Safari in Mikumi!

My training is all complete and I have arrived at my placement safe and sound. I think I still need a bit of time to digest my new surroundings before telling you all about them so I will tell you a bit about last week for now and will fill you all in on my new home, job, etc. in a later blog post. For now though, I will say that Rubya is located in a beautiful region of Tanzania and the people here have been very welcoming.

Last week I was in Morogoro for language training. I am still not anywhere close to fluent in Swahili and I really think I would have benefited from a remedial class of sorts. On a much more exciting note, I went on a Safari in Mikumi national park on Friday! It was really great and I’m very happy to report this, because it was not without effort! Margaret (my roommate) and I were appointed head of the entertainment committee for the week and as such, it was up to us to arrange the safari. Previous groups of VSO volunteers who were in Morogoro for language training chose the more economical safari option which was to travel by daladala. Even though the daladala would have been a private one for the group we really were not happy with this option for 2 reasons. Firstly, this is the beginning of the short rainy season and if it happens to rain then only cars with 4 wheel drive are allowed into the park. Secondly.... well.... it’s a daladala. Who wants to go on safari in a daladala? If you would like to know more about what the daladala experience is like, please check out Peter and Debra’s blog at http://debra-peter-martyn.blogspot.com/2011/10/theres-no-dilly-dally-when-you-ride.html .

One of our Safari cars

So, Tanzanians and Canadians do business very differently and we learned this very quickly. I’m sure many of you will end up hearing the long version to this story, but in effort to keep this blog post a bit shorter I will just say that it seems like the common business strategy here is to confuse people until they are so frustrated that they just agree. Luckily we were on the ball with our negotiation and we ended up with a great set of guides at a reasonable price and ended up having an excellent time overall.

Now onto the safari.... it was awesome! Before we entered the park I spotted a life sized giraffe statue on the side of the road just ahead and I thought ‘how nice, we must be getting close’..... and then as we got closer to the statue I realized that ‘holy shit – that’s an actual giraffe!’. He was just right on the side of the road munching on leaves! Before entering we also spotted several impalas and a baboon. Once we actually got into the park animals were plentiful. There were loads of impalas and water buffalo, lots of birds, including vultures, zebras, monkeys, more baboons, giraffe, elephants (more on that later), a few warthogs (look just like the guy from the Lion King), some antelope and.... HIPPOS :)

Water Buffalo

Giraffes

Warthog

Let me tell you a bit about the hippos since you all know I was really excited for them. Several of you warned me not to get out of the car when I saw one. This was a good advice as, for those of you who are not aware, hippos kill more people annually than any other animal in Tanzania except for mosquitoes. Seriously. Hippos are tough. Nobody messes with the hippos. So here is what happened as we pulled up to the hippo pool: the driver stopped the car, hopped out and invited us to do the same! I of course was quite eager to follow his instruction to do so as I wanted to get close to my hippo friends.... and if he was doing it then it MUST be safe. Right? It was tremendous; there were about 20 hippos in the pool and at least one crocodile. One of the hippos even had 2 babies! For the most part they were all submerged in the water so you could only see them (and hear them) when they popped up for air. Same with the croc.... and it was a bit unnerving that each time he resurfaced he seemed to be slightly closer to the shore where we were all standing.

From the hippo pool we moved on and spotted more giraffes and several elephants. I’ve got a pretty cool elephant story. There was a group of about 6 of them who had just crossed the road and there was one large male that was lagging behind. Our driver stopped so we could get some photos and we watched him cross the road right behind our car. Once he had crossed he turned and looked at all of us and flapped his ears. I thought ‘oh, how nice! He’s posing for a photo’. Those of you who know more about elephants than I do would know that flapping their ears is a serious sign of aggression and he quickly started to charge the car (picture at right). I was absolutely speechless and images of him flipping our car over and me tumbling out before the elephant stomped on me were flashing through my mind. Luckily our guide was not caught speechless and he shouted for the driver to GO! One of the girls got a great video of all this and I will post the link to youtube once she posts it. It was super cool.

We moved onto lunch afterwards. There is a great restaurant right at the entrance of the park that is situated right next to a watering hole. While we had our lunch we watched about 20 elephants come to have a drink and a splash in the water. There were even a few baby ones. A miniaturized elephant would make a great pet. Once the elephants left a few Zebras popped by for a drink as well. If you’re even in Mikumi then you should have a meal at this restaurant, it was a fabulous experience and the food was decent.

Our afternoon was not quite as eventful, but there was one more highlight that I would like to share with all of you. We made a stop at a huge tree and were invited to get out of the car and climb it. Against my better judgement I climbed up the tree with a few others. I knew I’d get up with little problem, but was nervous about the getting down. As I slowly made my way down someone pointed up... there was a monkey on the tree with us! He was quite high up, but still, he was on the same tree as a monkey? I have. That’s not the whole story though. As I was climbing down the tree I heard a chorus of ‘ewwwwwwww’..... yup..... the monkey pooped. It mostly got on the guide, but if you look closely at the below photo you will see that the monkey also pooped on me a tiny bit. I guess it’s not nice to get pooped on, but still, it’s a story I guess. 

That’s all for now. Miss you all.

V