Karine Ardault

Second day near Kitumbeine

After a night spent fighting with ants that were still in the tent and not so happy to find intruders.... We got up. During the night I heard a hyena twice. While we had breakfast, we heard a lion that was a lot closer than Ben was admitting, I am sure. As I felt a little concerned, we speeded up breakfast and starting to go back towards Arusha to buy cards to get into the park.

And what did we see on our way back? Gerenuks (gazelles de Waller en français). It is a very shy gazelle. It is also called Giraffe gazelle. it as a long neck and can stand on its back legs to reach its food. So, we saw a male with its harem.

And first a little scared female hopping away

Then, two females calming down

And the male...

...First checking the food...

... And then standing.

 

One lovely giraffe

 

A donkey

Then a Eastern Chanting Goshawk (Autour à ailes grises en français)

 

A male Ostrich - females are grey. Males become very pinl (fluo pink for some!!) when in courtship.

A woman waving at us on the road

a beautiful tree

 

and a beautiful sky

 

Long time, no see

I have been lost.... to make it short, here is a summary: work, work, work, being depressed because of work, too much work, wanting to quit job, reading Kelly Rae Roberts' book that makes me even more to quit my job, not having time to make art, being cranky because as I need coca-cola but there was a bad batch in town and all the coke available was undrinkable ....

Also a good news: Ben resigned from his job so finally we can spend time together, like going away on week-ends. In the past 16 months, we only had 3 (YES, THREE) week-ends together!!!

I have a lot more to say but I am going back to my blogging activity pole pole as we say here. It means slowly in kiswahili.

So at the beginning of the month, as it was a long holiday week-end, we went away! We really needed that. We took the Land Rover and went camping in the Bush for one night and then spent the remaining of the week-end in Tarangire National Park.

So for the first day we went north, on the road to Nairobi and about 100 km from Arusha we just turned left. We saw amazing things, especially animals we do not usually see, even in Parks.

 

This picture is not of good quality as it was taken through the windshield. This is a Lesser Kudu (petit koudou, in French). It is the first I am seeing one fully and so close.

This little beauty is a rosy-patched bush-shrike (Tchagra a croupion rose, in French).

This one is a Kori bustard (Outarde Kori), the largest bustard.

Another not good quality pix. This is an enlarged view of its foot.

And this is a baby giraffe with mummy. It is the smallest young giraffe I have ever seen. It was so funny with its big neck, "short" legs and fluffy "horns".

And here they go away with the rest of the group. It was so funny to see they and so close to masai villages. The area we went to was indeed quite inhabited so this is why it was also very interesting to see all those animals.

The weather was not that great but the clouds made an amazing sky.

 

  

Before sunset we went out the track to establish our little camp. Quite amazingly we were not bothered even if the villages were very close from where we decided to camp.

This one is a red-billed hornbill (Calao à bec rouge).

Sunset from our "camp".

 

Our camp! As we could not use the tent for a LONG TIME... we had to improvise some cleaning... Ben spent a lot of time getting rid off zillions of ants that were in the tent. The inside of the tent was infested by them as some bird had decided to put her eggs there... If we had had the opportunity to use more often the tent, this would not have happen ;-)

 

Another view from our camp.

 

The fire... taken with the 50mm lens with no flash!

Again, no flash... great picture. I really love this one.

 

And the dinner while being cooked!

Back for more, soon!