African Safari - 2026
Sunday 11 October'26 - Lake Manyara (Tanzania)
First up, a sad note to today was that Dennis would be leaving us with another guide after the morning safari. His brother had passed away and as the oldest, was required at home. An early start for our safari in Lake Manyara National Park. It is the home of the tree climbing lion, which is against the norm for other parks but alas, we didn't see any. The park is so different to the others we have seen to date in that it is nestled between the windward slopes of the mountains (meaning it gets a high rainfall) and a large inland lake and therefore, has dense vegetation. Now I know Oz has a wide variety of birdlife but I tend to take it for granted whereas I'm fascinated by the African ones. These Southern Ground Hornbill looked amazing and then there was the African Fish Eagle and Hadada Ibises. The day before I mentioned how pretty the smaller variety's were but how I would need to spend hours waiting for a good shot but I did snag one of a Blue-Capped Cordon-bleu. Another colourful little thing was the Male Rock Agama. The other things that are abundant in the park are the monkeys and baboons...
Next was my favourite. These guys are so majestic and even the smallest ones are big units. The video is where we had come 'round a corner and "startled" a mum and her calf. She immediately displayed all the signs of charging "the threat", to which our guide moved the vehicle very quickly (thank goodness)... It was now time to head back to our accomodation for lunch, where we met Noel (as in the Xmas carol), our new guide for the rest of today and our travel to Namanga tomorrow. We then had a few hours down time before undertaking a night safari at 2000 that evening. On the way out, we came across a giraffe, a baby impala & a bushbuk. After some leisure time and dinner, it was back in the jeep for our night safari. The thing that struck me when being given the "safety briefing" before entering the park was that, unlike all the daytime ones we had been on, an armed park ranger was going to accompany us on this one! Our 1st encounter was with my mates, followed by a noisy Southern Ground Hornbill then an active congress of bush babies (similar to our possums). We also saw a black footed cat (something like an ocelot), bushbuks and some other elephants but the quality of my camera and the "tyranny of distance" meant no photographic evidence. On our way out of the park, we came across a small impala that had lost the herd and was "hunkering down" for the night, probably hoping they would make it through to sunrise. Only a few metres down the road, the herd was doing the same thing. The end of a long day but most enjoyable.
