Tungamalenga and Ruaha

After spending three weeks in Ilula, we trekked our way to Tungamalenga as a quick stop before reaching Ruaha national park. The drive started out smoothly before roughing out into a rather bumpy ride for the rest of our trip. In Tungamalenga, we had the opportunity to meet with Dr. Barnabas, pastor Eva, and others who had been working and living in the area for at least the past five years. Despite the rainy weather, we weren’t deterred from making a trip to the Maasai villages. Sadly, both of our 4x4’s were stuck in the muddy terrain shortly after we began our journey.
We all walked to the first church and were warmly welcomed by the Maasai who sang and danced beautifully for us. On our way out from there, one of our vehicles got stuck in the mud again. We were stuck for quite some time; luckily, the Maasai crew helped us out from the ditch. Despite the rough start, we all had a wonderful time there altogether.

In Ruaha (or Ruvaha, which means “Great” in He-he), we stayed at the bandas in the Mwugasi Safari lodge. Each banda was built next to the river and all were beautifully decorated with ecologically sensitive material.

On the first night of our stay there, we were told that an unfortunate impala was killed by a pride of lion right behind out camp. We didn’t see the leftovers from that incident, but we encountered several lion prides with their kills on our first full safari day. Our tour guides, Festo and Mwarisho, gave us an awesome tour of the park and helped us dig our way out from the ditches when our vehicles got stuck in them. We saw a variety of animals, plants, and birds from our visit and had many great (photo)shots of them for proof. As an added bonus from the rainy weather, some of us also managed to capture an awesome shot of the thunder as well.