For the second day of our Safari we traveled the short half hour from our campsite to the Lake Manyara region to see if we could find some other species than we had not seen in Ngorogoro.
Standing at a lookout point on a foothill above Lake Manayara.
Not 5 minutes after entering the national park we were greeted by a pack of wild baboons. This one in particular was using a broken branch as a makeshift rocking chair...rocking himself slowly back and forth.
Hungry hungry hippos... Following our encounter with the baboons we stopped at a lookout point called Hippo Lake. We had to stay behind a fence 200 meters away but were allowed to exit the car and take pictures. While they may look cute.. hippos are violent animals that can bite a person in half, if one gets too close. They are well adapted to live in the water and yet they can run up to 30 mph on land. Don’t get too close...
On the lookout. . .
Spotted one! The first giraffe on the trip! Was my personal favorite moment. I had been waiting to see them since Ngorogoro. Rather unique the giraffe might be the most peculiar animal that we saw on the trip as it doesn’t resemble any other animal in particular. It’s a very elegant animal and usually travels in packs so there were more around.
Quintessential Africa :)
Another interesting variety of antelope the Dik Dik is a the smallest of its family making for an adorable miniature version of its larger cousins.
Again another variety of antelope the impala is more well known and can be identified by the black stripes that it has on its rear end. This here is a bachelor heard because only the males have large horns.
Another one of the “Big Five” we saw many elephants between Ngorogoro and Manyara. The ones in Ngorogoro have exceptionally large tusks because of the calcium rich landscape.
An elephant family in Manyara. The Manyara elephants has little to no tusks but they were still adorable and much more abundant in Lake Manyara.
An end of trip group picture including our cooks and the head of the campsite at which we stayed.
baby..these animals. are. amazing. the elephant's tusks are stunning and the chimp who made the rocking chair out of the branch?! so cool! I can't believe hippos are so violent... i had no idea! i love the picture of you "surveying" the safari ;) you're cuties!
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