Mikumi National Park

April 11^th

We head out to Mikumi National Park. Rogers called Mohammed a friend of his to drive us for the day. We met a woman named Martha the night before and wanted to introduce her to Rogers, so he called her up and she came along too. The drive to the park consisted of listening to Christina Agulera and 3 kids in the 20’s speaking Swahili. With David in the front and me in the back we felt a little left out of the conversations and it suddenly dawned on us that we were paying for these kids to have an adventure together and we just happened to be luggage to their nice day together. They had some amazing animals at Mikumi that came close to the road so David was able to take really up close shots. I was excited about the trees too. There were a couple of really ancient looking trees that were stunning and I wanted the driver to stop and take a picture of them, but one of the kids started making fun of me in Swahili so David told me to stop asking to stop for things. The day for pictures was a success. We saw many animals and we even stopped at a Hippo pool and ate some lunch of bananas, bread and muffins. On the way back David had a big headache and I mentioned to everyone that it would be nice if they spoke English so we could be a part of their conversation. They did for a while, but then they started speaking Swahili again, until they asked us where we wanted to eat. We end up at this kind of fancy place and I told David that they were going to expect us to pay for everyone again. So David asked them how much they were putting in for the meal. After telling them we weren’t very hungry and we weren’t going to get any food they decided they weren’t hungry after all. We paid the driver for the day, about $300US and David gave him a really good tip over that. Mohammed did a lot of driving and was very helpful. He even shared with David some of the local tea and that made David very happy. We got our stuff from Rogers house and had his friend take us to our hotel because we were going to get an early start in the morning to catch a bus to Arusha...home of the Serengeti.