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As wonderful as it is, the northern circuit is becoming ever more crowded. As a result, more official attention is being focused on the south and how to attract more travelers there. People usually have the time for only one circuit, and it is a tough decision for the first time visitor to pass over Serengeti National Park and the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. But the southern parks and the Selous Game Reserve - especially the Selous - are special too. I am eternally grateful for the opportunity to have lived in Dar long enough to have explored all of the south's riches. Of course, with time and resources you can always cover both the north and the south! Some visitors do combine the two in one long road trip (or they fly), but should you choose to take in only the southern parks, then Dar es Salaam - Tanzania's de facto capital on the Indian Ocean Coast - makes for a center of operations. The bonus is that you are well positioned to make a side trip to the legendary "spice" island of Zanzibar at the end of your safari. For the best time to visit please see When To Go. Mikumi National Park Tanzania's major east-west highway cuts Mikumi into northern and southern halves, which is unfortunate even though the stretch through the park is paved with closely spaced speed bumps. There is a one-room museum at the park entrance devoted to road kills. Nevertheless, Mikumi occupies a warm place in my heart. Some of my favorite wildlife photographs have been taken there: a zebra nuzzling her foal; a line of giraffes that recedes into the distance like a picket fence; and a baby elephant, carefully guarded by mother from a lurking crocodile, up to its armpits in the muck of a water hole. Long considered a "sacrifice" park because of the highway and because of the Chinese built railway linking the Indian Ocean with Zambia which dissects it too, Mikumi is under appreciated. Prior to 1969 and its acquisition of national park status, Mikumi was a small game reserve contiguous with the much larger Selous Game Reserve to the south. The highway left it vulnerable to poachers and large-scale game loss of migrating wildlife that game reserve authorities could do little about. As the country's fourth largest national park (3230 square kilometers) where hunting is forbidden and enforced, Mikumi now strengthens that important border with the Selous with which it shares an ecosystem, the biggest in Africa. In the as of yet fully unexplored wooded hills and mountains of this southern sector, there is the promise of a rare glimpse of a Sable antelope, or rarer yet of a pack of wild dogs. The Selous Game Reserve The Selous began life as a collection of smaller game reserves belonging to then colonial power Germany. The victors of the spoils of World War I were the British, who renamed it - in 1922 - after their patriot Captain Frederick Courtney Selous (pronounced "Seloo"), a military man and game hunter (companion of fellow hunter and American president Theodore Roosevelt), who was shot and killed by a German sniper in the Selous during the war. The reserve has a compelling history, not least of which is the story of the celebrated Captain Selous, but it was a British Army Officer and early game ranger called Constantine John Philip Ionides who must receive credit for enlarging the Selous from its original paltry 2590 square kilometers to the significant 56,980 square kilometers that it is today. Ionides envisioned the Selous as a kind of vast elephant kingdom and for 20 years labored tirelessly to bring it about. The easiest way into the Selous is by chartered propeller craft. It's quick, fun, the views of startled buffalo herds fleeing below are great, and it is expensive. The easiest way into the Selous by road is to follow the coastal road south from Dar to Kibiti village where you turn inland and follow a sandy track through picturesque country. Another more difficult route is through Kisarawe village on a track which begins near Dar es Salaam airport and which intersects the Kibiti road near the reserve's main Mtemere entrance. My traveling companions and I went astray of this track when we took it on one of our visits to the reserve. We emerged from the forest 16 kilometers from where we intended to exit with radiators full of grass seed and with vehicle paint badly scratched. The final route in and out of the reserve is through the Uluguru Mountains. This one is the most convenient for traveling between Mikumi National Park and the Selous. There is a river crossing to consider where the mud can be deep so this is best undertaken during the dry season. It is hoped someday to forge all weather tracks into the Selous through Mikumi's southern sector, which would be marvelous. Unlike a national park (although this rule has some exceptions), the Selous offers walking safari accompanied by an armed ranger. It's a wonderful to be out of the car in which you spend a lot of fanny-numbing time and in the very midst of wilderness and wild things. Among my favorite all time travel experiences is camping in the Selous by one of the lakes created by the Rufiji River's annual flooding. A full moon may rise the color of red lacquer. Crocodile eyes glitter from the lake. Under cover of darkness, hippos leave the water on silent trotters to feed in the bush a prudent distance from camp. A hippo's bellows and chortles don't make for undisturbed sleep, but, as a wise bush man once explained to me, sleeping soundly isn't the point of being there. Ruaha National Park Katavi National Park Katavi's remote location is the reason for its lack of visitors. It is a three day drive from Dar to this 5828 square kilometer, pristine, and most notably, empty wilderness. Katavi's popularity will only increase once it becomes more accessible, which may take years for the Tanzanian government and any financial backers to do anything about, but its growth into a tourist destination, someday, is inevitable. Other than by charter aircraft, Katavi is reached along a road which dissects it like the east-west highway does Mikumi National Park. This road begins at the town of Tunduma on the Tanzanian-Zambian border and runs in a northwesterly direction to Kigoma on Lake Tanganyika near the Tanzanian-Burundian border. Katavi can be reached from either Tunduma or from Kigoma (Kigoma is the departure point for Gombe Stream National Park ), but the southern route from Tunduma is in better condition. Much of what is accessible of Katavi is the floodplain of the Katuma River. Lakes Katavi and Chala are seasonal bodies of water on this floodplain and water sources for the park's wildlife.
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Mikumi, a tribal word for the Borassus palm tree which once grew prolifically in the area, is an easy four hour drive west of Dar on good roads. My husband and I camped there a great deal. On one memorable occasion, eight lionesses ran through our camp site while we prepared breakfast. The cats had first announced their proximity with grunts and roars which allowed us time to jump into our vehicle. I recall that my hair stood on end.
One of the primary differences between a national park and a game reserve is that a reserve allows hunting. The Selous has been divided into over 40 hunting "blocks" varying in size of up to 1295 square kilometers, each with an annual quota of species to kill. Sadly, armed only with a camera, I play less of a role in Selous' wildlife protection than hunters. Only 200 hunters a year can spend more money, a lot more money, in the Selous than can 5000 or so tourists. The reserve has set aside a small area north of the Ruaha (a tributary of the Rufiji) and Rufiji Rivers for photographic tourism. In 1995, tourism earned the reserve $150,000 US. Hunting raised 1.5 million dollars, or 24 percent of the country's total tourism revenue. It's a complicated issue. I don't have to like hunters or their mindsets to acknowledge the contribution they make to wilderness preservation. It is conceivable that the northern tourist sector may someday become a national park and wildlife within its borders protected, but everything south of the great rivers is more appropriate to maintain as a game reserve because of its complete inaccessibility during the wet months - the Selous is crisscrossed with rivers, streams and swamps - when even the north's tourist camps, less adversely affected by flooding, shut down. When it's possible to generate income only a few short months a year, the amount needed is best derived - without any alternative - from hunting.
Most of Ruaha's wilderness is rolling wooded hills of the deciduous savannah forest otherwise known as miombo, which extends in an almost unbroken belt clear across Africa's middle. These woodlands alternate with open grassland dotted with acacia species. Fig, tamarind, and palm trees grow near the Ruaha River and its streams and throughout the park the baobab, the elephant of tree species, is prolific, as much a symbol of Ruaha as its healthy population of pachyderms.
