Sat am July 2

It's before lunch sitting on the porch of our tent watching baboons traipse around the dry riverbed. Large extended family with little ones playing tag and wrestling while the older ones are parked
around the periphery. On the bank under some trees a huge elephant is framed by some acacia trees flapping his ears. Impala are grazing on the bank and the occasional warthog trots across the river bed.

This morning we got up before dawn and a MassI escorted us to the main area for a quick Tea and coffee before heading out into the dark back to the National Park. Dawn here is unlike what we a familiar. Instead of the eastern horizon starting to glow the entire sky seems to lighten at once. Not sure if this is always the case but it was today. We drove into the park in the dark with wildebeest and zebra crossing in front of us. As the sky began to lighten the Savannah took on soft glow and we could make out elephant and giraffe along side the road.

That was david now from Melanie - last night (a weemawek a weemawek) He didn't sleep last night
In the jungle the mighty jungle he didn't sleep last night
And neither did his elephant friend

It was so cool. First I woke up to trumpeting. The elephant was obviously in camp because he was close by. I awoke a couple of more times to his trumpeting. Then there was a new sound. I'm getting paranoid so I woke David. That's a lion he said. Don't tell me that I said. So he said that's an airplane and went back to sleep. As if. Then I spent the rest of the night worrying how we would get by the elephant AND the lion. But by 5am they had quieted down.
So as David said the Massi came to escort us to the safety of the lodge carrying his trusty - flashlight. Oh this is gonna go well me thinks. So I start planning. If it's an elephant in our way the Massi can climb on Davids shoulder and I can climb on his shoulder and bop the elephant on the head with the flashlight. If it's a lion we can just reach out and bop him. If that doesn't work we'll die. Good plan, right?

I'm not sure if we mentioned our tent looks out over a river bed. The river bed has water during the rainy season which ended in May. It's dry as a bone now but it wasn't a very wet rainy season which is obviously a problem. Anyway the animals all walk down the riverbed just like we stroll through the mall. So that's what David was looking at when he described the baboons etc above.

I also should mention that Kruger park in So Africa has a fence around it and the hotels and campsites are outside the fence. Not so in Tanzania. No fence and the animals are free to roam. Pretty smart choosing Tanzania, huh? Really it's extremely cool. So when they built the park they said to the folks that they had to move 10 km outside the perimeter. They said no thanks we've been living here forever. The problem is many raise cattle and goats. The animals in the park, since there's no fence, roam wherever and cattle have been lost. The moral of the story is when we complain about the snow and cold it could be worse. Our cattle could be eaten by lions.


- Posted from the ipad