Lions and rhinos and dik diks, oh my!

As I write this, we are on the beach in Zanzibar. We finished our safari yesterday. It was an amazing experience seeing Tanzania's national parks.

On the first day, we visited Ngorongoro crater. It is the largest intact caldera in the world. Inside, there is an extraordinary collection of animals. Because the crater has ample food and water, and due to the steep crater walls, most of the animals do not migrate in and our of the crater. We saw a lot of animals in the crater: zebras, wildebeest, hartebeest, several types of gazelles, warthogs, hippos, hyenas, elephants, many birds, one female lion and one black rhino. The rhino is particularly rare, as much of their population has been poached nearly to extinction. Apparently, rhino horn is thought to be an aphrodisiac in China, so poachers are paid obscene amounts of money to kill them and take their horns. It is an incredible waste of one of the world's beautiful animals, all for an absurd purpose. We were fortunate to be able to spot one.

We stayed on a coffee plantation that night, which was a delight. The next morning, we headed to lake manyara. The lake is home to more than 200 species of birds. We also saw hundreds of baboons, black faced monkeys, blue monkeys, giraffes, and many of the animals we had seen the previous day. At one point, we saw several hundred baboons in a single group, which isn't a common thing to see.

After the lake, we visited Tarangire national park, where we camped for two nights. The park is not very large, but it is home to thousands of elephants. Some of these are very old, very large elephants. On the first night, at sunset, a herd of elephants came to our camp to eat the trees near the site. It was intimidating to be so close to such a large animal. We rose early the next morning for a sunrise game drive. Almost immediately, we saw a cheetah. We watched as it stalked in the grass, looking for prey. Eventually, it ran after a pair of jackals. They got into a bit of a barking match before the cheetah trotted off into the bush. Later that morning we watched a female lion and three cubs laying in the sun on top of a ledge. It was also in Tangarire that we were introduced to the dik dik. These were the cutest animal we saw. They are a deer the size of a small dog. Super cute!

We did a lot of other drives, saw a lot of elephants, impala, waterbucks, and a lot of other animals I'm sure I've left of the list. It was a fantastic experience, and all the staff from the safari company were great. A very special thanks to out terrific driver, Aimi.

Now we are on Zanzibar, relaxing for a few days.