Another Weekend in Tarangire

Finding myself back in Arusha for a couple weeks between safaris, it wasn’t long before I was wishing I was back out in the bush. With guests going into Matembezi’s private camp in Tarangire, I was invited by the owner to head out and spend the weekend there before the guests arrived on the Monday. The fridge full of beer, binoculars on the dash, and a spare set of clothes and other essentials, we left the traffic jams and noise of Arusha on the familiar road to Tarangire.

Looking through my blog it hadn’t occurred to me how much time I’d spent this year in Tarangire and after this weekend, I have to admit scores very high on my favorite places list. I was excited to get out there with my brother, girlfriend and some other friends not working as the guide or teacher, but just for fun. I’d get to look at some of the little-brown-jobs (LBJ’s) as birders call them, or stop to try to identify a fairly non-descript plant.

Just the drive into camp was wonderful, the 500 elephants in the swamp beginning to head out into the woodlands, a leopard in a tree next to the road. A lion in a tree, 3 pythons in trees, and of course the tranquil vistas. Maybe its because this was the first park my parents brought me to as an infant, but it always has a calming effect on my soul.

We woke up early on Saturday morning and drove out towards the swamp onto a beautiful green lawn, the result of a grassfire followed by rain. Within 300 meters from camp we spotted two lionesses feeding on a hartebeest and then watched as a hyena approached, urging the lioness to drag the carcass into the bushes. Surrounding us was an aggregation of Bohor reedbuck, Impala, Grant’s gazelle, Hartebeest, Eland and even a rare Fringe-eared Oryx wandered past, as we sat on the roof sipping fresh coffee. We continued on our little game drive only to bump into a pride of 14 lions- 10 cubs and 4 lionesses, before returning to camp for breakfast.

The Sausage trees were flowering and attracted Scarlet-chested Sunbirds who flitted about chasing each other away from their flowers. But the real highlight was the number of antelope that the fallen flowers attracted. At any one time, we could see at least 7 different species and all in all we saw a total of 12 species within a couple kilometers from the camp. The burned ground had also attracted a species of bird that I’d never seen before called the Chestnut Sparrow-lark as well as beautiful Collared Pratincoles.

Sunday came, and we returned to Arusha, revived by a couple nights in the African bush.

Antelope species seen:

1.     Eland Taurotragus oryx

2.     Greater kudu Tragelaphus strepiceros

3.     Lesser kudu Tragelaphus imberbis

4.     Bushbuck Tragelaphus scriptus

5.      Fringe-eared oryx Oryx beisa callotis

6.     Common waterbuck Kobus ellipsiprymnus

7.     Bohor reedbuck Redunca redunca

8.     Coke’s hartebeest Alcelaphus buselaphus cokii

9.     Grant gazelle Gazella granti

10.  Impala Aepyceros melampus

11.  Kirk’s dikdik Madoqua kirki

12.  Steenbok Raphicerus campestris

Places With No Roads to Them

...Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away... Robert Frost

The lesser kudu cautiously tip-toed into the clearing around the muddy waterhole. We froze as the male stared right at us. Somehow he didn’t see us and followed his little harem and young nibbling at some Cordia. Our senses keen our footsteps sounded much louder than they were as we shadowed them. The slight breeze in our faces was perfect as we took cover in a Gardenia overlooking the waterhole. The 4 kudu we had followed were joined by 5 more, including a beautiful male and they nervously drank from the left-over rain water. A sausage tree spread its dark green leaves and we hoped the shy antelope would come towards us to feed on the flowers that lay scattered at the bottom.

Kigelia africana

Startled, the kudu barked- a false alarm as a female waterbuck walked into the water with her calf, then the low rumble that only elephants can make. We huddled a little closer as a young male marched onto the scene. Acting as if he owned the place, he marched into the water then suddenly realizing he was alone turned and ran back to the matriarch who had appeared with her two other young. We could hear them breathe and the sounds of camera shutters sounded as loud as gunshots. Silently they turned to face us as if to follow the path we had come in on. We whispered to keep still and keep quiet when they too changed their plan and as silently as they’d arrived, disappeared. 

Turkana by Helicopter, Serengeti by Cruiser

Coffee break on the east ridge overlooking Lake Turkana

The Nyiru Range

Silenced by earmuffs, we lifted-off effortlessly floating up and over the 9000ft range of Mt. Nyiru in northern Kenya. The impenetrable forest of moss and orchid shroud Pencil cedars, olives, and aloes gave way as we dropped down over the cliff, hovering momentarily to breathe in the eroded cliffs of these ancient rocks. The helicopter changed angle and we surged forward, northward, accelerating through the valleys and watching the landscape dry. Herds of goats picked their way through the seemingly barren rock and the odd group of camels fed on the Acacia tortillis that had managed to establish themselves in the drought ridden soil. Inhospitable lava flows and boulder-ridden hillsides stretched out beneath us as we raced up the Great Rift-valley to the shores of Lake Turkana. As we flew the abrupt shoreline, fishermen waved and crocodiles dove into the water.

We were on our way to Ileret where Richard Leakey and Stony Brook University had set up a research station, the Turkana Basin Research Institute. Hot, windy and in a not-particularly-beautiful scrub it was hard to imagine that this land hid many of the secrets of human ancestry as well as the fossils of many of the predecessors of today’s vertebrate animals. A massive crocodile skull lay on the cement floor outside the door of a lab where a few individuals sat, eyes glued to microscopes while their hands manipulated little bits of fossilized bones and high-tech cleaning brushes. Behind it, catalogued boxes stood on shelves housing the finished secrets of their work.

Dinosaur bones (Dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years-ago).

Natural rock slide at Desert Rose

This wasn’t an ordinary safari. Starting in Meru National Park to get a taste of game, we ending in Serengeti National Park to really feast our eyes. The major diversion to Lake Turkana was as much about having fun as experiencing this historically significant part of East Africa. The helicopters allowed us to stopover for a scrumptious lunch at Desert rose, named after the beautiful succulent (Adenium obesum), but not before we’d thoroughly cleaned the natural rock-slide of debris with our bums.

Sand dunes near the Soguta Valley

Grevy'z zebra (Meru National Park)

Beautiful tusker... one of the last.

Topi (Serengeti National Park)

Hyena (Serengeti National Park)

The safari defining wildlife-moment came when we camped in an exclusive luxury mobile camp in the very north of Serengeti National Park, in a small corner known as the Lamai wedge. Having seen nearly every other animal that we wanted the pressure was on us guides to try to find a famed wildebeest crossing. Conditions looked good. The wildebeest migration had arrived and some billowing storm clouds on the north side of the Mara-river beckoned the herds across. The wildebeest began cascading down the bank and I eased the vehicle down-wind and down-stream of the wildebeest. The quickening sound of thousands upon thousands of calves and their mothers, gnu-ing as they dove into the waters and emerged on the other side silenced the normally chattering kids in my vehicle. An annoyed hippo emerged, scaring the wildebeest and they drifted downstream, now coming up on both sides of the vehicle at about 300 per minute. I estimate the average crossing rate to be 200 per minute, and when we left 2.5hrs later I estimated that over 30,000 had crossed the river.

Wildebeest crossing the Mara River.

Learning, A Lifelong Adventure

As the low season has wound down and the dry season is in full-swing, I feel the need to share a little with you about what I’ve been doing since my last ‘proper’ safari. April and May, the two wettest months of the year have become a time to pursue a deeper understanding of the environment. I just came back this weekend from a night out in Tarangire National Park with savannah academics (fanatics) exploring a savannah very different to the one they research in. Maybe you can imagine the fascinating discussions and debates about how it all works, comparing South America’s savannahs devoid of large mammals to South Africa’s savannahs, compartmentalized by roads and fences. What a contrast sitting in Tarangire watching a herd of 300 buffalo come to the river to drink, a few hundred wildebeest and zebra grazing together, and then of course watching herds of elephants uprooting saplings. All of these are incredible shaping forces in savannahs.

Check out the individual variation on this Maasai Giraffe- a herbivore with the power to make plants panic.

We set off in the morning on a game drive, but not the normal type of game drive, because our focus was actually plants. The nine lions in the riverbed were only going to be a distraction today. Today we would look at leaves and growth forms and discuss plant predation. So few people realize how herbivory is in actual fact predation or serious assault on plants. So much so that plants have had to fight back and no more obvious than in East Africa with its high abundance and diversity of herbivores. Just look at the degree of armament on the Acacias, or taste a leaf and discover how bitter it is. Most plant leaves are packed with chemical defense- hence their medicinal purposes or toxicity. Chemicals like strychnine and cardiac glycosides among others defend some plants against their enemies.

The excitement in the vehicle as we drove along the front of a bushfire is something I’ve only experienced when guests see the more difficult to spot predators, but in this case, it was literally the flames. Fire is one of the most important savannah shaping forces there is, and of course most plants that live in savannahs are adapted to withstand fire. Leaves might be boring to most people, including Colin’s kids who resorted to making dust angels (like snow angels) face down, so I’ll stop talking about leaves and fire and if you’re really interested check out our new blog.

Some kids make snow angels... 

Over the past 5 years a major part of what I do especially during the lull in tourism is guide training. I’ve done a bit for A& K, Thomson safaris and Adventure Camps, but the majority of it has been for Asilia Lodges & Camps. This year was the 3^rd year that I set off with 10 trainees to spend 6 weeks in the bush. Our focus?- well, everything.

In the middle of the 6 weeks. (Photo by Laverne)

Our daily program was as such:

6 am: Tea

6:15: Game drive

9:00: Breakfast

10:00 Classroom

1:00 Lunch

3:30 Game drive

7:00 Dinner

7:30 DVD

At the end of the 6 weeks we took a week long break before heading back to Tarangire with all of the guides, and a few other people to help conduct training.

The Asilia Guides.
A special thanks to Colin Beale, Markus Coerlin, Robin Peterson, Moyra Earnshaw, Allan Earnshaw, and Jackson Looseiya who tirelessly led workshops.

57 lions

Thousands of gnu on the plains.

It’s that time of year again when most people in the tourism industry in Tanzania are winding down, closing camps and getting a break. The heavy rains have usually started by now, and getting around tends to be difficult or even impossible, especially in the southern parks. Many of the animals have dispersed to areas that do not have permanent water during the dry season. This year has been a little different with the short rains completely failing and the long rains arriving a month late, changing the animals’ typical patterns.

Young male lion in Piyaya.

 I was excited to be able to take some guests to some of my favorite places on a last minute safari. I picked up my guests at Kilimanjaro International Airport in the afternoon and drove to Plantation Lodge in Karatu which provided us a convenient starting point for the safari. A variety of luxurious places have emerged in Karatu as overflow to the lodges on the rim of Ngorongoro Crater, but I very rarely stay there because one misses the most beautiful time in the crater. However, in this case, my guests had already seen the crater in the 60’s and preferred to keep those memories intact.

Sitting at breakfast the next morning, I unfolded the Serengeti Ecosystem Map and traced our route. There was no way to avoid the crowds for the first hour as we climbed the steep, winding road up and around the rim of the crater, but I took the first opportunity I could to leave the main road and drive one of the most scenic roads/tracks through the area down to the plains south of Ndutu. Suddenly we were alone except for a few Maasai herding livestock along the road. We didn’t see another person or vehicle until we again crossed the main road heading north to Piyaya. January and February were unusually dry, and therefore the wildebeest were on the edge of the plains where they usually are at the end of April, so we had to drive a little further than I’d planned when creating the itinerary. We eventually found them just in time for lunch and sat watching and listening to the thousands “nyu-ing” all around us. That evening we spent the night in one of my favorite areas that I’ve blogged about a few times. Despite the lack of rain, the game was great with two sightings of three cheetahs.

Preying on Grant's gazelle hider fawns.

The safari then took us north through Loliondo and on the road that may become paved as the Serengeti highway. I could not help thinking about how it would dramatically change the face of the area that is already slowly changing due to pressures on the land and conflicts between the Maasai communities and the government-controlled hunting concessions. Permanent Maasai homesteads have sprung up where previously there was only the occasional dry season “rancho” or temporary cattle enclosure. Only two years ago when I guided and managed a camp, there was almost no difference between the land inside and outside of the park. Now the boundary between the park and community land is obvious due to the extensive livestock grazing outside the park.

Another amazing Piyaya sunset.

It always surprises me when I end up alone in the Serengeti. We stopped at a small spring on the side of a hill where over 200 elephant were making their way in different directions through the valley. Buffalo, topi, ostrich, impala, hartebeest, warthog, eland, and zebra grazed peacefully as we scanned for predators. A female elephant with a newborn wandered past us. The cute baby was still trying to make sense of its surroundings. As we pushed on, our drive took us along the Kenya- Tanzania border, the cliché “sea of grass” literal as the red-oat grass rippled in the wind. We enjoyed the solitude of the single track as the panorama stretched out before us - open space. A male lion with his lionesses under a tree sat with his head up seemingly enjoying the vista.

"Arturo" the patient male on the periphery.

Amazing?

It’s rare that guests want to stay more than three nights in a place, but with five nights at Sayari we were able to experience the area slowly and without the pressure to find anything. Of course when this happens, the animals decide not to let you rest, and the second morning we were woken around 4 am by roaring lions. It’s surprisingly hard to find lions when you’ve heard them roaring in the night, but by 6:15 we were sitting with a pair of mating lions in what would be one of the best lion experiences I have ever had. Two big males sat on the periphery and watched as the pair mated in front of us every nine minutes. The mating male was anxious and kept staring in the direction from which we’d come. A resident guide from the camp had set off in the morning and called me on the radio; two other males were headed our way and were about to emerge on the other end of the plain. The details of what happened and which lion did what are too complicated and confusing to explain here but we witnessed a heart-in-your-throat battle between seven different males on the edge of their territories. 

I’d never seen male lions in such great proportions; we’d only seen three lionesses so far. Needless to say, over the next days we found two prides: one with six females and eight 4-week old cubs, and one with 11 cubs and four females. In addition to these lion sightings, a mother cheetah and her three cubs entertained us on a couple mornings as we watched, hoping they would hunt. Come June, off-road driving in the area is being closed because of high-season congestion and I am glad to have had that last opportunity.

Elephant bull in musth.

Its hard to take photos of lions in shade at noon.

Mother cheetah with three near independent cubs.

Exploring Mwiba

Fellow explorers from left: Grant, Elliot, Colin on a rock overlooking Lake Eyasi. 

So, I may have fallen in love with this place. Having been their at the end of the dry season for the first time, I went back in the middle of January for a week with Colin Beale, my brother Elliot, and the manager Grant Burden for a week of birding. I couldn’t believe how different it was, and this is the sequel of that trip. The colors had changed from the dry greys, purples, and yellows to all shades of green bursts of yellow, pink, blue, white and red from all the wild flowers. With the help of Collin, whose ear for bird song and eye for the subtle differences in larks and pipits, we managed to rack up a good 202 bird species. Not bad for an actual total of 3.5 days birding interrupted by buffalo bulls, a walk to the escarpment where we watched a pair of Vereaux Eagles (aka Black Eagles) soar the ridge, and jumping into rock pools to cool off.

Compare the brilliance of the green in January to the dryness in the photo below. (Same ridge different angle)

(Photo courtesy Mike Beckner Nov. 2010)

I went back the next week alone and spent some time doing some longer walks, had the opportunity to see the area from the air and to refresh my mind having had a busy safari season last year. Anderson, Grant, Beazie and I spent most of the time driving around, climbing into kopjies, walking along drainage lines, and frogging at night. When it comes to trying to describe a paradise, I’m not sure my command of English is good enough.

Red milk weed.

Aneilema sp.

White gladioli.

Gloriosa superba- need we say more?

 Mwiba is full of little springs that will provide water throughout the year for wildlife. There are numerous drainage lines that cut through the escarpment and its fault lines, cutting chutes through granite and creating hippo pools to sneak up on. There are ridges covered in antique Acacias to picnic under, grassy open glades to walk through, rocky outcrops to climb and watch the sun go down from, elephant paths to follow through the thickets, and of course the diversity of animals is also outstanding. In the two weeks there we saw nearly 40 species of large mammal. Admittedly the abundance of game doesn’t yet compare with the Serengeti, Ngorongoro or Tarangire, but I love the opportunity and the potential here. I can get out of the vehicle at any time I want, wade into streams at night, climb rocks, and search for nocturnal animals at night.

Tree hide overlooking Sele spring.

Bwawa la kiboko (Hippo pool) No hippos there in the dry season and its deep and about 20m across- swim time!

Christmas & New Year Safari

Flying into Shaba, I peered out of the small plane’s window trying to spot game on the ground. The end of the dry season had left the river low and most of the vegetation was leafless and dormant waiting for the rains to come. Every once in a while I’d spot the vivid pink of a blooming Desert rose (Adenium obesum) or the bright red pods of a Terminalia orbicularis. The grey of the dry vegetation only made these colors more vibrant and the White-cheeked bee-eaters and Lilac breasted rollers shimmered.  

Adenium obesum or Desert rose

Terminalia orbicularis seed pod

Shaba is home to some dry country browsers. Though they are all selective leaf and shoot eaters, it’s interesting to see how each one fits in at a different level, the dikdik eating leaves up to 30cm above the ground, where the impala takes over, followed by the gerenuk and Reticulated giraffe. Then every once in a while an elephant pushes down a tree that even the giraffe couldn’t reach.

The end of the gorge in Shaba.

We drove an hour to the beautiful mobile camp that had been set up just for this trip. The black volcanic rocks promised fun with the UV light in the night when scorpions which glow fluorescent yellow in UV, would be coming out of their hiding places to hunt for insects and other tiny prey. Granite outcrops and an amazing gorge cut by the river beckoned us to boulder them, and how refreshing it is to jump in the river after a morning game drive as the mid-day sun reaches its height. Because the wildlife is much harder to find, most people get sent to other parks, but for the other guide on the trip, and myself, this was a great opportunity to have fun.

Walking the gorge.

The Maasai Mara complimented Shaba giving us great sightings of cheetah, leopard and more lion than wildebeest at this time of year. I’m always impressed with the abundance of wildlife year round in the Mara. If its not wildebeest, its topi, or zebra, or eland in astonishing numbers. Hippo, hartebeest, elephant, warthogs, Maasai giraffe, hyena, black-backed jackals, a couple wildebeest, reedbuck, banded mongoose and the list goes on. Combining the Mt. Kenya hartebeest, oryx and white & black rhino we’d seen at Borana and Lewa the trip mammal list came well over 50.

The young male leopard.