Mikumi National Park: Lion on the road

 

A strange time of day to see a lion on the road.

 

One of the coolest features of the highway from Dar es Salaam going west is the passage through Mikumi National Park. Although photography and stopping to view animals is permitted, you can easily see several different kinds of animals in what I dub a, “poverty safari”. It’s not unusual to have to stop to let a giraffe or elephant cross the road and although game viewing is much better in the dry season, the rainy season can still offer some surprises.   

I’ve driven through Mikumi dozens of times but I had never seen a lion from the road. Well, my luck changed the other day when we saw a sturdy lioness come on to the road at 11am. She was completely unbothered by our car and oncoming traffic and continued to stroll for about five minutes before she went off the side of the road.   

For some reason, the national park posts signs in the park indicating that photography is not permitted if you are passing through, and thus to technically get permission to take and post this picture, I had to stop at the national park office and pay the admission fee for the national park. It’s a shame because Mikumi National Park in transit is the only opportunity the majority of Tanzanians get to enter a national park. In my opinion, the sharing of pictures should be encouraged to raise awareness about domestic tourism as well as encouraging positive feelings towards wildlife. 

Emerging.

Local Waterfall Hike: Trip III

Pretty view from above. 

 

One of our go to local day excursions is a small generously labeled “waterfall” (previous trips) located in the foothills to the south. The area is inaccessible during the rainy season and thus we usually try to go as soon as it dries up so that we can see the water level in the river/waterfall. It’s a pretty little hike up to the water point and the length of the hike can vary depending on how close you park your vehicle. There are some trails around the foothills and you can climb up to get a beautiful vista of the surrounding area.   

Because the water level varies, it is always tricky to try to find a place to swim. When it’s dry there are several little pools and it’s easy to navigate over dry boulders but in the rainy season it is more slippery and the fast flowing water requires you to be a little more careful!

Any Mountain Wagtails?

There was so much water I couldn't even get to my normal spot to take a comparison pic.

Kisolanza Farm House food

Breakfast fruit platter is perfect.

 

I've written about Kisolanza Farm House before but I want to highlight their food as they have just opened a roadside cafe meaning more people will be able to easily access their menu. 

They have always done an amazing job with their food across all the meals and I've appreciated their creativity with local ingredients. Some of my favorites are their farm-fresh light lunch, chocolate mousse, farm fresh strawberries with homemade cream, carrot lasagna, and the t-bone steak. I am excited that their roadside restaurant will offer lunch and dinner on weekends. I swear I am not a paid sponsor or anything like that; the food is just delicious! 

Light lunch.

Random Pictures Volume VI

 I try to keep my digital pictures relatively organized. I really enjoy the exercise of "cleaning" my pictures at the end of the year. It's fun to look back through the year and remember little details that have been forgotten. Here are some random pictures from last year.

Sometimes you can get these guys in town that have coals with roasted meat and banana. Very portable.

This load is not stable.

The best phone repair in Iringa is a converted shipping container. 

This is the workspace in the phone repair shop.

My motorcycle driver had a life jacket. Right concept, wrong context.

Customized mudflaps for motorcycles, a thriving business.

This door leads to nowhere.

It's common for transport options to have a custom slogan. But COVID 20???

Rainy season at home

 

A nice view in the lesser visited far eastern part of Ruaha National Park. 

 

This holiday season we decided to spend at camp. Many of our staff live outside of our work area and Christmas is traditionally a big event in Tanzania. I describe December in Tanzania as the equivalent of a Friday during the work week meaning that things slow down as people may not be completely focused on their work. Taking this analogy a step further, the last two weeks of December are like Friday at 4pm; nothing tends to get done. With this in mind we decided that it would be a good time for our staff to take their annual leave and we would stay behind to look after camp and take our annual leave sometime later in the year.

 

We had just under two weeks at camp with Christmas and the New Year holidays. We had a bit of work to do but we had more than enough time to relax. With the onset of the rains it was a great time to get out and explore. The days were usually overcast and the rains provided some welcome greenery without too much mud to get in the way. Here are some of the images and landscapes that we explored during this time. 

An "average" outing in the bush

 

A look into the landscape that we were walking in.

Today we went out to ground truth some collaring movements and the day was a combination of success and failure though it’s ultimately a good representation of our normal weekend excursions. There have been dozens of excursions like this that I haven't really blogged about but these are kind of easy weekend activities that only take a morning or an afternoon.

There is a very wild habitat about a half hour from us and we knew a lion had passed through a few days ago. We wanted to follow up some of it’s movements and see what it had been up to. The area was near to a watering hole frequented by elephants and thus had a somewhat accessible network of elephant trails. Although this was good for accessibility this also meant that we had to be very careful to ensure we did not run into a group of elephants. Elephant populations near to village land are not very calm and often have negative experiences with humans while crop raiding and thus we had to be careful.

We tried to drive as far as we could with our car and somewhere along the way we hit a gigantic log that somehow flew up and hit the side of our car. When attempting to get out of the car I realized my door was stuck and then I realized that the frame of the car had been pushed in against the door. No worries, I took the ax out from the back and wedged it between the door and car frame. A few cranks and the door was able to open although it’s certainly a tight squeeze. After this short interlude we began walking to the GPS point.

You can see where the door was folded in

As suspected the area was full of elephant trails and due to their constant foraging it was also quite open. This allowed us to be a little more comfortable detecting wildlife from a distance. After about a 45 minute walk we reached our destination but unfortunately did not see anything notable.

On our way out we stopped at the water hole to look at some birds. While waiting quietly we suddenly saw a cautious elephant emerge from the opposite side of the pool. He came to mud bathe and drink and he was soon followed by six other large elephants. I don’t think they noticed us and we were thrilled to have an intimate sighting.

 

The elephants eventually left and we decided to drive another bush road. We ended up seeing a nice group of giraffe but the road was in very poor condition. After bashing through some particularly busy roads we began our journey home only to fly off the road and nearly have an accident. The steering felt off and we inspected the car to see our steering rod ball joint had broken. No worries once again, we straightened the steering rod out, hammered the ball joint in with a rock, and then tied some rope for a temporary fix until we could reach home. Due to the corrugation on the road it untied once but after a second re-tie it served us until we reached home. 

Discovering a kudu carcass

Examining the kudu carcass

 

Once in a while we'll try to ground truth some of the movements from our collared lions data (Buffalo carcass). We check the data every day and look for multiple days or points where the lions are moving within a very small range. It's pretty rare for an area to be in an accessible and safe environment so whenever we have the opportunity we take it. 

 

Movements that suggest a carcass

From November 26th to December 1st we noticed a lioness moving between two distinct areas. After she cleared out we decided to pursue as the site as itwas close to an old disused air strip and relatively accessible. We geared up and headed out, hoping for the best.

Unfortunately the rains had just begun and the area was prime tsetse fly territory. Swarms of tsetse flies can be annoying and anxiety-inducing and I found them to be dangerous in this situation as they took my focus off the environment. We do not live in an open savanna landscape as many people imagine Africa. Rather our area is dominated by a bushy and thick landscape that requires one to be alert when on foot. By focusing on driving tsetse flies off my face, I was taking valuable attention away from the environment. 

It because apparent early on that the area was prime tsetse fly territory and that they would not relent. You just gotta endure and hope for the best. They can bite through nearly all clothes and they frequently bite in odd and sensitive places like fingertips, palms, neck, and face. Many times you can't feel them land and they are extremely agile making it rare to kill them if you swat at them. We've experienced several bad tsetse fly infestations but this day was among the worst. 

At least we achieved our objective by finding the carcass. The first point that we went to only had a lone bone but the second point had a spine and femur of a kudu. We suspect the lioness possibly has cubs and brought food to them nearby. Due to the tsetse flies we did not stick around and look for more tracks and signs. We took a different route back to the car and found several skeletons of impalas and kudus along the way. I suppose the great kudu and impala population helps to sustain that healthy tsetse fly population as well!

A "latrine", basically a place where impala and dikdik defecate regularly. An impressive pile !