Tarangire Safari Park is a park, yes. It sounds like a tourist destination, stocked with animals and ‘prettied up’ for us tourists. I asked Paul just how real this place is. He looked at me like I had grown two heads – not meanly, just really confused. Yes, this is 3000m² of a ‘park’, but only because it is protected land. It isn’t a conservation area, it isn’t fenced, it isn’t groomed.  There are roadways/pathways throughout, so we have a chance to see whatever animals happen to be living there, but they are not imported, they are not fed, they are not looked after. This is true nature. Wow. Okay. We can’t wait. And we are keeping our fingers crossed that we see SOMETHING! ANYTHING! (I mean, our experience of driving through the Banff National Park does not mean you will see a bear or a moose or even a deer – so we don’t have huge expectations.)

[Afterthought: So, once we finished the day, I was able to make a reasonable comparison (for those people who live in Calgary). It is like Fish Creek Park, except scale it to about 400x the size. There are pathways through it that you can ride along and you’ll pass through wetlands, prairie areas, forested or treed areas, bushes, and you’ll go by a lake or a river. It is all natural, it is all real. It has just been made accessible to humans.]

Within seconds, as if they are there to greet us, we are faced with dozens of Vervet Monkeys. Paul, used to tourists not having experienced anything like this pulls over and completely turns off the car – wait, let me tell you about this Land Cruiser –

It is a six-seater vehicle. It is large. It is comfortable (as much as it can be!). It is extremely well taken care off. It has a roof that lifts up so you can stand up in the vehicle to get a better view of your surroundings. It has been built purposefully for this type of excursion and they are everywhere. I don’t think we saw another brand of vehicle.

Okay, so we are stopped, the engine turned off so we can get a picture or video without the sound or vibrations of the vehicle. I thought that was an extremely thoughtful touch. We could have watched these monkeys for a very long time. After all, this might be the only animal we see. We got to watch and film them for as long as we wanted. Paul was patient and helpful and completely non-judgemental. The monkeys were hilarious; they posed, they groomed, they played, they ran, they frolicked, they ate, they yawned. And they were less than two feet away from us. Happy, living their lives and completely unbothered by us humans in this large vehicle. They neither begged us for food nor attacked us. We may as well have been trees. Just part of the landscape. Huh.

Okay, let’s move on and take our chances. We might see something else. Yep. Not one minute later we come upon a bachelor group of Impalas (all males). We watched them for awhile, enthralled with their playing and eating in the field and really impressed with the luck we are having. Two animals in as many kilometers!!

And then we see warthogs – two of them! Seriously??? These aren’t put here for us? Except they are quite shy and run away as soon as we approach so we really only get a shot of their butts. I don’t care. This is amazing. Also, did you know that warthog in Swahili is ‘Pumba’? Yep, like in The Lion King.

Moving on, Paul points out two Crown Cranes – we didn’t even know these animals existed. Not only are we going to see some amazing things, but we are going to learn a whole lot of new things too! This is going to be so awesome. Within the span of 25 minutes, we have seen 4 different animals. Seriously???

Full disclosure here, we are not birders. Birds just aren’t our thing. We have a large variety of birds where we live but it just doesn’t grab our attention. Here though, wow. We could become birders here. The variety of birds we saw and the colours…the colours! Wow. I can’t remember the names of all of them, but the Lilac stood out. Holy moly. Gorgeous.

It took a bit of driving through the park before we saw something else, which helped to confirm that we are not in a zoo. Our next guest? Olive Baboons. Talk about interesting watching. They were in a few different Baobab trees eating the fruit and throwing the hard shells down on the ground. Again, just living their lives with no second thought to us humans watching them in complete awe and amazement.

Now we have learned to scour the land, the trees, the bushes in order to spot something. I was very happy to have spotted 2 large birds on a branch. Francolin Birds. I have no idea what they are, but they are big and I spotted them. I was so proud.

Mere minutes later, I screamed and hit Jason. ELEPHANTS!!! I couldn’t believe it. There they were. Right in front of us. A large group of them happily munching away on the trees and protecting their…BABY!!! Come on. How is this possible??? This was the most surreal experience. I don’t know if I have the words to explain how I was feeling. How we both were feeling. The elephants were right there. Right in front of us. There was no cage, no wall, no barrier. They were 100% doing what elephants do. If this is the last animal we see, so be it. We are content. We are satisfied. We are amazed. We watched them until they moved on and were hidden by the trees. Honestly, how the heck does an elephant disappear? How does a whole parade of elephants disappear??

This taught us that just because we don’t see anything in the landscape does not mean there is nothing there. I can only imagine how many animals we were not seeing.

A little bit further down the road, we run into more elephants – what??? Our minds are blown. As I am writing this, I feel like it seems a bit hyperbolic. Nope. It is even more amazing than I am saying. Honestly. This encounter was interesting for another reason. All of a sudden, Paul started the car and pulled forward a good distance. He had noticed one of the younger elephants running towards us. I guess they aren’t as blasé about us as the older ones, also, they are young and teenager-ish, impulsive and aggressive. He easily would have attacked our vehicle and possible turned it over. Paul was going to have none of that. Thank you Paul.

Do you know what a Waterbuck is? Yeah, neither did we. So when we approached a whole herd of them, of course we were in awe. Greyish deer like animals with horns/antlers and a white circle on their butts. Who gave zero f…cares that we were there.

There is a picnic spot here in the park (yes, it is still a park, just wild!) so we go for lunch because we are starving. Our boxed lunch is more than adequate – huge, lots of options and tasty. We ate quickly because we didn’t want to waste a minute. Nor did we want to run into any kind of wild animal while we exposed to the elements and not protected by our vehicle.

After seeing yet another group of baboons, we see a group of large animals in the distance – ELEPHANTS!! – we scream again. Just as excited as the first time. Except that nope, not elephants. Not at all. It is embarrassing to admit it, but come on, would you have been expecting to see…OSTRICHES? Exactly, and from a distance, they could be (and were!) mistaken for something else. No matter. We are in front of a group of ostriches. Seriously. They exist outside of zoos.

Fun fact: females are light grey and males are black. The females sit on the eggs during the day and the males sit on them during the night to camouflage their presence. Nature is amazing.

This next bit is self-indulgent, but I feel it is warranted. To be clear, Jason and I are running on about 5 hours of sleep between the two of us. We are tired, we are discombobulated, we are jet-lagged. No two ways about it. We have been in a car now for 8 hours, bobbing along, being lulled to sleep – well, swayed – well, rocked, violently rocked, but still. Sleep is imminent. My eyes start to close, I am comfortable that because 1) We are near the end of the park so there can’t be much more to see and 2) the guys are still awake and will see anything there is to see and make sure I wake up for it, right?

BUMP! My eyes spring open. I guess I am done sleeping. But wait, what is that? What am I seeing??? GIRAFFE!!! Brakes slam. Bags go flying. Heads turn. WHAT?!? Yep, that’s right. I saw the giraffe. I did. There it was, off in the distance, enjoying the lunch that trees provide. OMG. Bonus animal. Who knew we’d see giraffes? This is crazy. Luckily, we brought binoculars (I’m sure there’ll be a post about why it is important to have a set each.) so we could actually see it because it was really far away. But it was there. It was there, in real life. I saw it in the last few minutes of us being in the park.

What a day. What an experience. How does it get better? Does it even have to? (NO!) If we died tomorrow, we would be fulfilled. I was not expecting this type of reaction to our trip. Our cups are completely full. I am sad to leave the park, but I am at peace. We have seen, experienced and learned so much already.