Mikumi National Park

We began our national park tour with Mikumi, about two hours from the seminary. As we got closer to the main park entrance, we were greeted by baboons on the side of the roadway. They were not scared of the traffic at all it seemed and would “pose” for us to take pictures from the bus. When we got checked into the park, we were taken to our Bandas where we stayed for the next two nights. They were so cool and were situated right on grazing land for the animals. We could sit on our back porch and watch buffalo, elephants and impala graze--it was so cool. The first afternoon we went on a game drive and saw lots of twiga (giraffe), tembo (elephant), punda milia (zebra), impala, baboons, a ton of birds, a crocodile and the heads of some kiboko (hippo). It was so neat to see all of these animals living in somewhat close proximity without any problems--they just did their own thing and kept on eating : )

Impala and Zebras

The next day we went on three drives: one early morning, a late morning/early afternoon, and a late afternoon drive. During the first drive we saw lots of the same animals as the night before. Everyone was hoping for a simba (lion) but no such luck on this drive. The most excitement we had during the morning session was getting stuck on the road through a marsh. The tires started spinning and we slid a little so there was no way we could continue forward. To remedy this, our driver perfectly executed a 17-point turn with a two foot drop off behind him to deal with! It was a little nerve wracking at times but amazing that he got the bus turned around.

The afternoon game drive that day was when we finally got to see the simbas. There were two young males lying right next to the road. They were so calm with us right next to them taking a ton of pictures, but got eventually got annoyed with us trying to make them do something so got up and walked off. It was exciting to see a couple simbas though. The rest of the drive we saw lots of the same stuff as before.


Tembo

 That night we had tembo visitors come up close to the bandas. One came up very close to Bwana Shawn and Michael’s banda and then proceeded to work their way down the line. They just kept on eating like we weren’t watching their every move. It was so cool but weird at the same time since they were wild tembo that would have nothing stopping them from coming as close as they wanted.
The next morning we went on one last game drive, and while we didn’t see a whole lot of animals, we got a very personal experience with the Tsetse flies. Almost everyone completed the task of killing at least one fly while on the drive, some more than others. They sting fairly hard and are super annoying. Everyone was glad when we drove out of the Tsetse fly territory and made our way back to the camp.
We got to see pretty much everything we had wanted to during our drives through the park, just maybe not in the quantities we had hoped for : )

Simba