Tanzania: Ruaha National Park

Monday 9^th March

Ruaha National Park: 

 John decided to have a go at repairing the passenger window.It's electric and keeps sticking. Why Landrover couldn't just leave normal wind up windows is beyond me. Such a basic vehicle.  He did succeed although more work will be required later. At least it works again, sort of.



We left the lodge at 10am for a day in the reserve. It was about 20kms to the gate from the Lodge & when we got there, we paid $80 in total for the two of us. It was $20 each plus $40 for the foreign registered vehicle. That is probably very reasonable compared to the Serengeti, further north in Tanzania. Once inside, we had the place completely to ourselves. We were in there for almost 5 hours and we saw dozens of elephants and giraffe, as well as Hippos. 

We also saw lots of impalas & baboons. When we got to the Ruaha River, we were treated to the spectacle of young elephants playing in the water and huge hippos very close, completely ignoring each other.

We didn’t get to see any lions, we heard from the manager of the lodge that they were far away, hunting buffalo.

Having had a lovely day in the park, we headed back to the Lodge for a cold beer and dinner. The staff were waiting for us when we pulled up, their only two guests! We were presented with a cold wet towel each and we adjourned to the lookout deck to soak up the scenery. Dinner was served at 7 and they’d even gone to the trouble of writing it up on a blackboard for us. We started with tomato soup then had roast lamb and finished with baked banana. All of it was delicious. As we are going to be away early in the morning for the long drive to Morogoro, it’s an early night at about 9pm.