Scary Safari

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Sunday was our day off from the language training and we were offered to go on a safari to the nearby National Park Mikumi. About 2/3 of our group signed up for this and we were supposed to leave Morogoro at 4am to reach the park gates for opening - wildlife watching is best at dusk and dawn, then more animals are out in the open than in the midday heat. I say supposed to, as everyone was there ready to go apart from Mama J, one of the language teachers, who was supposed to come with us and the bus… About half an hour later we managed to get at least Mama J woken up and ready to go, but still no sign of the bus. It finally turned up with the half-hearted excuse by the driver. So we made ourselves on the way loaded with a picnic put together to our wishes by the sisters - never had that many vegetables and fruits from them before.
It was already broad daylight when we past the border of the park (and still more than 20km to the gate) and we saw the first few gazelles and a couple of giraffes. After a good half hour of bureaucracy (paying the park fees etc.) we drove into the park with our minibus and were quite excited to see more. Mikumi at this time of the year is not the most exciting landscape - very flat, not too many trees or in fact greenery altogether - just dust. But the animals made up for that, there were more gazelles, more giraffes, wildebeests, hippos, monkeys, elephants and so on (pictures are more interesting than words in this case). We stopped at the watering hole and had our picnic, watching the hippos and crocs and watching out for the monkeys trying to steal our food.
There are some lions in the park as well, but they are much harder to track down, so after ticking of most of the other animals from the list we were driving around and around, trying to find some lions, and driving - but there was nothing to see at all - in this part of the park, didn’t seem to be any animals at all. It was pretty hot and most of us were tired from the early start and being shaken into sleep from the slightly bumpy ride. Then Danny called (mobile phone reception was perfect on Vodacom) and we chatted away, while we just kept on driving through the dust. But then we suddenly seemed to be driving off the track and the minibus was jumping over the landscape. I wondered, if the driver had spotted a lion after all and therefore went off the track. Then we got even faster and the ride even bumpier! This didn’t seem right and I commented so to Danny on the phone. Now everyone was awake and some people started screaming and I thought the bus is going to turn over any second, but then the second driver sort of interfered and the bus somehow got to a standstill! There was a big uproar and then there was talk about trying avoid a big rock on the track and the driver trying to avoid hitting it and another version with the driver having fallen asleep! The latter one turned out to be true in the end - well noone got hurt and the Toyota bus held strong, no broken axle or flat tire. I remained the whole time on the phone - my thought was, if I hang up, Danny is going to get very worried and might think I just died.
Once we all had calmed down, we continued, rather shaken and with the other driver now on the steering wheel. After some more pointless seeming driving we met two other cars standing still and yes, watching a group of 3 lions on the horizon. They were so far away, that even with the 300 lens they were just about to make out.

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