March 14, 2025

 Tarangine Ndovu Camp, Tarangine National Park, Tanzania

Good morning. It is a beautiful morning. I went out front to our deck to watch the sunrise and enjoy a cigar. While I was sitter there a family of Kir’s DikDiks were feeding on the grasses just off our our deck. The were accompanied by a couple helmeted guineafowl. Today we are going to get a little later start, so the sun is a little higher.

The top two are the heard of elephants and DikDiks off our deck. The next three are a views from our tent cabins. The last one is of our cabins.

About 200 meters from the deck in an open area there was a family of elephants walking though. Completely beautiful. Woke Mary up at 07:00, breakfast at 07:30 and at 08:00 Alex is going to take us to the Silale Swamp which is to the south of Ndovu Camp. He is hoping to be able to find some cats there. We’ll see what happens.

We headed out on time. The drive this morning was really nice. The sky was clear and it was cool. Unfortunately, that usually means a very hot afternoon. We got to the top of a hill on the Madagascar range which overlooked the plain below. It was really breathtaking.

Then we headed down to the swamp. Now this isn’t an Alabama swamp. There are no trees. While there is water, it is very shallow. The plain is one big flooded area. We did see a pair of lions sitting in the shade. We also saw a family of Impala, a father, mother and baby.

We didn’t stick around as we wanted to get out into the swamp itself. We did find out later that the lions, hunter of opportunity, did take down the baby Impala for a morning snack. Glad we missed the drama of the take down, but apparently it didn’t last long.

We drove into the swamp where we saw storks, a pelican and more birds. It is a swamp in the sense that it was filled with flying creatures which wanted very much to snack on us. They seemed to like Alex and I but, of course, left Mary completely alone. Such is life.

Lunch as at a spot in the middle of the swamp which, thankfully, wasn’t a bug feasting place. But it was getting hot. Probably 30° or 32° C. After lunch we made a beeline back to the camp.

Today we added the following to our list of birds and mammals:

Secretary Bird

White-face whistling duck

Spur-winged Goose

White Stork

Yellow-billed stork

Hadaha Ibis

Great White pelican

White-tailed coucal

Common Snapping turtle

Leopard turtle

Once in camp we chose the dinner menu, played cards and had a drink. It was hot, did I mention that. After I lost at cards, by only 100 points, we went back to the tent cabin. I had a cigar, Mary played word and then I took a cool shower.

We waited until 19:00 and then went over for dinner. We started with vegetable samosas with sweet chilli drizzle. The main course was a lamb tikka masala curry with saffron and sultana rice, African mango chutney, tomato and cucumber raita and poppadum. Dessert were mini pancakes with Tabora honey and fruit compote.

Returning to the cabin we packed for the morning flight to Seronera in the Serengeti. It should be a short flight of about two hours. I am hoping that the Serengeti is cooler than here. Hope springs eternal!

It was off to bed and hopefully it will cool off enough to give us a good night's sleep. Sunday morning, we have our ballon ride over the Serengeti. Grace and I took one and it was fantastic. Very excited about it.

Termite mound and Baobab Tree.

Buonanotte e caio, Enrico e Maria