Week 3- Mikumi National Park

Hi Friends!   We had a fantastic few days off from our work at KVOC last week to travel to the town of Mikumi for ‘vacation’. Here is Emmet's own words as an account of our safari in Mikumi National Park last week (as he typed most this up himself as well):

We went to Mikumi National Park. We stayed at a place called Tan-Swiss. For the next two days we were on safari. We saw bathing elephants and lions and lots of other cool animals. The first day was a full day and the second day was a half day. There were also some cool birds like lilac-breasted rollers, white-browed coucal, and maribou storks. We were in a grayish green safari car with seats that fits six people but we had seven. The seats were on the outside. 

Maribou stork picking at bones on ground

 Out in the plains we saw mostly elephants, wildebeests and African water buffalo. The elephants like to rest under the Baobob trees. There was a young male elephant that was threatening us by stamping his feet and blowing his whistle that means waving his trunk. There was lots of giraffe and zebra. 

mating giraffes (almost)

young male elephant blowing his whistle

We stopped for lunch at the park lodge were there were lots of vervet monkeys. They were going crazy after our food. For lunch we had a bottle of amazing mango juice, an egg and bacon sandwich, a piece of chicken, a banana and a piece of cake. Steve had a face-off with one of the monkeys! We also visited a hippo pool where the water was a brilliant green color and the lazy hippos hardly moved, except for this one which yawned just for our photo.

Vervet monkey waiting for opportunities to swipe our food

Mama baboon with baby on her belly

 

There was one lion that crossed the road right in front of us and we thought she had young cubs that were nursing. We did not see the cubs.  Then the next day there was a family of lions that was stalking a warthog.  We sat there watching them for over an hour.  They were going after the gazelle, but after the gazelle ran away, they decided to go after a warthog.  The three cubs stopped under a bush and crouched down for the attack, and the youngest went in for the attack on the warthog but missed, and the warthog ran away.   Then the lion cubs went back to their mom and sat down on a dirt mound, and they were looking at another impala, but they decided not to and rested instead. We think two of the cubs were 3 years old, and the youngest was 2 years old.  

simba crossing the road

 

After a few days in Mikumi, we headed back to camp to await our next assignment.  It ends up that the maps and logistics of research in Tanzania is challenging, as anyone can imagine.  Challenging enough that are without most of the maps for the areas we are working.  This makes field work hard to accomplish, so we have been in camp most of the week instead, conducting community surveys, visiting and teaching at the local schools, and becoming more familiar with local village life. We’ll write about this in our next blog!

Hugs to everyone, we love you and miss you all!

Emmet, Kim, Amelia and Steve

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