A “walking tour” across the wilds in Ruaha National Park

We left Iringa, Tanzania, where I had been volunteering teaching English, for Ruaha National Park; myself, a driver, and a cook. We were going at least 80 miles an hour in the Land Rover on a dirt-and-rock road marked 50. It was hard to tell, the speedometer didn’t work. The driver’s name was Goodluck (really!).

We arrived at the safari site in the early afternoon. I grabbed my gear and headed towards my hut, just then a mother elephant and her baby strolled across the path 20 metres in front of me. Amazing! What an introduction to my four days of safari.

Ruaha National Park is bigger than the Serengeti and is the biggest park in East Africa. Our few buildings were smack in the middle of this wilderness. Guests are escorted by an armed guard after dark.

I got up at 6 a.m. every day to a beautiful, red sunrise spread across the horizon. Coffee and cookies were served at 6:30 and then I would climb into Goodluck’s Land Rover. Each day we did three, two-and-a-half-hour safari drives, with yummy meals in-between. Goodluck knows the park, the back roads and where to find the animals. Occasionally I would spot something before him, but often he would see an animal or bird, stop, point at it, describe it and I would still have trouble seeing it.