Ross: CSC Assignment Tanzania: Sunday

It is Sunday and we are off to Mikumi National Park at 6am. Well almost, Maria " Where are you?" "There she is!", and we are off.

It was about a two hour drive and it turned out to be an incredibly fantastic drive and we were not even there yet. About 20 minutes before arriving at the gate we saw several giraffes very close to the road. There were a lot of ooohs and ahs and I have to admit it was amazing. This Giraffe was maybe 50 feet from away from us. Our guide, Charles, commented that it was unusual to see them along the highway.

And then elephants, and we still are not to the gate.

We arrived at the park and the paperwork was handled - the stuff that says "if you get eaten by a lion, don't sue us". Philip handled it all and we stood around anxious to get on with the Safari. I was walking around and walked past the gate and somehow accidentally triggered the gate to go up and it is a huge gate arm. The guard was not too impressed.

Mikumi is a truly huge park: 3,300 sq km (1,250 sq miles), the fourth largest park in Tanzania.

We all posed for the traditional group shot where IBM demonstrates that technical collaboration means that every person must have the same group shot taken with their own camera.

Above is Philip, Ross, Maria, Shaun, Ilona, Aldrey, Christie, Ashish, Xiao, Ian, Agusto, Charles (our Guide for the day), Jonathan

And then we drove through the park. It is truly huge and sometimes you drive a long ways seeing nothing and then bang. You see something like this which is truly jaw dropping. Yes, 10 in this picture!

And Gazelles

and Baboons and a Hippo and a Worm !

Locked horns

Lunch at Mikumi and we could see the following in our view: monkeys, water buffalo, impallas, wildebeasts, a huge elephant herd of more that 50 of them, antelope