Lake Manyara National Park

            As our safari buses pulled down the gravel road leading into Lake Manyara National Park a troop of several dozens of baboons streamlined down the road towards us closing off all traffic. Male baboons are sexually dimorphic and were separated by ten females with young. Some of the males would stop next to our vehicles and rest on their haunches right out the windows and yawn. Their jaws are full of large canines. Their faces and butts are hairless but their bodies have long flowing hair.

            The National Park was declared a Man and Animal biosphere in 1981 and became a park in 1960. The Masai still live here and make a living off the land. In contrast to American National Parks that claim nobody ever lived here, this national park welcomed and kept a contract with the people who have been the best stewards of the land and who lived in these places for centuries, if not millennia. The park is 205 square miles.

             That first day of safari was like no other wildlife day I have ever witnessed. So much wildlife. It was insane,  Not in the sense of wildlife but in bird life. It was like a national geographic experience. We saw hippos, elephants, zebras, wildebeest, baboons, warthogs, impalas, Thompson's and Grant's gazelles, giraffes,  doves, southern ground horned bills, cape buffalos, giant kingfisher, pelicans, saddle billed storks, gray-headed kingfisher, common fiscal shrike, banded mongoose, Vervet monkeys, helmeted guinea fowl, tawny eagle, Egyptian goose and kites.