Mikumi Wildlife Park

We are heading back to Arusha in a couple of weeks, for several months while we are waiting on pump parts to come in before we can carry on with the project. Hence we took the opportunity before leaving the area to go visit the Mikumi National park. It is straight south of us, not that far, but the dirt roads are not too good so it is best to drive east to Morogoro for 2 hours, then back south west to the park for 1-1/2 hours as that is all sealed road. The park is unique in that the sealed road actually drives right through the park from east to west and continues on to some other southern Tanzania towns. This means you can be driving along and come across a troop of baboons sitting on the road, or a herd or giraffes crossing the road. Elephants are plentiful as are impala along the road. Quite surreal. Big fines if you hit an animal through. There are speed bumps, vicious ones, all along the road so you can’t drive fast in most places anyway. We being tourists would stop to take pictures, where as the truckies and buses would get impatient with us and go around us at speed. The park on the north side of the road is about 1/3 of the total park, the other 2/3rds are to the south of the road but there is not much in the way of roads and tourist activities on that south side.The park headquarters is about ½ way along the road and then turn off to the north a few 100 m to go through their gate and access the interior of the park. It is all gravel sand roads in the park but in quite good condition. 4 WD not needed at all. You have to stay on the roads and are not allowed to get out of your car. This makes it a bit difficult to get some pictures at times. An open top vehicle would be an advantage. We just used out little Pajero. We hired a guide for $10 for the day to shows us what roads to drive on, and give us good information about the various animals.The park is quite flat with open long grassy areas and them some other places with more trees.
There are quite a few different animals to see. As well as the above are eland, warthogs, lions (we didn’t see any that day), leopards (though almost impossible to find in any park), lots of zebra and wildebeest, water buffalo, hippos, (who make the cutest deep based loud umph umph umph sound to each other), crocs, and lots of birds from small to medium size.
We stayed at a tiny hotel ( only 4 rooms) in the town of Mikumi right on the western side of the park outside the park boundary. Run by a Swiss-Tanzanian couple, great restaurant and bar. Real western food, oh Boy! There are a few safari lodges in the park where you may get big animals walking around outside your room. They are almost $500 a night however. Though very accessible, there are not many visitors to this park so you are not waiting behind other vehicles to see animals etc.
We drove around the park on Saturday and on Sunday we headed further west along the sealed road. The next big town is called Iringa and the Lonely Planet says it is a nice drive from the plains of Mikumi up a gorge 170 km to reach Iringa perched atop the hills. We didn’t have time to drive the whole way and still get back to Gairo at dusk, but drove most of it to see the scenery in the gorge. It is mostly too steep to farm so there are not many people living in that area and it is mostly forest and rocky bluffs with a decent sized river at the bottom. It was indeed a nice drive. The road even though sealed was in major need of repair. Dang!. There were so many broken down trucks or trucks in some form of accident, all the way along it. We’ll have to do it again and get all the way to Iringa next time.