Day 45 and 46

 Day 45

Today we are driving to Same where we will stay at the Elephant Motel for the next 3 nights.

We have a quiet breakfast at MTAD with just Millie for company and then go and pack our bags. Robert and Evodi pick us up at about midday. It takes about 2 hours to drive to Same and is 106 km (66 miles). We have now driven a total of 3710 km (2319 miles) since arriving in Tanzania.

When we arrive at the hotel we find our safari guide for the next 2 days, Ally, is already here. We say Hi and arrange to meet him later.

We order some lunch and drinks and sit in the garden area. Our lunch of fish, rice and greens arrives pretty quickly and is very good......a good sign for the next few days.

After lunch Veronica shows us to our room. It is a typical African style hotel room and suits our needs perfectly. We do a bit of unpacking and then have a short walk around outside. We see monkeys and banded mongoose in the hotel grounds and outside our bedroom window.

 

Just outside the hotel we get some good views of the surrounding Pare mountains.

We are actually staying on the outskirts of Same but can see the town in the distance.

We then sit down in the garden for a drink and read our books. Around 6.30 we meet up with Ally. He seems like a nice guy and speaks good English. We arrange to go out at 6.30 tomorrow morning.

We have a good dinner and then head back to our room as we will be up early tomorrow morning.

Day 46

Today we are spending the day in Mkomazi National Park. This is one of the less visited and less known National Parks in Tanzania and we have never been here before. Today we only see 2 other cars apart from the park rangers, one was a group of girls doing a “self drive” and the other was a guy who is actually building a new lodge here. The park is 3500 square kilometres in size and shares a border with Tsavo National Park in Kenya.

Elephant Motel is only about a 10 minute drive from the park entrance and we enter soon after 7. It was quite dull to start with and the surrounding mountains were covered by the clouds. 

We see plenty of birds and also some hartebeest, eland, buffalo and ostriches, all be it quite a distance away.

Long Crested Eagle

Long Tailed Fiscal

Driving on further we come across a group of giraffe much closer to the road. We also see some birds that we haven’t seen before. Luckily Ally likes the birds too and is happy to point them out and help us identify them. We also manage to get some much better photos of birds that we have seen previously.

Red Billed Buffalo Weaver

Pin Tailed Whydah

White Winged Widow Bird

At about 9 we stop at a viewpoint and get out and stretch our legs. The cloud is still in evidence but starting to clear a bit. 

We drive on further spotting more wildlife, some closer than others, including a leopard tortoise. 

Eastern Chanting Goshawk 

Mid morning we come across 2 large groups of elephants on the hillside. One group were definitely heading up the hill, the other group seemed happy to stay lower and eventually congregated under a large tree, looking for shade as it was now quite hot. We stayed watching for quite a while.

As the day was warming up so the clouds cleared away. Ally drove up to a second much higher viewpoint, the views on the way and at the top were amazing. Again we got out of the car and stretched our legs.

Ally had brought some fruit with him which he prepared for us. He had pineapple, mango and watermelon - the fruit here always tastes so much better than at home. It was such a lovely spot that we decided to stay here and eat our lunch. 

As we descended down from the view point we stopped several times for photos. This park really is worth a visit for the scenery alone. 

At the bottom we saw more giraffe and zebra and of course birds. 

Woolly-Necked Stork

Crimson Rumped Waxbill

Rosy Patched Bush-Shrike

I should also mention that there is a Rhino Sanctuary within the park. This is heavily protected by the rangers. At present they are actually building a new enclosure but it is not finished yet. This afternoon we drive along a road that borders the outer fence to this. At this point we get quite close to the Kenyan border. From here we then drive back to the gate.

Northern Carmine Bee-Eater

Golden Pipit

We arrive back at the gate at about 5.30 and stop to pay for our permits for today and tomorrow. 

The rangers also seemed very keen to show us their small Visitors Information Centre which was interesting. We then did the short drive back to Elephant Motel, followed by a shower, dinner with Ally and bed.