National park of Ruaha

Iringa is the gateway to Ruaha National Park. So I took the opportunity to go on a two-day and one-night safari, with the Bateleur safaris & tours company, based next to the school where I worked.

With two other Turkish tourists and our guide, Goodluck, we left on Saturday morning from the city center to enter the national park at noon. We were 4 in a 6-seat SUV, with a panoramic pop up roof to observe the animals. So we had plenty of space to be comfortable.

After check in at the park reception, we stopped on a bridge over the Great Ruaha River, from where we could observe crodiles napping, as well as some hippopotamuses enjoying a good swim.

We joined our "bandas", thatched-roofed hut, to drop off our belongings before going to lunch, and gather strength for the rest of our day. Once we were ready, we went looking for other animals.

We could see elephants, zebras, impala antelopes, giraffes, buffaloes, monkeys, many birds and I'm sure enough...

After a wonderful sunset, typical of a movie, we ate dinner in the same place as at lunch. On the road to join our bandas, we saw a huge hyena in the light of our headlights.

On Sunday morning, we took off before sunrise to be able to admire it, surrounded by beautiful large baobas, accompanied by the song of the birds that woke up. That was a magical moment!

We spent the rest of the morning following in the footsteps of a lioness. We saw her prints, but unfortunately, we couldn't find her, before we had to check out at noon.

Before leaving the park, we still saw wild dogs, which are apparently very hard to see normally.

After this pleasant journey in the wild, we took the road back to Iringa.