Sunday September 15
We left Explorians at 7:30am for the drive to Little Oliver's Camp in Tarangire Park - Ayoub had told us we would arrive in time for lunch around 12:30; however, after reaching the park entrance he took far too much time doing a game drive through the park on the way to Little Oliver's meaning we only arrived at 1:45pm - extremely hot, tired and cranky. No matter how ofter we requested that he put the speed on he kept stopping to show us various things. Many were very interesting including a leopard up a tree, a python up a tree, 4 hippos out of the water in the swamp, and hundreds of elephants in the swamp.
Fortunately Little Oliver's was still able to provide lunch which we woofed down before a short rest and some very limited unpacking before heading out at 4:00pm. We were quite successful in that we spotted a cheetah with 4 cubs. We arrived back late again at 6:40pm. We showered and dressed for dinner and headed out to pre-dinner drinks around the camp fire. It was a very warm evening - we only needed t-shirts - a big difference from every other evening at all other locations.
Our 7:15 game drive was one of the best ever - close ups of the same cheetah with her 4 cubs, a lion chase of a warthog (who escaped), a male ostrich chasing 5 females, flocks of love birds, storks, egrets, ibis, waterbucks, a kudu, elephants heading to the swamp. We got back at 11:45 am so we could start packing up for our 6:00am departure the following morning. Time to head home.
We still did an afternoon game drive to see the elephants in the swamp as they parade in, in the morning and leave in the afternoon. Back at the camp we finished packing (as much as possible) showered and headed to pre-dinner drinks. Ayoub joined us this evening and Dieter did a great job of chatting with him - they have a mutual love of soccer which helps establishing some common ground. We had a bit of a bender on our last night on safari which probably was not the best idea considering we had to be in the jeep on our way to Kilimanjaro airport by 6am.