Mikumi Safari

It has been awhile since I have been able to update and I am more than thrilled to finally have the chance to inform you about my safari! First of all, here is a link to a site with a few pictures that I had a chance to upload. If you go to this site, you can type in my email: emettesvold@yahoo.com and my password: africa and then you will not have to sign up as a user. Keeping them here is much easier than trying to upload them to this blog, so hopefully I'll be able to post a few more now that this easier method has come about.

The weekend began with our driver, Mr. Dominic, picking us up at HOPAC at 9 AM and making our way on the five hour journey to Mikumi Village. We arrived a bit later than anticipated, but we ate a quick lunch at our budget hotel, the Mikumi Genesis Motel and then headed out for a 4-hour game drive in the park. On the first day, we encounted a great number of impala, zebra, elephants, and hippos, with a few giraffes interspersed in the mix. We also came face to face (almost) with several herds of Cape Town Buffalo. Many hip area bruises later (those safari windows are rough on internal organs!), we returned to our hotel for a great dinner, an early bed time, and a trip to Mikumi Snake Park, which was attached to our hotel. (hehehe) They had two HUGE crocodiles and many smaller ones, several turtles, monkeys (don't ask me what they have to do with a snake park) and a large number of snakes. (all in glass cages where half the glass was cracked away and the back door was lopsided... a real feeling of security!)

The next day, we woke up early in the morning and headed out for a great drive. We encountered many more zebra and elephants, but also many warthogs, a jackal, and herds of wildebeests. On our way to the park, we also saw a herd of hart-a-beests, which are a rare antelope looking animal. We then returned to our hotel for lunch and a bit of rest before heading out on our evening drive. On this drive, we kept our eyes peeled for lions and more giraffe, but no go. Despite the disappointment of not having seen these animals, we felt confident that the Lord would give us the chance and we were blessed by being able to see elephants and zebras drinking at the waterhole. (not to mention a 3 meter long crocodile (9 feet dear American friends) and two small friends stalking the young animals at the water's edge!) After the drive, we returned to the hotel (with a flat tire on the 18 km ride to the village) yet again for another dinner (by this time we were a bit sick of the small menu offered by the hotel) and another early bed time.

Our last day, we woke up very excited for a sunrise drive and headed to Mikumi. We found several photogenic giraffes on the way, but all along the main highway before you entered the park, so you couldn't stop to take good pictures. Once we entered the park though, we were blessed with four giraffe that just wanted to walk in front of us and eat from trees close to the road. As we departed from the giraffes, we had barely gone a kilometer and we encountered two lions, lying on the side of the road. It's hard to imagine just how huge and majestic lions look in the wild, but I tried to capture it with my camera. Check out the photo page for a great shot!

After the excitement, we were ready to leave the park. However, apparently the van was not ready to leave, because as the lions moved back toward their den, we trailed them for a bit only to be left with a punctured, completely flat tire. Our driver waited until the lions were out of sight and then told us that we were going to need to get out of the van in order for him to change the tire. "Just do not go too far," he said. So, as we waited to be lion lunch, we enjoyed the scenery and could not help but wonder how far we'd get toward home with no spare tire and the tire that was now being put on the van being the tire that had been repaired from the day before (mind you, it had gotten a bulge in it, which to my knowledge, cannot be realistically repaired!) Anyway, as it turned out, after we began driving again, the tire popped within two minutes of driving, leaving us 28 km into the park and in major lion territory. Our driver decided that this was not a good place to change the tire and he would just need to drive on it until he got to the gate. So, as we drove the hour that it took us to get to the park gate, I watched the rubber fly off the tire and the rim grow progressively more bent while enjoying the smell of burning rubber. :-) It was amusing. To make a long story a bit shorter, we had some friends from HOPAC that were also at Mikumi that day and they loaned us their car to go to Mikumi Village and get a new tire. 4 hours later we were on our way home.