Mikumi National Park

Big, flat, tan, and wonderful

My 3-day stay at Mikumi National park was a wonderful break between two sections of intensive training in community-based healthcare. I was dead tired when I showed up after a six-hour drive through dusty roads, and I collapsed on my bed (thick mattress on top of raised stone dais) in the little banda that I shared with some teammates. I soon grew restless and walked through the common area onto our unenclosed "porch".

Our hut was situated in a long line of such buildings, named after various wild beasts of the savannah (I think that we were the cheetah), with the main lodge, dining area, pool, and shops at the far end. We could look over at our neighbors on their porch about fifteen meters away. I was in a team of ten people, so it was wonderful to be together.

The lodge is surrounded by park. We were totally cut off - the only electricity was to the main building for refrigeration (and the pool, of course). Even our huts had no lights. The savannah stretched out forever, a long distance of brown and tan with green splotches here and there. It was then that I noticed that we weren't just "at" the park, we were "in" the park.

Fifty meters in front of the porch where I sat, a group of zebras were rolling around like mad in a dustbowl. Further afield, a small herd of water buffalo milled around a watering hole. There were no fences. We were sitting in a safari.

A late lunch was served at the main lodge. We ate outside at a long table and dined well. I'm a vegetarian, and every effort was made to accommodate me, which was well-received. As we ate, a large grey elephant made his way to the watering hole just a short walk from where we sat. It was majestic. Here I was sipping fruit juice while this monster mammal sipped water right next to me.

After a lazy afternoon spent reading and talking on our porch, we returned to the lodge for a magnificent candlelit dinner. There's something very exciting about sleeping in a place surrounded by wild animals. Their noises helped me off to sleep.

The next day, we took off in two Land Cruisers on our safari. It was a wonderful way to settle the breakfast that we'd just finished. It seemed that we had driven forever when we spotted our first group of elephants, animals that until the previous afternoon I had only seen in zoos. But here they were, and plenty of them!

We found zebras, wildebeests, and plenty of very strange-looking birds. A group of giraffes proved too far a drive around some very steep-sided creek beds, so we watched from afar. For all of its flatness, Mikumi National Park boasts an impressive hidden landscape that you have to be inside to appreciate. Small trenches and treestands provide vantage points, and an easily-accessible, though terribly bumpy network of paths provides plenty of freedom to approach animals from a variety of directions. We even found ourselves a sleeping lioness, although she was clearly too tired to do anything "interesting" for us. :)

The last (and by far most fascinating) stop on our LONG drive through Mikumi was the accidental discovery of a hippopotamus-filled lake. We were driving along and suddenly found ourselves at the edge looking down. After a short drive along the edge, we came to a place where we could park the trucks just a few meters from the water. Hippos are outstanding animals, and we hadn't expected to see them, so it was a real treat. Lucky for us, they stayed in the water, swimming about quite lazily and not destroying us.

We returned to the lodge to eat and sleep, and followed up the next day with another short game drive on our way out of the park.

Although it is a bit of a drive, the hidden treasures of Mikumi National Park are not to be missed!

Amazing Mikumi

Early Sunday morning 13 November the safari car was ready for our trip to Mikumi. We left the Arc hotel at 5am and arrived at the park borders when daylight broke, the best time of the day t o watch animals. The watching of animals in Mikumi is no doubt facilitated by the fact that the main road from Dar es Salaam towards the (wild?!) west passes right through the park. We watched elephants and other animals crossing this busy road without paying special notice to the huge lorries that use the road at all hours of the day.

After driving an additional 40 or 50 kms we arrived at the main gate. We spent some time getting registered and paying the access fees. The entrance staff first insisted that we use credit card to pay the fees. But in the end we were allowed to even pay in Tanzanian shillings, although we were clearly expected to pay in US$. One may wonder how the Tanzanian citizens manage to get into the park if they do not have a credit card or have bought dollars from their local bank.

One of the reasons we went to Mikumi was to also visit the Genesis Snake Park. We had first understood that it was part of the National Park. But it is in fact a private venture, like a small zoo with snakes and other reptiles like crocodiles and turtles. We enquired with the National Park guide about the snake park. He said it was a shame to have it in the Mikumi neighbourhood. In fact, he suggested that we could buy the snakes and other reptiles and move them all to Morogoro if we could find a good place for them there, for example at SUA or in a private zoo that he also thought would be of interest both for local people in Morogoro and for visitors. He said that he could no doubt get the National Park Service to write a recommendation in this regard.

We then drove off into the Mikumi National Park spending a couple of hours on the ‘game drive’. In addition to the big mammals that we already had seen before going through the gate (elephants, girafs and various antelopes and zebras) we also watched many birds, lizards, and maybe we even saw the tail of a leopard.

The possibility to see more than the tail made the driver bring the car off the road and onto some rather clayish and wet terrain. Even using the full four wheel drive gear it took him quite some time to get us back onto the road. Some of us started suggesting that we get off and help by pushing the car. But he finally made it.

On the way back to the entrance we stayed for a while at the so-called hippo lake. However, this rather small lake or pond was really nothing compared to the Wami river hippos that we watched on trip to the Wami-Mbiki Mkongo camp on 11 November, where we could walk along the river bank both watching and listening to the herd of some 30 or 40 hippos enjoying themselves in the middle of the river while clearly aware of us all along. Sometimes one of them opened its huge mouth towards us, apparently as a warning to us not to come too close or maybe stay too long.

After the game drive we then went to the Genesis snake park lodge where a guide showed us various mainly dangerous venomous snakes like cobras and green mambas. We were not very impressed by the presentation, nor by the conditions the snakes were living under (along with some turtles and crocodiles). The guide tried to impress us by making one of cobras (se photo) attack him by tapping on the thick glass window separating the snake from us.

We had a quick lunch at the snake park restaurant and then went back to Morogoro and the Arc hotel.

Cool place, enjoyable stay, wildlife and fresh breeze!