Ruaha Road Trip

Christmas in Dar es Salaam – it’s a little different! Since consumer society is limited to the top 10% of the population (or less) and roughly half the local population is Muslim, there’s just no room for the wall to wall media blitz of “Christmas is coming” that we are used to. There is some hype – but when the upscale shopping centres put Christmas carols on their PA systems and you hear “Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer” or “I’m dreaming of a White Christmas”, it seems a little weird, given that it is 35 Celsius outside.

So we made a few compromises and put our Christmas lights on the potted palm on our balcony, and called that the Christmas tree.

And that’s where we opened the presents. Spencer and Sally arrived from Beirut the day before Christmas and Winnie came the week before that so there were five of us to open presents - Kenge cloth and African masks (from Kigoma region) were big hits !

(That’s Sally, Spencer and Winnie – guess who’s who!)

And we actually had a very fine turkey for Christmas dinner, at our friends Judy and Bob’s – but we also headed home in good time, hoping to make an early start the next day.

Ruaha National Park was our destination – specifically, Tandala Tented Camp, which is just outside the park gates. But it is about 110 Km past Iringa (which is 395 Km from Dar), and we did not want to be wandering about on strange dirt roads in the dark – so we aimed the first day at stopping a bit before Iringa, then coming on to Tandala in time for a game ride the first afternoon.

In Canada, a day’s drive of 400 Km would be easy – but even if we were travelling on the country’s main highway, which is paved and sometimes well maintained, it is tough driving. Essentially all the commerce of the nation goes down the two lane Morogoro road – plus all the  trade of Burundi and much of Northern Malawi, Zambia and eastern Congo – so huge lumbering lorries and their trailers compete for kamikaze status and space on the road with intercity buses, cars and innumerable over-laden bicycles and herds of goats. Most buses and trucks sport slogans on their rear end like – “Haki ya Mungu” (“Will of God”) or “Inshe Allah” (“Praise the Lord”), and you quickly  understand  why as you watch them pull out to pass on a blind hilltop.

A little after Morogoro, the highway passes through Mikumi National Park, where the baboons and giraffes and elephants are just not impressed by motorists – even if we were very impressed by them.

By the end of our safari, herds of giraffe and antelope were pretty “ho-hum, seen that” kind of events – but the first sightings in Mikumi were a big thrill.

Soon after that, we came to the escarpment, and the road zigged and zagged as it ascended  to the highlands. When we stopped for the night, it was suddenly cool – in the hotel we stayed in one the way back, there were even fireplaces in the rooms!

 Next day we were on the road early and even before we got to the park boundary, while pounding along the dirt road leading to the camp, whom should we meet but a very impressive bull elephant, right in the middle of the road!

But most of our game viewing was done from the back seats of a converted Toyota Land Cruiser, since we hired a guide and driver from Tandala, who were excellent.

Ruaha is a huge park (over 20,000 square Kms), and the scenery is magnificent. We were there just at the start of the rains, so the yellow-browns of the dry season were being replaced by subtle shadings of green as the fresh grass pushed its way up. Later on, we are told, the wild flowers are amazing, and in the full dry season the animals congregate more at the few watering holes, so it’s probably pretty different at different times.  Who knows if we would have liked it even more at some other time – but certainly it was an amazing series of game drives over the three days we were there.

Apparently, although baobab trees can live for centuries, they are a cellular kind of tree and during the dry season elephants will break open their sides and chew pieces of the tree trunk, to get the moisture that is in it. Since baobab trees are hollow, the result is dozens of hobbit homes dotting the landscape.

And the birds are just amazing – crested cranes particularly!

One of most photogenic moments actually came as we returned to camp, and a herd of elephants decided to cross the road in front of us.

Our guide, Kenneth, promised us a view of a lion – and delivered on the last day! (remember that these are open-sided vehicles we are in – I did find myself wondering how many milli-seconds it would take him to cover the twenty feet to our vehicle, but I guess he was not very hungry.)

And we actually did not have to bump around in an old Toyota to see game. The Tandala Tented Camp set up is that large tents are built on raised treetop height platforms by the riverbank, and animals are attracted to the water provided by a borehole. So at sundown one can enjoy a gin and tonic on one’s balcony, and watch the elephants as they amble through the area. And later listen to them wander through the camp in the night, and the next morning, admire their foot prints on the path (management was quite insistent that we should be accompanied by a Masai guard when we went to our tents after dark, although I am not sure what he would have done with his spear, if we had met an elephant then).

Our last day came all too soon – we went for an early morning walking safari and said goodbye to our hosts (both second generation Greco-Tanzanians who had been borne in the area) and we were off. We stopped for a bit of shopping in Iringa – which looks to be a very pleasant and bustling town, perched on a cliff top overlooking the valley. 

Molly, Winnie and Sally could not resist the beautiful fabrics, and had fun getting measured by the sidewalk seamstress, who sewed up three very fine dresses for 10,000 Tshs ($8 Cdn) each and had them ready for 8 AM the next morning!

And then we were back on the road – a few nano-seconds of gut-wrenching adrenalin interspersed seven hours of driving, and we were home before dark, ready to see in the New Year!

Words by Lars – all photos by Spencer, Winnie, Molly and Sally. Hassle of selecting from 1550 photos and uploading to the web – entirely MOLLY !!!