Safari

Late Sunday afternoon we pulled into Tarangire National Park which is one of the largest wild animal preserves in Tanzania.. It only took a few minutes for us to realize where we were because we stopped only a few minutes from the public camping area to watch a heard of elephant cross the trail. The campsite was nice but completely exposed to the wild animals and it was a little disconcerting to discover that we were the only campers brave enough (or stupid enough) to stay in such a remote place with nothing more than nylon tents for protection. Then, as we were getting settled in, one of the parked rangers pulled up and left an armed guard who would stay with us all night, “just as a precaution.” My anxiety climbed a little more when after Patti and Pam had gone to bed, Dan and I were sitting in the camp talking with the guard when he got a strange look on his face and then said, “I just heard a lion down by the river.” Then I heard it! Sounded a little like a bullfrog but Dan said that the adult mail lions grunt that sound to communicate with the pride. Am I supposed to sleep in a tent where there is a lion close enough to hear him grunt? Laying quietly on my cot, I heard the sound several more times and finally prayed myself to sleep. All was good until Patti woke me up around 4am because she was hearing something “walk around the camp.” She wanted me to get up and go see what it was. Yea right. I chose not to tell her about the conversation with the guard and suggested it was probably a warthog rooting around (we had seen lots of them on the way in). She accepted that explanation and tried to go back to sleep until whatever it was started scratching on our tent. It didn't help her feel any better but I knew that the King of the Jungle would not knock before entering. I felt better..

The next day we spent the day driving through the vastness of the African plain. What and experience? We made a list of all the wild animals we saw and those we hoped to see. It was like being right in the middle of a National Geographic Documentary! Giraffes, elephants, monkeys, baboons, buffalo, warthogs, mongoose, all kinds of impala , and finally, there they were, two bigger than life mail lions lying under an Acacia tree. (Only about 2 Kilometers from where we had camped!) Finally, as we were on our way out of the camp we saw several jeeps stopped on the trail all looking in the same direction. It was another big cat; the all elusive leopard. All in all, not bad for our first ever safari.

The twenty four hours we spent at Tarangeri was indeed a spiritual experience for all of us. The glory and majesty of our God could not have been more evident. We left there late in the afternoon and drove back to Arusha and set up camp there for our last night of camping.