Tarangire National Park is one of those places... the kind people often describe as a “hidden gem.” It’s not that it is really hidden – it just suffers from having “siblings” that are superstars. People know about the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater from all the nature programs on television, but Tarangire is often a surprise for visitors. The safari operator puts Tarangire on the itinerary and their guests say OK… then they get there and fall in love!
First of all, Tarangire has 3-5,000 elephants… and it may be the only place in Africa that the combination of national park and conservation corridor lands is resulting in a growing population. With poaching causing precipitous losses in elephant populations all over Africa, this is an amazing achievement – and reason enough to visit Tarangire.
But there is so much more than “just elephants. For example, lots of cats. On their first day in Tarangire (in 2011) the Idiots watched a pride of lions stalk a herd of zebras and make a kill. The next day they saw lions mating. In a day and a half they saw about two dozen lions and several cheetah. They also saw most of the great safari animals, except for rhinoceros and leopards. Tarangire is a great animal park!
And then there are the birds. Tarangire’s mixed landscape makes it both a home for a very broad range of birds, plus a haven for many more species as they migrate. It is a bird lover’s paradise.
But even without the animals and birds, Tarangire would be worth visiting. The physical landscape is stunning. The park centers around the Tarangire River, a year-round water source. The hills, valleys, and swamps produce a mixed savannah habitat, with acacias producing tree-dotted prairies and open forests. Thousands of termite mounds add color and texture to the landscape.
Most of the Idiots’ friends live in climate zones that have four seasons. Everything in their lives responds to the annual rotation from cold to warm. It can be hard to grasp how different the seasons are near the equator. In Tanzania there are only two conditions – rainy and dry. Most of the year is dry. March – May is the rainy season – the “long rains” – during which heavy downpours are common and the land gets most of its annual precipitation. There is a second, unpredictable period during November and December called the “short rains”.
So unlike the “pageant of seasons” one sees in Minnesota, Tanzania is brown for most of the year, and green during and after the two rainy periods.
In 2011, the Idiots visited in October and saw Tarangire in its brown phase… and they were entranced. In 2014 they visited after the short rains. Tarangire was green. The Idiots were gobsmacked!
So… safari reports always focus on the fauna… this episode is all about the flora.
But there is one plant that elevates Tarangire from a gorgeous park with lots of wildlife to a magical place that may be an extension of Middle Earth – the baobab tree.
Baobabs are large… they are frequently over 75’ tall and their trunks are often 30’ or more in diameter. And they are old – often living more than 1000 years. The root system is spreads wide and shallow in all directions, designed to suck up as much moisture is possible when rains do come. The trunk is mostly made up of a pithy material that can hold amazing amounts of water… over 25,000 gallons!
The baobab has many nicknames. It’s flower – which smells like rotting meat – is pollinated by fruit bats and develops into a rather ugly hanging thing filled with pale, dry fruit… resulting in the names “monkey-bread tree” and the unappealing “dead rat tree.” As an adaptation to the long dry periods, the tree is bare of leaves for most of the year, giving it the nickname “upside down tree.”
These huge, ancient trees tend to grow as individuals… and they have personalities. The Idiots photographed the baobabs the same way they would photograph people, attempting to capture the individual characteristics that make each one unique.
Tolkien fans know that the gnarled yews of Puzzlewood are claimed to be his inspiration for the forest of Fanghorn. But how can one look at these ancient baobabs and not see the Huorns – the walking, talking trees that the Ents lead against Saruman at Isengard?
