Pat Bean's blog

 “Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.” J. Lubbock

Kim and I on the deck of our tree-house suite drinking cognac and watching the sun go down. -- Photo taken with a timer by Kim Perrin

African Safari

I’ve always dreamed of living in a tree house, and have drooled over the Swiss Family Robinson’s home up among the branches many times. . Tonight a tiny taste of that dream would come true.

After a grand afternoon of game watching in Tarangire National Park, including our scary face off with a concerned mama elephant, followed by a long ride over one of the roughest roads you can imagine, we arrived at the Tarangire Treetops Lodge about 30 kilometers away. .

One of the tree-house suites for guests at the Tarangire Treetops Lodge.

A guide escorted us to our accommodations, which we accessed by a ladder up through a trap door. He said he would be back later to escort us down to dinner.

We immediately saw that our tree house home for the night was a lot bigger and grander than the ones dads build for their children in the backyard.

Our large room was airy with a long deck on one side that overlooked a wildlife viewing area. The room came complete with a shower, fluffy white robes and a set up of cognac and glasses on a small table before two deck chairs. .

Tarangire sunset -- Photo by Kim Perrin

We took advantage of all three, in that order, the latter as we watched yet another of Africa’s colorful sunsets before being escorted back to the main lodge for dinner.

This would be our last night with Bilal, and he reluctantly joined us for one pre-dinner Coke before hurrying off. We had tried to get him to have dinner with us several times, but it seems there were rules about guides and clients associating except during our wildlife drives together.

Meanwhile, so entranced had we been with our accommodations, and perhaps the cognac, that we had dressed for dinner, forgetting that we had planned to go on a night wildlife drive.

So we raced back to change into something more appropriate for the adventure, arriving back at the lodge just as dinner was being served on an outdoor patio. As it turned out we weren’t the only ones who had forgotten the night ride was supposed to begin immediately after dinner.

I wondered if the other forgetful couple had also taken advantage of the cognac hospitality. The wait for them to change, however, was pleasantly filled by conversation with our fellow tourists who would all squeeze into an open Land Rover with us for the night’s drive.

One of the guys was an avid birder like myself. What a relief it was, for both of us, to finally have someone who appreciated the finer points of whether a bird’s supercilium was white or brown and whether it had two or three wing bars.

But finally everyone was gathered, and dressed in warm Maasai robes provided by the lodge to ward of the night chill, and we were off for our first African night safari.

Tune in tomorrow for the “rest of the story,’ as columnist Paul Harvey was always so fond of saying.