Wild Flamingoes

As a pilot, Andrew sees incredible sights in this beautiful country of Tanzania. Sights that the rest of us can only dream of. Flying over the vast landscape, Andrew is often in the privileged position of seeing wildlife in their natural habitat, albeit from a bird's eye view!

Each month, whilst transporting a team of evangelists and medical workers to remote villages to carry out their vital work, Andrew flies over several salt lakes on the outer rim of the Dodoma region:

At certain times of  the year, Andrew notices that crowds of flamingoes flock to these lakes. He tells me that sometimes, the birds rise up in groups,one after the other like a concertina effect, creating waves of pink that dip and dive several thousand feet below his aircraft. It must be an amazing sight!

Last weekend, Andrew decided that it was time to go and find this lake by land transport, so that we could also enjoy the view of  his wild flamingoes, but from the ground! His overhead view had shown him that getting there by car would be a challenge, as part of the journey would be fully off-road. Only the very sturdiest of 4x4 vehicles would make it! It would also be tricky to know exactly where to drive, as flying over a landscape is completely different from travelling there in a car! With this in mind, Andrew made a sensible plan to travel there with just one other family, who were prepared for a bit of adventure and knew the potential we had for getting lost!

However, we had a very successful trip last Sunday to the lake of wild flamingoes out in the bush, just 45 minutes drive from Dodoma. The Beckwith family who came with us were great travel companions, fully prepared for the unknowns of some off-road driving! Here are some photos of our afternoon outing as our 2 families headed off on our adventure after attending church:

On the way....

You can't see Andrew for dust...full speed ahead over a dried-up lake en-route: he's looking forward to his barbequed meat on the shores of the next lake!

Seriously off-road:

We've arrived! Now, where shall we set up a shade-cover and the BBQ??

The older girls go off to explore...

Looking out flamingo-direction...It was incredible to see so may birds there, just carrying on with their life in the wild! It was amazing to be able to get fairly close up and then to eat our lunch watching over this beautiful, natural and unspoiled lake:

The BBQ site:

The mud in the salt-lake shores is tricky to walk through! Esther's feet got stuck...

 It proved to be much easier to walk without shoes back to our lunch site!

 Apart from wild flamingoes, Andrew discovered this fresh paw-print- it looks rather ominous! Hopefully the big cat that this paw print must belong to only likes fresh animal meat as opposed to marinaded, barbequed meat! Thankfully, we didn't see any other signs of him whilst we were there!

Checking all is well on our home-made BBQ:

Then just enough time to relax...

 ...before heading home again...