At the end of June, my niece Barb, and her husband Chris, came all the way from Zuni, NM to Addis to spend a couple of weeks with me and have a break from their busy lives as family practice physicians caring for Zuni native Americans. For the first week, we made home visits in the slums of Addis and they helped me provide care for our beneficiaries. The second week we went to Arusha, Tanzania, where we started our safari.
We had an easy 2 hour flight from Addis to Kilimanjaro International Airport, where we were picked up and went to Arusha to begin our safari. We spent 6 nights out, stayed in a small lodge the first and last nights and camped the middle 4 nights. We spent 3 days in the Serengeti, one at the Ngorongoro Crater and one each at Lake Manyara and Tangire parks. The Tanzanian national park system is really wonderful. The fees for non-Tanzanians to get into the parks are quite steep and they use that money to great advantage to maintain the parks.
We saw an amazing number of animals, including lions, cheetah, leopard, wart hogs, baboons, monkeys, giraffe, buffalo, wildebeest, zebra, elephants, rhino, hippos, crocodile, ostrich, many birds, buffalo, gazelles, hyenas, antelope and lots of baby animals. We were there at the right time to see the beginning of the annual wildebeest and zebra northern migration to Kenya. Enjoy a few pictures of our trip.
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- Buffalo
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- Stork
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- Baboon parade
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- Storks in tree
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- Our dining table with a Maasai blanket for a tablecloth
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- Entrance to the Serengeti
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- Our safari van
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- Gazelle
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- Cheetah, one of the rarest animals to be seen
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- Cheetah and cubs
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- A lone elephant
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- Baby elephant nursing
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- Why do elephants always look like they are smiling?
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- Baboon mom and babies
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- Giraffe
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- Wildebeest (gnu) migration
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- Lone wildebeest – These animals call to and answer each other with sounds that resemble honking geese!
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- Leopard in the tree. Look on the lower branch on the left where the foliage starts. Very difficult to find, but we had a great guide.
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- My “home” for 4 nights.
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- The smallest critter we saw–at our campsite.
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- Giraffe eating acacia tree–the thorns don’t seem to bother them.
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- Crocodile sunning himself
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- Zebras
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- Hippo pool
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- King of the Jungle
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- Safari balloon and ostrich
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- Lion cubs
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- Crested Guinea Hen
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- Very young baby baboon–looks like a little old man!
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- The pink on the lake in the background is flamingos, not the sunrise reflecting off the water. In Ngorongoro Crater.
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- A pride of lions, with male eating his share of the zebra kill. No one else eats until he is done. There were 3-4 females and a young male in addition to the male who was eating.
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- Now it’s my turn!
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- I’ve had enough
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- Too close for comfort?
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- Hyenas waiting for their share of the kill. It was as if the lions were on center stage of an amphitheater and the hyenas were the audience, sitting on many tiers of seats.
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- Female lion following wildebeest kill–note the red face on the lion.
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- Ostrich enjoying lunch
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- Baobab tree–in the silk and cotton family. Has an edible fruit like a gourd and the bark is used to make paper, cloth and rope. Native to Africa.
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- Giraffe
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- Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa at 19,340 feet (5895 meters). You are not seeing just clouds, but the snow-capped peak coming out of the clouds.