Best Of

The Tarangire Safari lodge is a tented camp in a wonderful location, high up and overlooking a gorgeous landscape and river. Binoculars here are essential to enjoy the delight of seeing such things as a large migration of zebra crossing the river as I witnessed. The zebra were making distress noises and I saw a leopard prowling nearby, start to run and then darn it, disappear behind a bush, I assume, successfully catching it’s prey. My hubby mocked me about this, but later, the TD said he saw it too.
The tents are pretty basic, there is only electricity morning and evening. There is a power strip in the tent for charging during those times. We took a solar/or rechargeable folding lantern from Luminaid which is pretty powerful for during the night. The camp supply a solar lantern in the tent which is mostly valuable for some illumination for nighttime bathroom visits. There is a large charging station in the main area which is perfectly safe to leave a cell phone charging.
There are four bungalows round the bend from the tents and further away from the main lodge, some of the other group members were assigned those, these are randomly assigned by the lodge and not Tauck, we never even went to see them. One person encountered a black spitting cobra outside his, I didn’t get the full first hand report of this. Someone else also saw a long green snake…another reason to watch where you are going and keep to pathways.
You cannot wander around outside during nighttime. There are guards parading around. Children must never wander unaccompanied and absolutely no running!
During the day, there are small antelopes called dik diks wandering around. One day, I was sitting outside reading when I became aware of one about two feet away just staring at me. They don’t seem frightened unless you make quick movements. There were elephants wandering near the camp several times.
The food at this lodge was the best on the trip. There is a small nice gift shop. Great staff. There is a nice swimming pool.

Oh dear, we just returned from our Family Safari and my good intentions to post every day fell by the wayside big time. Once we left the Gran Melia in Arusha, the following four days of accommodation did not have wifi in rooms and what with being with family, lots of unpublished additions to the itinerary, trying to relax and being totally disinclined to even write my daily diary, I’ve only glanced at the forum and writen few comments.
Of course, now it’s barely the middle of the night at home and my sleep is probably over for now.
Here are a few jumbled thoughts on the tour.
We had a fantastic time. Trying to follow on from my original reporting…The welcome dinner at the Gran Melia was held in the buffet part of the hotel, it was an extremely disappointing selection of food both then and at breakfasts there.
There was a great surprise Welcome celebration before that which will remain a secret…but just to say, you will receive the first of many gifts on the tour there, that you will eventually definitely need one of your duffels to put them all in on the way home! Not divulging any more on this! And it may vary what and how much depending on the TD you have.

This was our fourth visit to Tanzania and we still think of all the countries we have visited, the local people there come number one of our most favorite on the planet.
Every safari day in Africa is unique, which is partly why we return. This time, what has normally been our favorite area, the Ngorongoro crater, more correctly as your TD will point out, a caldera, was really cold with far fewer sitings than in the past. But we did go right up to the edges of the lake this time to see the birdlife and hippos, the wind there was very fresh. We also saw, if I remember correctly, the first ever siting of a golden jackal for us, as opposed to the more abundant black backed jackal.
Our accommodation for this area was a one and three quarter hour drive from the crater. Tauck does not stay at the usual Serena lodge because it has no suitable areas for children which I totally agree with.

On the entire tour, we had a huge number of lion encounters!

Now to the accommodations. I note that on the forum in general over the past couple of years, that many people put huge importance on hotels than almost anything else, rarely commenting on tour components. It is never our own priority, tour competent is tops for us, but here goes….to be continued