Kipunji Quest, Lintworm goes to Tanzania

I visited Ankarafantsika, Ranomafana and Isalo National Parks and a private nature reserve in the arid south west.

Safety is not much an issue during the day, but going out in cities at night is only safe in taxis and traveling between cities is not really safe during the night. There are enough stories of foreigners who do not abide these rules that got robbed, but in day light you should be perfectly fine, just don't do stupid things that you also should not do in European big cities....

 

Or just have a zoochat meeting I really want to go back, to see the other half of the island and get a full set of sifaka species, the current count is 4/9...

 

And so began the ZooChat Giant Jumping Rat Race...

 

Day 16 (January 8th)

Ruaha National Park is Tanzania’s largest national park and among the most species rich, but as it lies on the southern circuit it is not a visited often, so it is supposed to still have the “real” Africa feeling. We left Iringa in late afternoon for the 3.5 hour ride to the park. Once leaving Iringa the tarmac road quickly became a dirt road and the landscape changed to Acacia shrubland, more reminiscent of northern Tanzania then anything we had seen so far. It should have been no surprise though, as Ruaha is the southernmost tip where lesser kudu, “Kirks” dikdik, striped hyena and Grant’s gazelle occur. Naturally we hoped to see all of them . Ruaha lies on the crossroads of multiple ecosystems and it is one of the very few places where one could in theory see both lesser and greater kudu as well as sable and roan antelope. Our original plan was to camp in the last village, about 10 km outside of the park gate, but the praise that our guidebook had for these camp sites, did not reflect reality. One of my colleagues had said that the park bandas within the NP also had a restaurant, something our guidebook did not mention. After making some calls, it became clear that there was indeed a restaurant and there was a banda available (turned out we were the only guests…) so we set out for the gate. The first wildlife we encountered within the national park were Tsetse flies, which were unfortunately very common at the park gate, but fortunately absent at the bandas… The bandas were about 25 km drive from the gate and the first mammals we saw in the park were off course loads of Impala. We saw some Masai giraffe and a few hippos as well. In terms of birds we passed several flocks of Ashy starlings, a Tanzanian endemic looking like a golden-breasted starling, but then completely ash grey (*surprise*). Nice for my girlfriend were the first sand-grouse of the trip and for me the first herd of Greater kudu. Greater kudu are relatively scarce in East Africa, not like in Southern Africa where they are among the most common antelope. In both regions they are however among the most beautiful of them all.


The park bandas are next to the park headquarters which have a resident African elephant herd, which is always close and we found that our banda was even en-suite, a new improvement, so you did not have to call the guard to take a piss in the night. The bandas, just as the park HQ, 300 meters further on are not fenced, so wildlife comes and goes at will. Impala, Black-backed jackal, grass rats, Vervets and Yellow baboon are easy enough to handle, but at night hippos come out to graze and lions pass from time to time, so that is not something you would like to encounter when emptying one’s bladder…. The banda had some damage done, by an elephant scrubbing against it, but was fine otherwise


The next day would be one of our 2 full days we had to explore the park and try to get better views of Africa’s big cats…

 

Day 17 (January 9th) Ruaha National Park

The day started along the river drive, which is one of Ruaha's main roads and it is supposed to be a good place to see many of the park's mammals. The drive roughly follows the Great Ruaha river, the only problem is that the river is not so great anymore. Due to unsustainable use in the catchment area, the rives now becomes completely dry in the dry season, which was coming to an end when we visited. The river was thus reduced to small pools, often with a hippo or two in it. After the ubiquitous Impala we saw a small group of Defassa waterbuck and a small pool next to the road held to Greater painted snipe, a normally shy bird, so it was surprising to see two of them completely in the open. Other interesting birds in the first hour included White-bellied bustards, Grey-capped social weavers, Isabelline shrike, Buff-crested bustards, Yellow-collared lovebirds and a Wahlberg's eagle. Mammal number were low though. We saw a few Grant's zebra, Masai giraffe and Impala, but the most interesting was a small group of Grant's gazelle and a pair of Thomas's dikdik. Thomas's dikdik are part of the Kirk's dikdik species complex, which is now generally accepted as comprising 4 different species (though Groves found a fifth naturally), with the Thomas's dikdik, I have now seen all 4 species in the wild.

At the end of the river drive we saw our first African elephants of the day and my first Lesser kestrel ever. We then followed the route along the Mwagusi sand river and quickly startled a Lesser kudu. Lesser kudu are supposed to be rather rare in Ruaha and chances of seeing leopards or lions are higher than seeing lesser kudu, which drove my girl friend a little mad, as she did not come all the way to Tanzania to see some antelope, how beautiful they might be . In the following kilometers there were off course still no big cats and the more open savanna, filled with Baobab trees, made place for shrubland, not increasing visibility. It was however good for seeing small mammals, as we saw Common dwarf mongoose, Ochre bush squirrel and a few Yellow-spotted bush hyrax. Rock hyrax don't occur in central Tanzania, so bush hyrax are also found on rocks here, though this individuals lived in a large Ficus tree (ignoring the fact that there are also real tree hyraxes in Ruaha). We drove a bit further and found a White-headed vulture perched on a tree and we stopped at a junction little further to see whether we would take the road that turned right and crossed the sand river with a bridge. While looking at the map, my girl friend realized that there was actually a Lion laying on the bridge. Just on the other side of the bridge they made a kill, which explained the vultures in the surrounding area and the Lion on the bridge was part of a pride of 7, including some youngsters. The lions had obviously been around for some time now, as several cars passed without really looking at the cats that were laying along the road, we were however happy that we got to see lions pretty well finally, after seeing them from a driving bus in Katavi only. We asked a guide enquiring about Leopards and one had been seen earlier in the morning, just a few km further on. Needless to say this animal was long gone.

We continued driving along the Sand river and within an hour we found a second pride of lions, this time with young cubs. The mothers were looking with some appetite to a small herd of Masai giraffe grazing in the distance, but no action off course . Afterwards we were directed to Kilimatonge hill, which was supposed to be an area where leopards are common, but needless to say we did not see them. We got however good views of a foraging Egyptian mongoose and we found a small herd of Greater kudu as well. The Kilimatonge hill is supposedly also home to Klipspringers, but we did not see those either. On the way back to the camp we did see some nice birds though, including Crowned hornbill and a Pearl-spotted owlet.

In the late afternoon we decided to give another try to find a leopard at the hill, but this was chanceless off course. We did see 2 nice carnivores however in the form of a pair of Bat-eared foxes. That night we woke up with the roars of a lion, which completed the bush feeling and we were extra grateful of having an en-suite room .

 

I would not be surprised.....

The problem is that there are changes that he proposes that make sense, the only problem is that you have to dig through a lot of cr*p, where he states that his samples are 100% distinct, though you can see from the data they are not.

I have been thinking of creating a list with his changes and checking it critically with the data he provides and data from other scientific sources to see which changes exactly do make sense and which don't and for which there might be a possibility he right... I can make a start with that here soon, if anyone is interested

 

Day 18 & 19 (January 10 & 11)

The second day in Ruaha we did actually start before sunrise. Normally that is one of the best times to go wildlife watching, but it is also one of the best times to be asleep, especially after months of field work . Fortunately temperatures were relatively low throughout the day, so we could afford not to be up too early. But for one day we wanted to try and see whether we could find something nice.

We took the river drive again and spend the first 2 hours of the day to complete that circuit, before returning home for breakfast. The first mammals were Impala, Grant's zebra, Warthog and Yellow baboon, so that was nothing interesting.... It became better when we found a small family of Bat-eared foxes enjoying the morning sun. In Dutch we call them "lepelhond", which means "spoon dog", a name I prefer over the normal English one . The next carnivore was not far ahead as there was a lone Lion, an old male, sitting next to the road. It remains amazing how ignorant of cars such animals can be, as we were only a few meters away with windows open. If we would have stepped out of the car, things would have ended differently, but this lion performed some yawning and staring exercises and then walked away. That sighting were worth it to get up so early. We were still silently hoping for a leopard or a cheetah, but no such luck today, we did see Grant's gazelle and Defassa waterbuck at the same locations as yesterday though. After breakfast we decided to go west, which was the area were sable, roan antelope and Lichtenstein's hartebeest are supposed to occur. Long story short: it was a lot of driving with hardly a reward. The more we drove west the drier the landscape became and animal densities were low and the animals that we saw were much more skittish... We ended up driving in paths that were becoming slightly overgrown with lots of small Acacia (spiny....) growing on the road. So we were a bit afraid of getting a puncture (even though we had a spare tire), but we were in the middle of nowhere and there would be hardly any other visitors here, if at all.... In terms of animals we did see a Purple-crested turaco and a large male Eland. But at some point we decided to head back to a main road, as the springs we were supposed to find, turned out to be unfindable...We then spent 2 hours driving back to the park HQ, with no special animals at all, though a group of 7 male Greater kudu was nice to see. The late afternoon we spent again looking for leopards around the Kilimatonge hill, but off course we saw none, the only noteworthy animal was a potential slender mongoose, but that one disappeared to quickly...

The next morning we found out that we indeed had a puncture and while trying to replace the tire, it appeared that we had a jackscrew that was not working.... So if the puncture would have been worse, we would have been stuck in the middle of nowhere.... Fortunately we were now at the park HQ, so there was enough material to replace the tire, finding another puncture, which could be repaired. So with some delays we were off to the exit. There was no more game viewing, as we were running low on petrol too, so in the first village after the park exit, we refilled using 1.5 liter bottles filled with petrol.... This was enough to reach Iringa town again, where we would spend the night before continuing to the Udzungwa mountains.

After hearing so much praise about Ruaha NP, we were slightly disappointed by the park, though we saw quite some diversity in species, densities appeared to be low and. game viewing was not an easy thing, as most of the park is woodland or shrubs, instead of more open savannah... Still we saw nice animals and Ruaha is empty compared to the Serengeti for example, but it did not live entirely up to the hype...

 

Day 20 & 21 (January 12 &13)

After leaving Ruaha there was only one national park remaining on the trip, but the last was certainly not the least: Udzungwa Mountains National Park. Originally we were planning to also spend a day at Mikumi National Park, this park is only 1 hour away from Udzungwa and is yet another classical savannah park. But after 4 full day game drives we had a bit of game drive fatigue, so decided to skip it, as apart from invisible leopards, the only new interesting animals would have been Crawshay's zebra and wildebeest. And as Mikumi is disected by the main road to Dar es Salaam, we would pass through anyway on our way to the airport.

After a quiet morning in Iringa, where we picked up our new fancy handmade African trousers, we set out for the ride to Udzungwa. This was the last day that we had our own car, as our driver would go back all the way to Dar es Salaam the same day, as a car is really unnecessary in Udzungwa. The Udzungwa mountains are part of the Eastern Arc mountains (like the Usambaras were I did field work before this holiday) and with a protected area of over 2000 square kilometers, they are the largest protected forest block of the Eastern Arc mountains, protecting an amazing array of rare and endemic species. The main reason for visiting Udzungwa is to see 2 primates that only occur in the Udzungwa mountains: Udzungwa red colobus and the Sanje mangabey. Kipunji are also known from 1 remote forest, but that was not in the area we were going...

Leaving from Iringa we started a 220 km drive to our final destination. Iringa lies only a few km away from the Udzungwa mountains and we spent most of our time driving along the northern edge of them, but we had to be on the eastern side . The drive itself was rather uneventful, with lots of driving through degraded forest and bushland and the only animals of interest were Yellow baboons. Our destination was the Udzungwa forest camp, which has several nice bungalows, but also offers cheap camping, which is more my budget . The camp lies on the eastern edge of the National Park and is thus bordered by forest on one side. As the Udzungwa mountains can be quite high, I was somehow assuming we would be at a slightly higher altitude, thus not in the crazy heat that is normal in the lowlands of eastern Tanzania... Unfortunately, the camp lies at the base of the mountains, so it was incredibly hot and often humid . On the plus side, the location of the camp is pretty amazing and among the first animals we saw when relaxing on the lawn next to the restaurant was a large group of Udzungwa red colobus. This was red colobus species number 3 of the trip and arguably the most beautiful. It does not show that well on pictures, but these monkeys are amazing, but a little bit shy, unlike the scores of baboons on the lawn . The camp also has a small nature trail along the edge of the national park, so no need to pay the entrance fee and on the first afternoon walk it produced a group of Mitis monkey as well as a lot of movement on the forest floor, but no animal was seen... The most common birds here were Trumpeter and White-cheeked hornbill.

At night the forest came alive, with most abundant a large amount of Southern tree hyraxes calling. With some effort we could locate one and as a bonus we also found a Zanzibar dwarf galago, though it failed to show much more than it's eyeshine.

The next day we devoted completely to relaxing at the camp and getting the arrangements for the following two days in the National Park. Walking the small nature trail was very productive this morning, with not only a Hinge-bellied tortoise, but more importantly: 2 Checkered sengi, sengi number two of the trip . I did some bird watching as well on the fields outside the lodge and there were lots of small finches and waxbills around, most interesting were groups of Golden-bellied waxbills. In the afternoon I went shopping in town, to buy some vegetables for lunch and to pay the national park fees and arrange a guide for the next 2 days. It was quite a mistake not to take a backpack with me to carry the foodstuff... Apparently baboons are trained to recognize the small plastic bags in which vegetables (in this case tomatoes) are carried. So when I was happily walking to the NP office, I noticed a bit too much attention from a big male baboon, he left his tree and came running at me, as he had obviously noted the tomatoes... I chose for the option of just giving him the tomatoes instead of having to fight over it... I did not feel like picking a fight with such a monkey... The closest hospital was quite far away..... Arranging the logistics for the national park was easy fortunately (though expensive...), but unfortunately we were allocated a young and not too knowledgeable guide... On the plus-side, there were loads of Udzungwa red colobuses feeding right next to the road at eye level. When I walke back to the camp, the baboon had already consumed all my tomatoes and did not show any interest in me anymore. I did however not dare to buy tomatoes again

 

No reason to be scared of them, they are far from agressive, but the males demand respect and they will take any food they feel is theirs...


Day 22-24 (January 14-16)

Today was the first of the two days that we would actually enter the Udzungwa Mountains National Park. We were going to one of the most popular trails, the Sanje waterfall trail, which unsurprisingly leads to a waterfall in the Sanje forest... We did not start very early, which meant that it was hot and that the birdlife had died away mostly... At least they were quiet and the first half an hour of the climb we did not see much except some Mitis monkeys, Zanj sun squirrels and a juvenile Palm-nut vulture. Our guide proved to be incredibly unknowledgeable, so we took the effort to show him how juvenile Palm-nut vultures look like . I had secretly hoped he could show us some Eastern tree hyraxes or something else that is interesting, but that hope was in vain. After about an hour of climbing we reached a camp site, where we startled a Checkered sengi and a big group of Udzungwa red colobuses. You can never see those two species often enough. At a nearby viewpoint we were treated with good views of a Crowned eagle, which is the Harpy eagle of Africa. We then continued to a smaller waterfall and more importantly a nice pool to swim in . After this refreshment we followed another route downhill and we were treated with good views of the Sanje waterfall, which is about a 100 meters high. We also encountered some Italians who were stupid enough to try to climb the hill in the early afternoon heat + humidity... You could hardly be more foolish with 35 degrees and 90% humidity, but who am I to judge them

We felt blessed when it started to rain in the afternoon and a walk on the trail at late afternoon gave us views of another Checkered sengi. They are common, though just a little bit shy . My girlfriend wasn't very keen on doing night walks on the camp grounds as there could potentially be elephants around (they indeed come down sometimes and the village is protected by a line of bee hives, but the camp is off course not ). I could persuade her one night and we found a carnivore next to the path, but after some eyeshine it remained hidden, even though it was only 2 meters away, we could not see it through the vegetation and when we finally saw something it looked mainly brown.... There are several options including Marsh mongoose and genets, but I had the feeling it might have been an African palm civet, but with night walks you just cannot always see what you know is there.... With all the tree hyraxes calling throughout the night here, I finally realized that the calls and eyeshine I had seen in the Usambara's must have been from Eastern tree hyraxes, I just didn't make the link between these crazy calls and hyraxes....

The next day was Mangabey day. The Sanje mangabey is a mangabey that was only discovered relatively recently to science and only occurs in a few forest blocks in the Udzungwa mountains, fortunately some researchers have made successful attempts to habituate these mangabeys to human presence and they have succeeded with 2 groups. One group is followed by researchers, the other by tourists . The mangabey group we were looking for lived very close to our camp, but some English tourists had spend quite some time climbing steep slopes to find them, given the fact that most of them were past retirement age, that must have been challenging. We were thus very glad that one of the trackers met us and said they were very close today. I was a bit skeptical because we heard the same when going for the chimpanzees in Gombe and that took us 3 hours.... These mangabeys however proved much easier and within 5 minutes walking from the camp we were in the middle of a group. Unlike the mangabeys you normally find in western zoos, Sanje mangabeys are completely gray and a bit smaller as well. On pictures they look pretty boring, but following a group of about 20-30 of these monkeys through the undergrowth is pretty amazing, given the fact they are completely ignorant of people (if you read the accounts of the people who habituated them, it becomes clear the first years they were not like this ). As we walked with chimpanzees just 2 weeks earlier it was obvious to compare mangabeys and chimps and that is an unfair comparisons. With chimpanzees you almost like you are among fellow humans and their intelligence is obvious. Mangabeys are "just" monkeys though and it was cool to spend time with them, but the connection was just not there. They would just ignore us completely and go on with playing and foraging. After one hours or so we had seen enough and we both did not feel extremely well, as we had eaten something wrong, so the rest of the day was spent lying around and preparing for the travel home the day after... I did see a nice group of Retz's helmetshrikes though, which made me very happy, as these birds are part of my favourite bird family (vanga's and helmetshrikes).

At our last day in Tanzania we were welcomed at breakfast by a group of Angolan black-and-white colobuses which had decided to pick the shrubs opposite the restaurant as their spot for the morning. Unfortunately we had to leave quickly to catch the bus to Dar-es-Salaam, but it was a nice last goodbye to a wonderful place. I really want to go back to the Udzungwa mountains, as we only had the chance to see the eastern slopes, but these mountains harbor so much more, including an endemic giant sengi, so I guess I have to get back one day.

As mentioned earlier the main highway to Dar transverses Mikumi national park and fortunately we had a window seat, so we could do some game spotting during the 45 minute drive through the park, we were quite successful and saw multiple African elephants, Masai giraffes, Crawshays zebra, tons of Impala and also some Buffalo, Eland and the only Marabou of the whole trip... Unfortunately no wildebeest, but you can't have it all . The rest of the drive was pretty unremarkable with the usual traffic jam upon entering Dar, but our surprise came when we got out of the bus at the main bus terminal: we were met by an honest taxi driver. This guy actually quoted the right price when we asked to give us a ride, I was so baffled by this and it explained why bargaining was useless, as there was not much to bargain over.... After picking up some extra luggage and eating a final pizza we took another taxi to the airport for our midnight flight. When driving past rows of palm trees I wondered what all these house crows were doing, until I realized that there were swarms of hundreds of Straw-colored fruit bats flying through the city at dusk... That was a nice goodbye from Tanzania and a good end to a fantastic holiday there. The shock could not have been greater when I arrived at my home in the Swiss jura and noticed it was -10, especially because I "enjoyed" the 38 degrees of Dar just the day before....

All in all I had an amazing holiday and including my time in Amani I saw 65 mammal species and I guess over 300 bird species in this wonderful country. When looking back I definately want to go back to Lake Tanganyika and it's chimps, but also more time in both Kitulo and Udzungwa would be wonderful. I will go back for a short while to Tanzania in January and I hope I do get a chance to visit the Serengeti then or see Kilimanjaro... I have now seen most major national parks in Tanzania, except the ones where all the tourists go. This is something good in it's own way, but there is also a reason why tourists flock to the Serengeti and apart from the great migration there is one animal I really want to see, as it has been eluding me for years now: the leopard. That said; I would trait sightings of an Abbot's duiker over any leopard immediately

The next trip has already been booked, but that won't be Africa this time, but a hell of a lot colder and windier and will involve elephant seals instead of elephants...

 

Udzungwa, Zanzibar and Central African red colobus (in Gombe) were the 3 species.