Into Ruaha National Park (Thursday, July 30)

Today was Deanna's birthday, so after our morning discussion we performed our dance routine for her. It was a huge hit, and entertained the whole camp for a few minutes. Then we packed up and left Chogela campsite for our next stop, inside Ruaha National Park.

The drive to Ruaha was fairly short and uneventful. We arrived without any mishaps in time for lunch and brief welcome from Meing'Ataki, who was so excited to finally show us Ruaha, his baby. The main event for the afternoon was a game drive that took us around the park for almost four hours. Anton, the driver of our awesome van, had promised me that you couldn't spend two days in Ruaha without seeing simba, so I was ready for some lion spotting.

A watering hole on the Great Ruaha River near the park entrance

Our drive started out on an impressive note, as we saw a whole group of banded mongoose, and two jackals, just as we pulled out of the park headquarters. Like Mikumi, there were giraffes, impala, zebra, and elephants scattered all over. We also saw a dik-dik pair, in the daylight finally. After about an hour of speeding through dry bush and grassland, we emerged near the Great Ruaha River, and Anton's simba promise came true. At first we saw a big male and female pair lying in the middle of the dry riverbed, some distance away. But as the van pulled forward, all of a sudden we noticed a young male lying just a few meters from the van.

Young male lion

It was amazing to see a lion so close, and he didn't even seem to notice our presence. He looked over at us a few times, but mostly just lay there panting in the heat. We continued on slowly down the embankment of the river bed, and found another two lions lying in a clearing, again only a few meters from the van.

Sleepy female lion

Then we saw a huge female, hiding in the shade of the trees and bush nearer to the riverbank, guarding a mostly-eaten buffalo carcass. No wonder the rest of the lions took such little notice of us--food coma! The river wasn't flowing, but in places there was water in pools and the vegetation in this area was a lot more green. There was a group of elephants, tons of yellow baboons and impala, and two groups of tandala (kudu) browsing along the embankment. Again, I had a hard time internalizing that this was the real wild, and not animals in captivity or at a zoo. Amazing.

Just as we were pulling away from the lions area, we saw a couple hyrax running among the rocks, and they were adorable. They definitely don't look like their closest relative is the manatee. We drove around for a while longer, but nothing beat the lions at that point. We got a bit lost on the way back, and ended up back at the headquarters far after dark--but got to see the beautiful sunset from the vans in the process.

Our game drive group at sunset (Alissa, Fidy, Vanessa, Stephen, Me, Helen, Jenny, Vale, and Mike taking the picture)

Sunset in Ruaha

After dinner, Dr. Alex, the Ruaha veterinarian, briefed us on his role in the park, and specifically his research on giraffe skin disease. We'll be going out tomorrow to survey giraffe in different parts of the park for the disease, so we got a basic introduction to the problem and what we'd be doing the next day. Meing'Ataki also passed out lots of TANAPA souvenirs, which was really nice of him--and solved my problem of not knowing what to get for my dad!