That’s What Friends Are For

That’s What Friends are For!

And when you’re lost, and in dire need who’s at your side, at lightning speed with friends of every creature coming down the pike, in fact we have never met an animal we didn’t like! Didn’t like!

(Song lyrics above from the Jungle Book “Thats What Friends are For”, vulture song)

It’s me again! This time writing about our third and final day of our game drive. Boo hoo hoo. Well Hakuna Matata! This post is AWESOME! As I said above, “we have never met an animal we didn’t like!”

We met James bright and early in the morning and extra excited for our third game drive. In the morning it was a little overcast but the weather did not affect our great moods.

We were about two hours away from the Tarangire National Park which has an area of 2850 sq km or 1096 sq miles. It is famous for its large herds of elephants with up to three hundred in a group.

Here are some of the animals we saw at the Tarangire National Park:

Elephants

A big group of elephants

In the bush!

ELEPHANTS ARE AWESOME

It’s looking at us

Elephants

Here is the whole group

I LIKE ELEPHANTS!

A lot of elephants

We have never seen so many elephants in one group! Lions only hunt the baby elephants, that is why the bigger elephants are always surrounding them.

Giraffes

Giraffes

A huge giraffe

I see the giraffes

A giraffe eating

It is time for the giraffes lunch! Leaves, YUM YUM!

Seeing the giraffes was amazing because we had never seen babies in a group. The giraffes also stay in groups and we saw one group that had about ten giraffes eating and sitting. (mostly eating) One out of the group was sitting which is very unlikely to happen because lions hunt them and it takes a while for the giraffes to stand up. James told us that just one kick from a giraffe’s back legs can kill a lion, so the lions have learned to hunt giraffes from the side.

Vultures

It was my first time seeing a vulture, (other than in the Jungle Book). Unfortunately, we did not see them stack on top of each other and start singing!)

Here is the song “That’s what friends are for” from The Jungle Book featuring four very fabulous and musical vultures.

Monkeys

We stopped for lunch in the park and saw a monkey jump onto the roof of a car nearby. It walked around and then disappeared inside of the car. We knocked on the window to get it out but it returned when our backs were turned.  Two game drivers finally scared it away, and then we went to eat lunch. We made sure our guide, James was with us, because he would throw stones at them so they wouldn’t take our food . Luckily the monkeys did not take our food or go into our car.

The most exciting animal we saw was… (I am going to make you guess again)! 🙂

This time, I wont give you any hints…Okay, I will give you five hints.

1- They are a member of the cat family
2- They have black spots
3- They are the fastest land animal
4- They are not Leopards
5- They always look like they are crying because they have to black lines under their eyes

We saw two cheetahs! (Good thing I took longer at breakfast, because maybe we would not see them if I was fast)! 🙂

The best part was we were able to see the cats stalking an animal. It was really neat to watch their strategies. At the beginning, one goes in front and the other stays behind. The front cat will try to get the animal to run into the open, then the second cat is there to start the chase. This part of the hunt can take a long time, so that’s all we saw.  We noticed they would walk a few steps and then sit down for a while so that they did not scare their prey away.

We had a great game drive and saw 4 1/2 of the “Big Five”. (We say the cheetah is the half because the leopard and the cheetah are both in the cat family and who knows, maybe it was a leopard in disguise)?