Ruaha Crew

On Sunday car was packed by tents and camping equipment for yet another trip to Ruaha National Park. It is a 2 hour drive on bumpy dirt road away from Iringa. Before reaching the park we had our first encounter with the wild life when a huge Kudu antelope jumps out of the bush and in front of the car, luckily we avoided running over this creature with horns longer than a meter. The park gate is just by the great Ruaha river which gives an impressive welcome with crocodiles and hippos in the water and on the sand banks. Since dry season just started the was a lot of water still in the river. Our plans of camping changed when we realized we could stay in the more comfortable bandas for a lower price than tenting. Arriving at the bandas we were welcomed by two giraffes walking around between the bandas, in the river next to bandas there was hippos and on one of the sandbanks Mr Big Daddy Crocodile was catching some sun. Afternoon game drive was Ok but we failed to spot any cats. Evening dinner by camp fire was fun, we played some silly games kept going until after midnight when my birthday started and the Finnish guys sang for me :)
In morning we got up at sun rise for a game drive with high expectations of finding some cats. But five hours later we still had not found any cats although we even got some advices on where to look. Eventually we saw a male and a female lion walking towards some shadow about 30 meters from the road. Once they made themselves comfortable we could hardly see them because of some grass in the foreground. But we decided to remain to see if they would get up on their feet again.
After some minutes we saw a lonesome buffalo bull walking in the direction of the lions. We all got a bit excited hoping lions might make an attack. To our surprise we could see the opposite thing happening as the buffalo attacked the lions and the lions run of in fear. The buffalo continued following the lions and chasing them away as saying: "this is my neighborhood get lost stupid cats!"

This action came to be the highlight of the trip which all in all was fun and exciting.