Tarangire National Park

Our day started bright and early with a 6:30 breakfast since it's a two hour drive to Tarangire National Park. We got there around around 8:30 and split up into groups to perform our transects. We had to count all the mammals for 2 km and then break for .5 km and then start another count again. There were animals as soon as we entered the park. We saw a herd of zebra and then spotted a cheetah! The cheetah was walking parallel to the car path so we followed him and then he started running and caught a dik dik. It was an incredible experience! We also spotted a jackal on the road, which is a pretty rare sighting. We continued our counts until lunch, which we had at the Tarangire Safari Lodge. It was a beautiful lodge and had an amazing view from the restaurant/bar area. I had a burger and fries and it was the first real American food I've had in awhile. It tasted pretty amazing. We got to take a game drive in the afternoon and spotted a ton of elephants. We even saw a few babies. When we were going to a popular elephant spot, we heard there was a baby lion nearby so we waited for about twenty minutes and we finally saw him! It wasn't a small cub but he was definitely still pretty young and about the size of a medium dog. Tonight we watched The Lion King outside by the fire and I brought my glow sticks my sister sent me. Some of the staff from the local town was at the movie and they had never seen a glow stick before! They were all fascinated by them and asked a bunch of questions about how they worked. We have a really full day interacting with the community and compiling data tomorrow, so I'm headed to bed early!