Tarangire- SOPA lodge June 21- 23

Phew, don't know if I can finish this post without coffee #2, but I must. This is a nicer more detailed version of the past few days

There is a surprise at the end.

Last time I wrote I was in Arusha, with the market and everything. Since then, again many many life changing things have happened.

We left at around 8:00AM on  to go towards our second (first real) lodge. On the way we stopped in town for snacks and water, then a gift shop (didn't buy anything...not the real thing although some did) and then finally the beginning of Tarangire Park- Home to the largest amount of elephants. We had our first game drive on the way over.

I saw my first elephant. For those who don't know, elephants are my absolute favorite thing on this Earth. She/He was hiding. Some people got sick of seeing the same animals over and over again. But my god for me this will never get old. We saw huge families of elephants teeming will tiny little babies. We saw a female looking days away from having her baby. It was mind blowing. We saw Zebras by the dozens.

I was in the jeep with bird watchers so in our jeep birds were the focus when not looking the elephants (no one can resists they honey brown eyes). My shock came from when I saw an Ostrich. They were hilarious.

We got tucked into our rooms upon arrival and I quickly made a new friend named Robert (like our tour guides name) He so sweet and since he's learning french and I want to learn Swahili we've been exchanging knowledge. He's catching on faster then me.

There are black faced monkeys here on the roofs.

As for the surprise I would like to say that I saw a wild dog. 14 of them to be exact. There are only aprox. 1000 left of them. You know they're rare when your tour guide starts taking pictures. Our driver hadn't seen one in four years and our tour guide 6 years. They were beautiful quiet creature lounging on the road. All fourteen of them. (Ill post picture later. The Internet here isn't strong enough) And not to brag we also saw 2 of the 40 leopards in the park. All in one day!