TARANGIRE NATIONAL PARK

Day  after day of cloudless skies. The fierce sun sucks the moisture from the landscape, baking the earth a dusty red, the withered grass as brittle as straw. The Tarangire Rive has shrivelled to a shadow of its wet season self. But it is choked with wildlife. Thirsty nomads have wandered hundreds of parched kilometres knowing that here, there is always water. Herds of up to 300 Elephants scratch the parched river bed for underground streams while migratory wildebeest, Zebra, Buffalo, Gazelle, Hartebeest, Eland and Oryx crowd the shrinking lagoons. It’s a smorgasbord for Predators – the greatest concentration of wildlife outside the Serengeti ecosystem.

The rain scatter the seasonal visitors over a 20,000 square kilometre range until they exhaust the green plains and the river calls once more. But Tarangire’s mobs of Elephant are easily encountered, wet or dry. The swamps, tinged green year round, are the focus for 550 bird varieties, the most breeding species in one habitat anywhere in the world. On drier ground you find Kori bustards, the heaviest flying bird; the stocking thighed ostrich, the world’s  largest bird; and ground hornbills that bluster like turkeys. Tarangire’s pythons climb trees, as do its Lions and Leopards, lounging in the branches where the fruit of the sausage trees disguises the twitch of a tail.