Our African Safari - Day One (We kick off the trip, leaving town and heading for the plains)

If you follow Jeff Cable Photography on Facebook or Instagram, you probably know that I just completed another photo tour with M&M Photo Tours. And just like last year, we made the long trip to Tanzania to go on another safari adventure.

And, like last year, I am going to blog the photos and stories from each day so that you can virtually come along with us on this epic trip.

This is a photo of our group. We all met for the first time in the Amsterdam airport, where we got to know each other. We then flew from Amsterdam to Kilimanjaro airport and landed in Tanzania around 10pm. We went straight to a lodge and got a good night's sleep. This photo was taken first thing in the morning as we prepared to take off on our first day of safari.

The first day is a lot of driving, as we make our way through Arusha and head out towards the open land. As we were driving away from the "city", I saw a large group of Maasai out in the distance. I asked Sam, our guide, what was happening. He said that it was a market where the Maasai were selling their goats. My next question was..."Can we go there and take some photos?" After a slight pause, he said "Sure, let's give it a try."

They checked with the Maasai who were OK with us shooting photos, and so that is what we did. At first, we did so from the vehicles, but since they were not objecting to us shooting, we all got out and took photos of these tribes members.

I really like photographing things like this since they are not staged for tourists, but real happenings in a foreign land.

The Maasai dress in the most amazing colors.

As we were entering the Tarangire National Park, I spotted this one Maasai youngster with his face painted. I knew, from my last trip to Tanzania, that this meant that this young man had recently been circumcised and sent away from his tribe to become a man.

The first animal that we spotted in Tarangire National Park was this Gazelle. I liked the way that he was peaking out from behind this tree.

Tarangire National Park is known for their elephants, and we were very excited to see dozens of them there.

Last year we only saw 5 elephants on our trip, whereas this year this was only the beginning. Throughout the two weeks in Tanzania, I think we saw more than 250 this year!

The baboons are always fun to photograph, since you can get really close to them and they have great expressions.

I caught these two baboon cleaning each other. How cute.

These were my favorite photos from the first day of the safari, but trust me, it only got better from there. So stay tuned as I continue to post images on the blog.

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