Tony arrived to pick us up just before 9, we were waiting promptly and all seemed to be going to plan until the ‘mama’ in the group realised she’d left the binoculars in the room – delay no 1 involved fetching keys from reception, Much running (or at least fast walking)to retrieve said binoculars and we were off. Until…5 minutes up the road the same mama realised she didn’t have her phone! Saint Tony didn’t even turn a hair, just  proceeded to turn around – fortunately mid U-turn the phone miraculously appeared in the bottom of the bag…yet another u-turn and we were on our way to Lake Manyara.

A short drive from our lodge, Lake Manyana National Park is the smallest park in Tanzania. The Lake itself is a salt lake fed but hot springs. It takes up 2/3 of the park.

To get to the park we had to climb the beautiful Riff Valley with fabulous views. 

We stopped at the African Galleria in Kiratu on the way-  apparently  owned by the wealthiest Masai  in Tanzania who also owns the biggest tanzanite mines. The Tanzanite was incredible such a rich blue. The stone that took my fancy – a big emerald  cut of 5 carats was a mere 3000USD just for the stone- anything set in a ring was upwards of 9K- needless to say we came out empty handed!

JWe arrived at the park round 11. The park is really a forest – very different to the park we visited yesterday. Lush, moist and green (fed by ground water) it had HUGE acacia canopies with dense bushy foliage below. This made animal spotting tricky. In fact we decided it was a bit like fishing – you can dangle your line but you have no idea of what you’ll catch, when or where- and the animals were certainly shy today. We had close encounters with a couple of elephants and baboon gangs and distant sightings of wilder east, buffalo, giraffe, a zebra and a few flamingoes floating on the lake.

Our lunch spot was on the shore with fabulous views – we dipped hands in the hot springs which were scorching.

On the way back spent a long time watching a troop of baboons groom each other – fascinating to watch the meticulous parting of fur and squeezing of the ticks before the groomer popped them in his/her mouth- and to see the look of sheer bliss on the face of the groomee.

Arrived back at our  lodge hot and absolutely covered in red dust. Tomorrow we head to the Serengeti for four nights. We are in a  tented camp so not sure what the blog capability will be.

Jambo from us!