Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Lake Manyara's Magical Elephants

My friends, it happened. I saw elephants. 
For the past 2 days, we have been in Lake Manyara National Park taking field notes fort our first research paper that is due in 2 weeks. While this was meant to me a field exercise, every person would admit to having at least one "tourist moment." Mine was the elephants. 
Our group was split up into 6 different cars and we all went in different directions. Somehow, all the other cars ended up together and saw 4 elephants. We raced to the place they saw them, and magic happened. 


We found the four elephants they had seen but now there were 6 elephants, including the cutest baby elephant! They were eating and hanging out and not being extremely photogenic, when they decided that the leaves on the other side of the road must be more delicious. Magic. The group was definitely a matriarchal group of related females and their young. I admit, I cried along with 2 other girls in my land rover. No shame. 

Day 2 Lake Manyara: We saw elephants left and right but rarely stopped because we had to spend 2 hours observing baboons. I've seen enough baboon butts for a life time. I was able to take a picture of this classy lady!


Elephants is not the only cool thing we saw. There were plenty of mixed herds of Zebra, Gazelle, wildebeest, and cape buffalo. I can't believe I saw 2 of my big 5 on my first day at a National Park!!


And last but not least, the beautiful Kingfisher that posed for us while we shot him like paparazzi. He was loving the attention!


There are 205 more pictures from the past 2 days, so I can only upload 4 at a time! Other sightings included: warthogs, giraffes, hornbills, vervet monkeys, blue monkeys, and impala. More pictures to come!


No comments:

Post a Comment