What trip to Africa would be complete without seeing some wildlife? Not ours! Now that we have completed the language school portion of our trip, we took a day and headed to Mikumi National Park a few hours from the seminary. Had to love the ‘DANGER Wild Animals Next 50 KM’ sign shortly before seeing a baboon walking in the opposite lane on the highway and discovering that the big gray ‘rocks’ near the side of the road were elephants. A tour guide joined us on our bus once we entered the park and was able to fill us in on all sorts of interesting facts about the animals we were seeing. Plenty of impala, buffalo, zebras, elephants, giraffes, warthogs, hippos, crocodiles, jackals, wildebeests, and some of the most colorful birds and butterflies we’d ever seen.
We were served mango juice immediately upon our arrival and had a fabulous dinner later in the evening. The lodge at which we stayed is in the midst of the park where all the animals roam, so a nearby parade of elephants silhouetted in the dark as we enjoyed our sautéed bananas for desert was nothing out of the ordinary there! We enjoyed gazing at all the stars visible on this side of the globe and our fun accommodations for the night. Alarms went off at 5:30 the next morning in hopes of seeing some animals early in the day, but we were still unsuccessful at spotting a simba (lion)—it’s very rare to see them unfortunately. Not that our adventures were dampened at all; it was a wonderful trip to the animal kingdom before entering the human world again.
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