Day 10: Arusha National Park

I had another early start today, needing to be in the car park outside the conference hall at 07.30 for my final excursion. Today I was going to Arusha National Park which, as the name suggests, is the national park closest to Arusha.

You can normally get a great view of Mt Meru - the second largest mountain in Tanzania - from here, but this morning was a bit damp, so it was hidden by clouds at the point we arrived.

We began driving around the park in a safari jeep.

After five minutes of driving we caught sight of some zebras in the distance.

These were proper wild zebras, not like the ones I fed the other day!

Alongside the zebras there was also a group of African buffalo.

The guide explained that buffalo are the most dangerous animals in the national park. You wouldn't want to be in the way if one of them started charging!

We drove a bit further and just around the corner we found a giraffe.

This was a safari with a difference, because we were going to do part of it on foot.

There are lots of hiking trails in the national park but our group was only doing a very short walk of around 2km. Even for that short walk, however, we needed to be accompanied by a ranger with a gun. He explained that the gun isn't to shoot animals; it makes a really loud noise, which would scare off any unfriendly buffalo.

We started by walking around a slightly morbid display of animal skulls. The ranger was speaking in a mixture of English and Swahili to our interpreter, an Esperantists from DR Congo, who was then translating into Esperanto. The process fell down a bit when he started to show us skulls of aardvarks and waterbuck and none of us knew the words for those in Esperanto

The views as we walked were really beautiful.

The national park is really green and there was a small river running through it.

Not a very good photo, but before long we caught sight of a warthog in the vegetation not far away.

We walked a bit further, admiring the beautiful trees...

...and then we came across some grazing buffalo.

If they look close in the photos, it's because my camera has a really good zoom!

They were actually a safe distance away and there was a small stream between us and them.

We walked a little bit further, turned a corner and came across an amazing waterfall.

It's called Tululusia and here's a picture with some people in it for scale. It was so pretty and all the more exciting to see because I had no warning it was coming up!

After that the walk continued...

...and we passed lots of beautiful trees and bushes.

Everywhere was so green!

We passed a tree which had some very noisy birds in it. Apparently they were Egyptian geese.

When we got to the end of the walk we had a picnic lunch and then got back in the jeep to continue the rest of the safari by road. It wasn't long before the jeep pulled up so that we could look at another warthog.

It was really hard to get a good picture because he was hiding in the vegetation, but essentially he looked like Pumbaa from the Lion King

There were also quite a few giraffes in this part of the park.

Around the corner we found more zebras and an antelope.

The next stop on the tour was a series of lakes called the Momela Lakes.

One of the excursion members asked whether it was possible to swim in them. The guide said preferably not, as there might be hippos in there!

We didn't see any today but they were very pretty lakes, although the road to get to them was exceptionally bumpy.

Unfortunately, we ended up having to travel the road three times. Having got to the end of it, one of the excursion members realised that he'd lost his wedding ring  He thought it might have slipped off his hand while washing them in the toilets of the picnic site where we'd had lunch, so we drove all the way back along the road to see if we could find it. In the end we unfortunately didn't, so had to drive back down the road in the other direction for a third time.

That did give us the opportunity to observe a baboon by the side of the road

Our final stop in the national park was a viewpoint from where we could look out over a crater.

There are no roads down to the bottom of this volcanic caldera, so the animals are able to graze in peace.

With the help of binoculars we could see a herd of buffalo doing just that.

After admiring the crater it was time to head back to Arusha. The weather had improved a lot by this point, so as we drove back into town we were able to get a view of Mt Meru.

It's been a really fun week in Arusha (at least for me - maybe less so for Tim, who spent this morning in a committee meeting!). Tomorrow we set off on safari, starting with Tarangire National Park.