May 17, 2008

Today we went to Gorongosa National Park (www.gorongosa.net). In the 1950’s and 1960’s Gorongosa was one of the biggest nature reserves around and was known for its big game; however, during the civil war a lot of the fighting occurred in the area and many of the animals were killed for food or for money to buy arms (the elephants and their ivory tusks especially). The park is now being restored.

We left at 5:30 this morning and arrived at about 8:30. We knew that would be a little late in the day and we didn’t see any lions or elephants like we were hoping to, but we wanted to make it a day trip. We had a fun time though and saw monkeys, baboons, gazelle, bushpigs, warthogs, and rhino. It was kind of like a do-it-yourself safari since we used our own 4X wheel drive vehicle in the park and we basically just cruised around the park looking for stuff. At the entrance I felt like we were entering Jurassic Park

You kind of need a telephoto lens to take any sort of picture that will do justice to the animals and the surroundings, but I promise one of these photos shows the... backside of an animal -- I'll let you figure out which one of the pictures that is ;-)