Ruaha National Park: Guest visit

 

Five hyenas came in the morning

Ruaha National Park is known for its vastness, lack of crowds, and wilderness. One of the major reasons for this is that the wildlife densities are low, especially in comparison to the more famous northern circuit parks such as Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro Crater. This means that visitor experience can be hit or miss, both due to the chances of good wildlife sightings a well as the personal preference of the visitor. Some people really like the wild feel with few cars while others yearn for more frequent wildlife sightings. 

We had a friend visit from America and he was not specifically interested in the wildlife so we were curious how he would find the safari. We did a typical three day, two night safari with accommodation at the park run bandas.

The safari took place in peak dry season meaning that animals congregated at the remaining water sources making it easier to spot wildlife. We are lucky enough to find ourselves in Ruaha National Park relatively often but most time there is an aspect to the visit relating to our work. It had been a while since we took a purely recreational visit to the park and it's always a unique opportunity to share the experience with a first time visitor, especially a long time friend. 

Our safari was Ruaha National Park at its best. We had intimate sightings, saw a diverse species of wildlife, and felt the beauty and power of nature. Some of the highlights were having two lions on a kudu carcass across from the bandas, waking up to a group of hyenas in the river scavenging the kudu, following a pride of 13 lions that had just eaten to the river, along with countless other elephant sightings. Apart from one leopard sighting (which we actually didn't manage to see) we had every single sighting to ourselves and probably passed a total of five vehicles on the road during the entire time.