showing us her full ears, her flirtatious eyelashes, and her protruding tusks.

Tarangire is well-known for the elephant populations that roam through the park.  Here is one such family of elephants hanging out under an incredible baobab tree.

A giraffe perfectly framed between the trees.

At the very end of our last safari drive, we experienced our closest encounter yet with a leopard.  You can clearly see his spots and other features.  What an amazing creature!  Many people go on safari without seeing a single leopard, but we ended up seeing four (three fairly close and one far off).  Our guide was as thrilled as we were, suggesting that we were very lucky.  This was the perfect ending to our game-viewing experience.

Grant and Garrett had the opportunity to watch one of the local villagers make bows and arrows by hand.  They were then able to practice shooting with them, using a cardboard box as a target.  We then learned how to unstring and restring the bows so that we could carry them onto the plane and practice with them back in India.

A rare opportunity to get all four of us in a picture with our eyes open, smiling, and no bunny ears.  This picture was taken at sunset on a terrace at the lodge, overlooking the Tarangire valley.

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