We rode into the National Park today in our little Honda Jazz. Many of the roads are more suited for soft 4wd and the park has erected large dirt burms every 20 meters or so on these roads to stop passenger vehicles from driving. That didn’t stop us however! We popped over each burm and drove through mud puddles from recent rains – trying to avoid bottoming out the vehicle and or getting stuck. Getting stuck is a bad thing out here – you are in the middle of nowhere – we saw no other vehicles the entire 3 hours we drove around, and lions, elephant, rhino and hippo live here.
Its amazing to drive up to huge black rhino – and scary at the same time. We came across several herds of elephant – surprising one herd so that they trumpeted and stomped the ground. We quickly shut off the engine to show them we meant no harm – one of those larger elephants could easily turn our car on its topside! This park is a resource of wild game – we came across wildebeest, large groups of Wart Hogs, many gazelles, rhino and saw Hippo from afar on the edge of a big lake. Its awesome to seemingly have a National Park with so much game nearly all to ourselves. The only people we saw the entire time in the park was at the main lodge/restaurant. So cool!
From your pictures, it looks like you got so close to the animals! Sounds like a great excursion.
Brock – nice to hear from you. I enjoyed watching your Cobra video like a year or two ago – pretty cool. Need to get back to Vietnam. Thailand is home base for part of the year. Yea, I had been close to lions on other safaris but this was def the closest I’ve been. Get to sub saharan Africa if you have not yet been – for the traveler, its an amazing unpredictable place full of adventures!
You should take part in a contest for one of the best blogs on the web. I will recommend http://www.davestravelcorner.com!