After climbing Mt Kilimanjaro, getting a long shower, a good nights sleep, and wishing my good friend Rachel a safe journey back home, I caught a short flight to Dar es Salaam on the beautiful Tanzanian coast. Dar es Salaam is not the capital of Tanzania, though it probably should be. It’s the biggest city in Tanzania and it’s where all the embassies are, while the government sits in the center of the country in Dodoma. There really isn’t a whole lot to see in Dar, it’s mostly the hub from which I embarked on the next set of adventures, but that didn’t stop me from spending my one free day exploring the city center. The National Museum deserves special mention as it contains a few of the most significant hominid fossils ever discovered. East Africa is considered the cradle of mankind after all.

Ruaha National Park

Early the next morning I head to the domestic terminal at the airport and board a little Cessna on my way to Ruaha National Park. It’s like being on a small bus that flies. We make three stops along the way, hopping from one dirt landing strip to the next dropping off passengers at various spots within the Selous Game Reserve. Flying low over the savanna I can spot buffalo, giraffe, impala, gazelle, and in the river and along the banks, hordes of hippos! After dropping off the last passengers it’s just me and the pilot, Peter. He invites me to sit up front in the copilot’s seat, a first for me. I feel like I’m eight years old and it’s my birthday! Along the way I tell him about traveling around the world and he tells me about being a UN pilot in Somalia, and finally quitting after being attacked on two different occasions. Crazy! Finally, we land in remote Ruaha.

I’m staying at the Ruaha River Lodge. It’s pretty awesome. I have a really nice cabin with a huge porch for sitting and gazing at the river waiting for animals to come drink. There are also a lot of hippos in the river, though they seem to prefer the area a bit upstream from my cabin. Like any other hotel, inside my cabin is a neatly typed information sheet, meal times, check out times, no smoking, laundry service, warnings about black mambas and cobras, what to do if a hippo or elephant charges you, you know, the usual. To that end, the lodge employs several local Masaai to escort us when we need to move about the grounds to protect us from animals that may be lurking somewhere. At dinner time, they collect us all, a dozen or so guests, and we walk to the outdoor dining hall as a group while our Masaai body guards make sure no one gets murdered by a hippo, lion, or elephant along the way.

Aside from the amazing gourmet meals and sleeping, the only activity people really come here for is the daily game drives. Your assigned a jeep depending on whether you requested a full day drive or two half day drives. I go for the full day drives to enable venturing further into the park. The animals here are more spread out and harder to find, but seem to be much more rewarding when we do. Impalas are just everywhere! I’ve seen lots of elephants and our jeep even got charged by a couple of overprotective males at one point. Exciting! I saw a mating pair of lions lounging next to the kudu they killed, a pride feeding on a buffalo they killed minutes before we arrived, and another pride with about four cubs napping under a tree. Lots of lions!

I even saw the extremely difficult to find leopard with her dead impala hanging from the tree above. At one point I climbed out of my jeep and into the neighboring jeep, without touching the ground of course (that would’ve been dangerous), to get better pictures. Haha

I also saw live kudus which are only found in this park and of course, many, many zebras and giraffes. I never get tired of those guys.

As a bonus, on my last night in Ruaha, I was relaxing on my deck just waiting for dinner time when a huge hefalump suddenly appeared! I think he was startled to find me sitting there because he just stood there staring at me for a minute before chewing on the tree and then slowly moving off. And that’s why we need Masaai escorts everywhere we go.

See all the pics from Ruaha here.

Katavi National Park

Next, a very early flight in the same Cessna with Peter again to the even more remote Katavi National Park. I’m staying at the Katavi Wildlife Camp, run by the same people who own Ruaha River Lodge, and this time my cabin is actually a giant tent with a wooden deck built around it and amazing views of the river. It’s awesome and beautiful! Is there such a thing as a five star tent? There are much fewer guests here, but we still need Masaai escorts here too. My first day we spotted a lion just outside the grounds and at night I can hear hippos and lions bellowing just outside my tent. The hippos sound like an extremely loud cross between a Harley and a tuba.

The game drives in Katavi focus around the river. As usual, impalas, giraffes, and zebras are everywhere you turn. I’ve seen more giraffes here than anywhere else. Also, big topi antelope, reed bucks, water bucks, and lots of warthogs. The hefalumps here are much more shy than the other parks I visited, but I managed to see quite a few on my second day. One day I also spotted a roan antelope and got a decent picture of him. Apparently, it’s a privilege because they’re ridiculously shy and rarely seen.

The real stars of the park though, are the hippos and the crocodiles. 80% of the hippos in Tanzania are in this park. They pile into the small river and mud puddles all over, bellowing in chorus, occasionally arguing with each other, and opening their mouths for what is the most colossal yawn on earth. My last morning I witnessed a hippo fight. Very cool! The crocs don’t do too much except lay in the sun and look scary, but they are numerous and impressive to see.

My last day in Katavi was probably the best of all. Late in the morning we drove by a tree full of buzzards. My guides, Obadia and Waziri, decided to explore a little bit off road and we happened upon two lionesses with two cubs feeding on an impala they must have just killed seconds before we drove by. Up close and personal with lots of grunting and growling and blood stained faces. Awesome!

A couple of hours later we drove by an impala right on the side of the road. We didn’t stop because impalas really are everywhere, until we saw something big drop to the ground. She had just given birth. Wow! Mom furiously cleaned and licked as we watched this black blob of goo slowly transform into a cute baby impala and take it’s first awkward steps. The whole thing took only 25 minutes. It may be the coolest thing I’ve witnessed on this trip so far. Even my guides and the manager of the camp in all their years of guiding safaris said they had never witnessed a live birth of anything in the bush. It was just incredible to watch and I’ll never forget it!

Even on my last morning, we did a short game drive before my flight out, my guides suspected there was a leopard around because of the way the monkeys were screaming. What?! Sure enough, we spotted the leopard lounging in a nearby tree. Coming to these remote southern parks was definitely a good decision! Expensive? Yes! Worth it? Yes!

See all the pics from Katavi here.

Stay tuned… I’m not finished with Tanzania just yet.