Northern Tanzania in late January means green. The rivers are full, there’s water in all the waterholes and the grass is growing well. This is a blessing and a curse. The green grass brings the great herds of wildebeest, antelope and zebra out into the parks, along with the predators that rely on them to survive, but it can also make all this difficult to see and travel can be a mud-spattered experience. Tarangire shelters you from the worst of this. The numbers of mammals to be seen are in the tens and hundreds, not thousands or millions and the park is well maintained with good roads and great places to stop and watch.

Our lodge is situated high on a bluff above the Tarangire river, with an uninterrupted view of the river valley and the low rolling countryside that surrounds it. When we arrive, there has clearly been heavy rain further south and the river is running high and fast. There are woodpeckers running up and down the tree outside our tent and a glimpse of a couple of elephants in the valley below. We’ve already seen impala, waterbuck and several birds on our drive in.

By now, it was lunch time and getting quite hot. We headed back to the dining room and I was introduced to the local beer – something that was going to become an institution amongst us. We always drink whatever is local to the country we’re in, and there’s usually a choice of different beers to suit any palate. I can’t imagine going to Africa and drinking a German, Danish or Belgian beer. After lunch there was a chance to relax, watch and try and identify the birds around our tent and explore the lodge grounds while keeping in the shade as much as possible.

This first evening in the park would be my real introduction to safari game drives. Our driving around in Kenya on my first trip had been more about exploration, always with the intention of finding wildlife, but rarely with any luck.

The sun was still bright as we set off from the lodge, but the shadows were lengthening nicely and the heat of the middle of the day was slowly fading to comfortable warmth. There were plenty of mammals and birds to be seen, waterbuck and impala in groups and small herds, a family of elephants with seemingly a destination in mind and many birds in the air and on the ground.

Tarangire is mostly open woodland, a mixture of acacia and grasslands that is green and glorious when bathed in the light of the setting sun. Its horizons are dominated by the outlines of its many Baobab trees, some of them are ancient giants with huge canopies and trunks several metres across. Elephants like the heartwood and will dig in through the bark with their tusks to get at it, occasionally resulting in sights like the one opposite.

By our second full day, the river has fallen and we are able to drive down to the causeway/bridge across it and into the southern part of the park. There are different animals and birds to be seen here, but it comes at a cost. The high plain south of the river is plagued with tzetse fly. We spot a group of hartebeest just off the road and stop to get a better look. They seem unsettled and, well, twitchy! The reason is soon apparent as I receive my first ever bite from a tzetse fly – not the last of this day, but you always remember the first of anything. These flies have evolved to bite through the thick hides of buffalo and antelope and they have no problem with human skin. The bite is a sharp stab, painful for a few minutes then irritable for some time after.

There’s no protection, I was bitten on the foot several times – and they just went straight through the leather of my shoes. They are tough insects – a slap or a smack does little to dissuade them. They seem to have a habit of playing dead once struck – they fall to the floor of the vehicle then pop back to life again an few minutes later and bite once more.

The sleeping sickness that they carry is a concern, but the risk is quite low in most areas and probably not really worth worrying too much about. In any event, we closed the windows, turned the air-conditioning up to maximum and beat a hasty retreat. I was bitten about a dozen times, but Roger our driver was fairly savaged. There’s a school of thought that suggests they’ve evolved to target the dark colouration of the buffalo as a primary prey and therefore as more likely to attack humans with dark skin than light. In this instance we were all attacked with more or less equal ferocity, but poor Roger did seem to fare slightly worse.

As we headed back down the track towards safety – tzetse battering the windows on either side – another vehicle of visitors stopped to ask what we had seen, only to become the new target of the flies who swarmed away from us towards easier pickings. We could only shout our apologies and continue our retreat to safer ground.

The only disappointment with Tarangire was the lack of predator sightings. It wasn’t until the very last drive out of the park that we finally saw the tips of some lion’s ears through the long grass at the side of the road. Even standing up in the back of the vehicle, I couldn’t get a photo of them and we left for our next destination with me feeling just a little bit let down. There weren’t going to be any predators at the next location either.

Fred had planned his route carefully – the three of them were in the country for about six weeks altogether – and had decided to not travel from Tarangire to Ndutu in a single day. It was relatively easy to do, but it would need a full day on the road and wouldn’t leave time to visit Ngorongoro Crater as we passed along the rim.

So, we stopped at Rhotia Valley Lodge, a few kilometres off the road to the Serengeti in the Crater highlands above the Manyara escarpment. This was a chance to let my companions unwind for 48 hours before heading further west. We spent the time quietly, exploring the grounds and finding chameleons, walking in the woods looking for birds and just relaxing on our balconies overlooking the forest on one sides and terraced fields on the other.

Walking was more challenging than it needed to be, the day was hot and the altitude was telling (more than 1600m) for an island-dwelling lowlander like myself. Still, the scenery is stunning and the birdlife is varied, it’s just the paths are steep and the ground uneven.

I really did like the place though. The location seems well off the beaten track, but it’s close enough to parks and activities that it would make an ideal base for part of anyone’s safari.