Kipunji Quest, Lintworm goes to Tanzania

Well then Western Tanzania is another place on the to-visit list. I wonder when I'll get there. That list is certainly very long and is constantly added to with the various ZooChat travel threads, but I'm sure I'll get there eventually.

I know @KevinVar saw Palm-nut Vultures in Ghana as well, and that's another place on the list.

 

I remember seeing a pair of palm nut vultures in Kosi Bay in South Africa when I visited two and a half years ago

 

Day 7 (December 30th)

After the chimp hike we thought we deserved a resting day, especially as the next day would be a full traveling day... Sleeping late was impossible in a tent, as the temperature and humidity were high, so an hour after sunrise we were wide awake and slightly sour, as sleeping on the small inflatable mats was not the best treatment for our legs after the 5 hike in Gombe. A resting day off course did not mean doing nothing, we were camping on the shore of Lake Tanganyika and that lake is full of cichlids. Though the diversity is not as high as in Lake Malawi, Tanganyika still has 250 cichlid species endemic to the Lake, so it was snorkeling time again. The shores of Lake Tanganyika are quite rocky and that is off course a favorite cichlid habitat. Snorkeling in Lake Tanganyika was really fantastic, there are cichlids wherever you look and it is really an ecologist's dream. Every cichlid species has it's own ecological niche, some a bit higher in the water column than others, some on the sandy patches, some in the open water and also the variety in diets was very interesting, with many algae eating ones, but also fish eaters and ones that eat small invertebrates. I think that we saw about 20-30 different species of cichlid and as a bonus we also saw some spiny eels (Mastacembelidae). Snorkeling here was a lot more fun than on Zanzibar, though I imagine a larger coral reef would beat Lake Tanganyika experience.

After spending the morning in the water and on the beach, we took a tuktuk (Bajaj) into Kigoma town to buy bus tickets for the next day. In most places all buses leave at 6 am and only busier routes are served multiple times a day. Kigoma is really the edge of the world as far as Tanzanians are concerned, so all buses left only at 6 am... Which meant buying tickets a day before to be sure of a seat was a good idea... The next day we would be going to Sitalike, a small town on the edge of the Katavi National Park, which is famous for being in the middle of nowhere and the lack of tourists. There is one bus per day from Kigoma to a town close to Sitalike and it is operated by a company called "adventure connection". Normally African bus companies have names as "luxury bus", "comfort", "first class", "new force" or in one case "panda transport" (complete with pandas painted on the bus). The buses with fancy names are very often, not fancy at all and often not comfortable... So if the name was already "adventure connection" that did not promise a lot...

Buying the tickets was also an interesting experience, as I do not really speak any Swahili and the people in the booking office did not speak any English... Fortunately everybody in Kigoma was very friendly to us. Normally people in African towns see white people as some kind of ATM, but Kigoma is apparently so isolated that people are genuinely happy to say hello and ask how you are. What did not help when buying bus tickets is that Tanzanians treat the clock differently, for them 12:00 am is 6:00 am for every sensible person. So when we got our tickets we were supposed to be present at the bus station at 11:00 pm and departure was said to be 11:30. I already assumed this was just to make sure we would be on time and the bus would only leave at 12. This turned out to be correct, but being on time is never a wrong thing when there is only 1 bus per day.... Tickets were really cheap, per person we paid about 21.000 shillings, which is about 8 euros for a bus ride of 8 hours, so a lot cheaper than hiring a car for 150-200 USD per day....

The rest of the afternoon I spent reading books and trying to see a tropical boubou... Tropical boubous are not rare birds at all and I have been hearing them the whole year, but not seeing them. Also on the campsite they were everywhere and they are thrush sized black and white birds, so should not be able to see one would think... But the boubous did beat me again, I did see another Common duiker though, which was also nice. Finally we booked a taxi for the next morning at 4:30 in the morning, to be sure to catch that one bus...

 

By the way, a trip report focusing on mammals from this trip was just posted on mammalwatching.com, so if you don't want the spoilers, don't read it

 

Day 8 (December 31st)

This day started way too early for me. We woke up at 4:15 am and by 4:45 we were in the taxi to the bus that would take us to the middle of nowhere... Though our bus ticket said that the departure time was 5:30 am, I indeed left at 6 am, as we expected, so we spent over half an hour waiting in the bus... The long-distance buses in Tanzania are big buses, you would also seen in Europe. The main difference is that instead of 4 seats in a row, most have 5 seats in a row, which ensures that it just doesn't fit... All buses leaving from Kigoma leave at 6 am, so the first 30 or so kilometers we were driving behind the others. Then most buses turned left and we went right in a southwestern direction to the city of Mpanda. The first hour was all good quality tarmac and the landscape was nice and green and within an hour we saw the first Miombo woodland. Miombo (Brachystegia) woodland is originally the dominant habitat of a large band in Southern Tanzania, Zambia and Malawi. There are several bird species that prefer this woodland and roan antelope like it as well. Unfortunately it is also prime habitat for Tsetse flies, who carry the nasty Trypanosomiasis disease. Wildlife is not affected by it, but livestock is and that is one of the main reasons why population densities are still low in this corner of the country. The risk of getting infected by the flies is not so high, but their bite is painful and they are near impossible to kill... You can hit them and they will drop to the floor and fly away again...

After 1.5 hours of driving the tarmac ended in a small village and apparently we had to change into another bus there. Nobody spoke any English, but if your whole bus empties into the one next door, that is a hint.... From this small town we continued in a similar bus, but now completely full. We took a small dirt road and we were almost immediately surrounded by Miombo woodland. In fact we drove about 70 kilometers seeing only Miombo woodland and only 1 "house" that was sort of inhabited. Though there was nothing but woodland, I did not see a single animal, apart from some fleeing birds. My girlfriend saw a Smith's bush squirrel though, an animal I have seen plenty off in Botswana and Zambia.

After 70 kilometer or so we at once came in a clearing and there was a huge rack full of Coca Cola and Fanta bottles, waiting to be sold to travellers. The bus stopped here and was "attacked" by vendors selling chickens (BBQ or alive) and a whole range of other food items and drinks. From this village onwards the bus was driving another 100 km before reaching Mpanda. These 100 km were still full of Miombo, but now interspersed with farms and small settlements.

Mpanda is the remotest larger city of Tanzania, with all other settlements of name at least 8 hours away and Dar es Salaam would take two whole days to reach.... We were almost at our final destination: Sitalike, on the border of Katavi National Park. We changed buses in Mpanda and there were several minibuses passing through Sitalike, but off course it took one hour of waiting before it finally left town. From Mpanda it was only 30 km to Sitalike and the bus even made a detour for us to drop us at the hotel (I guess because they overcharged us anyway on the ticket). There are two hotels a "mzungu" would want to stay in Sitalike and they are next to each other, separated only by a river. This river is however full of hippos, with a resident pod of 80-100 Common hippo living in a small river... We first tried the Riverside hotel, but they originally charged us 50 USD per person per night, which we got down to 25 USD for 2 persons per night. But the room was crappy and the service horrible. So I crossed the bridge to the neighboring Hippo Garden hotel, which rooms and service were much better and I got the price down to 50.000 shillings per night for two persons (so slightly over 20 USD). So we moved and we saw a wild canid with a white tip to the tail running away, which must have been a Side-striped jackal, but I don't want to count a lifer in such a way... There were quite some birds in the Acacia trees on the hotel grounds, with Meyers parrots the most ubiquitous, Blue-headed tree agama were also nice to see. We got a room with a view as well, as 15 meters away was the hippo pod, which we could observe at 10 meters distance from the lawn. During the day all is fine, but when it gets dark the hippos leave the water to graze and they do walk over the hotel grounds at night.... So after having dinner in the restaurant we carefully checked whether we would not meet a hippo.... The only animal we saw was a Southern white-faced scops owl, which would be the last lifer of 2016 as it was 4 hours to midnight... We went to sleep early as the next day would be a long game drive through the Katavi National Park, the first real Safari park of our trip...

 

Day 9 (January 1st)

It was a rather untypical New Years morning, no hangover, no fireworks and no "oliebollen", but with hippos... Hippos do make these loud grunting noises and they start with it around 2 in the morning and then just continue...When going for breakfast they were off course the first mammals of the year. The first birds were Red-winged starlings, red-cheeked cordonbleus and Speckled pigeons.

Our car was already waiting for us and thankfully it was not an open vehicle but a closed one, as Tsetse flies were expected... After breakfast we drove to the Park HQ of Katavi NP to pay the fees, but naturally the office was still closed, fortunately our driver new where they guy lived, so he went to pick him up and we waited while watching a band of Banded mongoose running around the buildings and sheds. The night before I had given my girl friend some instructions about which antelope was which and which predators we might see, though I did have little hope she would remember, but how wrong I turned out to be....

By then the park guy was brought in and thankfully paying with Visa went right for once, so within minutes we were out. Our driver knew the park by hard and he insisted we go to the Katisunga floodplain first. The Katavi National Parks habitats can basically be divided in floodplains and wet miombo woodlands and where floodplains are good for wildlife watching, miombo woodland really isn't, especially not in rainy season when we were there... Getting to the Katisunga floodplain was quite a drive and in the woodlands we did not see any mammals, but birds were still aplenty and everything was tickable as it was January 1st . The birds we saw include White-crested helmet shrike, Malachite kingfisher, Ruaha red-billed hornbill, Bare-faced go-away bird, Red-necked spur fowl, Helmeted guineafowl and Green wood hoopoe. After some time the landscape got a little bit more open and the first mammals to be seen was a small group of African elephant that was quickly retreating in the miombo. Around the corner the first Impala were a fact and it was rather surprising they were not the first mammals we saw, as in any park Impala were the easiest game to spot by far...

We had now reached the edge of the floodplain and we saw some more nice birds including Black coucal and Black-winged kite. When we drove a little bit further my girl friend at once shouted "stop, go back, I saw a wild dog" and while African wild dog occur in Katavi, they are difficult to see and I expected to see a jackal... How wrong I was as 30 meters away a single African wild dog was standing on the plain.... This was one of the mammals I had really wanted to see in Tanzania, but I knew my chances were not very good, but there they were and the single dog was soon joined by several more, though all keeping their distance to the road. The drive along the flood plain was also very productive birding wise with Grey kestrel, Brown snake-eagle, Yellow-billed oxpecker, White-headed vulture, Eurasian hobby, Martial eagle and many European bee-eaters. After some time more mammals came into view and we saw several Masai giraffe, African buffalo, Grant's zebra and more Common hippo and Impala. These were naturally the first giraffes my girlfriend saw in the wild and as always the giraffes were amazing. Giraffes somehow look more natural in a zoo then in Africa, where they are complete freaks, but very beautiful ones. They are the mammal we stopped the car for most often every single day....

Continuing along the floodplain new birds and mammals kept dropping in with Saddle-billed storks, Southern ground hornbills (which are extremely common in Katavi), African wattled lapwing, African fish eagle and Pallid harrier as most notable ones. We also saw the first Warthogs, Defassa waterbuck, Bohor reedbuck, Topi and even a single Bushbuck, which can be quite shy...

From this point onwards we started following a seasonal river, which was like every water body full of hippos and in this case they were joined by some huge Nile crocodiles. A very good bird we saw here was an African crake, which untypical for a crake walked out in the open. From this point onwards we did not see a lot of new animals, but more elephants, giraffes, impalas, buffalo and more of the common bird species. At the edge of the floodplain we flushed a Spotted hyena and shortly afterwards we saw several Jacobin and Red-chested cuckoos. At Lake Chade we saw a large elephant group, which was unfortunately far away, but closer by where the usual topi, zebra & waterbuck. In the surrounding bushland we saw Dwarf mongoose and some Yellow-winged bats. A nice feathered surprise was a single Swallow-tailed bee-eater, a bee-eater restricted to Miombo and Mopane woodlands and even there surprisingly scarce. At this point we had somewhat surprisingly still not seen any cats and I was also hoping to see roan antelope and lichtensteins hartebeest, which should be rather easy to see in Katavi, but maybe not in the wet season.... National Parks close in Tanzania at 6:30 and this rule is rather strict unfortunately.... On the way out we drove along the Katisunga floodplain again, but apart from elephants close by and a Lappet-faced vulture there were no real highlights. During the whole day in the park we saw a shocking number of 2 other cars, which considering the landscape and abundance of birds and mammals was maybe a bit surprising.... But Katavi is promoted as being almost unreachable and allthough it is a long drive, it is easily reached with both public transport and normal cars, as the "highway" crosses straight through the park...

We finished our first day of the year with about 70 bird species and almost 20 mammal species and in the next day would also be spent completely within Katavi, so there was still hope for cats and nice antelope...

 

Day 10 (January 2nd)

Just as the previous day, we would have a full day in Katavi NP and when we were getting ready for breakfast, our car+driver was already there. Katavi is branded as being ridiculously difficult to get to and most people who visit are flown in and stay in luxurious lodges within the park, making it also ridiculously expensive. The truth however is that Katavi is easy to get to, it just takes some time... It can be reached by public transport or private car from major cities like Mbeya and Kigoma within a day and the Tanzanian government is very busy upgrading the major roads in the area. As the park can only be visited by car, we hired a car + driver in the village next to the park, where the hotel also was. For this we paid 370.000 TSH per day (about 150USD), this included driver + fuel and was for an 8 seater 4x4. Though this sounds expensive, it is cheap by Tanzanian standards...

This day we would start in the western section of the park, which is the closest to the head quarters and we figured that we were lucky as it was very cloudy and thus almost "cold"... The birdlife was still abundant, but mammals were nowhere to be seen for the first half an hour, except for impala off course... After driving through the miombo woodland, we ended up at Lake Katavi, which is a huge but very shallow lake, which is only there in the wet season. Actually it is more a flooded grassland than a lake, but at least it is full of birds. Unfortunately it was mainly the standard freshwater birds like egrets, White-faced whistling ducks and the like. But we added two more lapwings to the list: Long-toed lapwing and Spur-winged lapwing. A bit further were large floodplain grasslands, but more than many distant buffalo, waterbuck and bohor reedbuck we did not see. We were driving along the edge of the lake and floodplain, hoping to see lion, which are supposedly seen sometimes here, but apart from a Great-spotted cuckoo we saw nothing... We only ended up almost getting stuck in the horrible mud....

A bit further the landscape was completely open, with no woodland to be seen and it looked like the place had recently been burned... Though there were fresh traces of elephants, the first mammal we saw were Common eland, of which there were several big groups, though all very shy. Birdwise Spotted thick-knee and Black-bellied bustard were the most interesting ones. There were also many cisticolas and larks flying around. The problem with these is however that they are completely boring brown and all species look alike, so it is no fun IDing them in my opinion. A bit further we surprised two Bohor reedbuck next to the road and 2 km further we even found a male Southern reedbuck, which is supposed to be rare in Katavi. By then the road had almost disappeared, so we decided to turn back the way we came and go to the Katisunga flood plain, which was full of wildlife the day before.... Apart from the fact that we almost got stuck on a vertisol (black cotton soil) with the car, the 1 hour drive to there was rather uneventful... These vertisols are pretty horrible, when they are dry it is a dustbin, but a little bit of rain makes it extremely slippery and the soil clumps together, so if you walk through it, you carry an extra few kilos of soil on your shoes.... By car it is just extremely slippery as you lose all grip and once you get stuck you are in deep trouble...

At the Katisunga floodplain we did not see any new mammals, but we did add Grey crowned cranes to the list, cranes are very beautiful anyway and these crowned cranes are even more beautiful than your average crane. We also got to see some Topi close-up but that was it. In the topi case I really don't understand how the topi here are different from the ones in Rwanda or the Serengeti, as they look pretty much identical, but according to some I have now seen the rare Ruaha topi.... We were still hoping for lions, but initially we only got a group of elephants crossing the road. They remained very close to the road and we stopped the car to watch them. After some time we decided we had stayed long enough, but starting the engine and driving apparently was not what the young elephant bull wanted us to do, so he pretended to charge the car, which looks dangerous and makes a lot of noise, but normally they don't really charge and just bluff. Luckily this one was also bluffing .

Time was running out again and we decided to get to Lake Chada, which was full of wildlife the day before, but now via a different road... We almost immediately saw 3 Three-banded coursers taking a bath. Somehow Coursers are dry-country birds for me and seeing three in a very green setting in the water, was a bit surprising . When we continued we started seeing more Elands, which were surprisingly shy. Bird wise we did not see anything new, but it is always a treat to see Saddle-billed storks and Southern ground hornbills next to the car. Just before we had to turn back an Egyptian mongoose was surprised by us, making it the 3rd mongoose species of the day, after we had seen both zebra and dwarf mongoose earlier. We then had to make our way back and besides from some beautiful Masai giraffe, Broad-billed roller and a Black-headed oriole, we did not see anything exciting... We then realized that we hadn't seen a single other car during the day and the day before we also saw only 2 cars in the park. We also ended up seeing no Lions and Leopards or Roan antelope or Lichtenstein's hartebeest, apart from the leopards they are all supposed to be relatively easy to see here, but maybe only in the dry season...

Katavi National Park really is very beautiful and though mammal wise it was not extremely exciting, except for the wild dogs, the birdlife is amazing and if you would put a little effort, you could easily see 100 bird species per day. The evening we were getting to bed early, as the next day we had a bus drive of about 12 hours ahead of us (at least that is what we thought....)...

 

You're wrong there, he examined a whopping total of 4!!! skulls, which all fall within the variation of Ugandan topi..... It is only distinct in the females horns (n=1), when it is "smaller" than ugandae , but hey it might have been a younger specimen....

 

Day 11 (January 3rd)

As long distance buses mostly leave at 6 am (at least officially), we had an early start and by 6:10 we were waiting next to the main road. When leaving the hotel we were carefully checking whether there were any hippos walking around on the lawn, as it was still completely dark fortunately there were "only" a few giraffes. The manager of our hotel had booked the bus for us the day before, so when the "Mbeya express" arrived at 6:45 from Mpanda. I already said that buses that say they are "express" are not to be trusted and in the end that proved to be right....

By the time we left the sun was up and the first 40 km of the journey we would go straight through the Katavi NP. Within ten minutes we saw two Lions sitting next to the main road, unfortunately we could not stop the bus and most passengers missed them, but this is easily the best species I have seen on public transport. It was a male lion with his female and I am wondering whether they were waiting for some stranded cars . It was somewhat typical that we spent 2 full days in the National Park without seeing any cats, and after 10 minutes in the bus we did see 2.... After the lions we also saw multiple Masai giraffe, Impala and in the end also a small group of Lichtenstein's hartebeest, another species we failed to see in the 2 days before....

After leaving the park, we started our ascent into the Ufipa highlands and here it became clear that our bus, was not the strongest one and it took some time to conquer even the smallest hill... By then we had really left the wilderness of western Tanzania and the highland was dominated by farmland. It was somewhat reminiscent of the Ethiopian highlands in the area surrounding Bale National Park. At lunch time we then arrived at the town of Sumbawanga, where we all had to leave the bus and stand at 40 meters distance when it fueled up for the rest of the journey. But before we had an half an hour break at the bus station, where we were off course big attractions as "Mzungu". When the bus filled up and it was ready to leave, they thought it might be a good idea to change ALL the tires of the bus. Off course they could not have thought about it before the break started, but in the end we waited another 2 hours before we could leave... From Sumbawanga it was still about 7 hours travel with a normal bus and with every kilometer it drove it seemed to get more problems.... We finally arrived at the border with Zambia at around 7 and from there we turned north to Mbeya. But to reach Mbeya we first had to descend from the Ufipa plateau and then ascend to the southern highlands, where the city of Mbeya is located... And that took a lot off effort with the bus and it sounded like it was very close to a complete break down... When at 9:30 pm it stopped at a random spot and the driver started inspecting the bus, we were afraid we might have to spend the night there... But fortunately it could continue and by 10:30 we finally arrived in the town of Mbeya. It took only 15,5 hours to get there and as the road was in good condition the whole time, a private car should be able to do this in less than 10 hours..... Normally Tanzanian buses are not much slower than private cars, but that is because they all drive like maniacs, this bus was too slow for such things, which was good from a safety perspective, but bad for my patience.... We quickly found a taxi, ignoring all the people who wanted money for their imaginary services and fortunately it was only a short ride to our hotel, called "a peace of mind". It was a very nice and affordable place, but it was stocked to the rim with African "art", so it was extremely colorful, without an empty spot. So calling it peace of mind, was not really appropriate....

 

Could not agree with you more!!!



Hix

 

Day 12 (January 4th)

After the terror bus ride from the day before, this would be a more quiet day, where we only had to travel 120 kilometers to get to the village of Matamba, which is the gateway to Kitulo national park. Kitulo was our one chance to see Kipunji monkeys and there is next to no information about seeing them there, the main attraction of Kitulo is the wildflower spectacle taking place in the rainy season.

We started the day doing some shopping of stuff we would not be able to buy in a small town and get enough money as well... The most important item was buying me a hat. Somehow I am a professional in losing hats and caps as I go and this would be the 5th hat in about 1.5 years time.... After the shopping we went to the main bus station in town, where we found a minivan (matatu) that would take us to the larger bus station just out of town. These minivans are not made to be comfortable and they are also not made for people taller than 1.60 meter, so I was 25 cm too tall for this bus... Fortunately it was only a short ride. Larger bus stands are generally one big chaos with touts and vendors all over the place and as a white person you are a freak, so you get all the attention that you did not ask for.... This comes down to at least 5 people leading you to the bus you want to take and if you don't watch out they might put you in a bus they want you to take and you end up going the opposite direction... Fortunately we were in the right bus within minutes, but unfortunately there was literally no room to place my legs under my seat, so I was blocking the main path . At that point I was reading through my Rough guide and a young chap looked at me and said what a nice book I had and half a minute later he asked whether I would give it to him.... It never ceases to amaze me that they dare to ask such questions, as it was clear the book would be useless for him and he did not even speak proper English...

Luckily this bus ride was only about 1.5 hours and we were dropped in the nondescript town of Chimala. From here there was supposed to be a long and winding road up to Matamba and only one bus per day. It turned out that there is now a new road, which is long but not winding and there are multiple buses leaving throughout the day. The two of us were given the front seat, so we would be seeing exactly what the driver was doing, which is normally not good for your peace of mind and as seat belts only add useless weight, they were absent, which in emergency would give us a short flying experience.... Luckily this guy did not drive like a maniac and there was only little other traffic. It got interesting though that after half an hour drive we stopped next to a stream and they started cooling the engine for several minutes, as it was quite clear the bus was overloaded and we were ascending to a plateau.... Given the number of empty bottles at that spot, it was clear they were doing that more often. Ascending the plateau was interesting in this bus, as it did literally go at walking pace and it was clear the engine was still overheating... During the trip birds were largely absent, though we saw a nice Diederik's cuckoo, which is a standard cuckoo but then with a shiny-green back. When we finally were at the top, it was clear we were in a different world. It is amazing to see how African landscapes change very rapidly with a changing altitude. We were first going through dry and sunny Acacia bushland and at once we were on this green and cloudy plateau, full of potato farms. From there it was only 20 more minutes to Matamba, but we were struck by a huge downpour and unfortunately our backpacks were lying on top of the car. On arrival it was indeed clear that most of my clothes were now wet....

We found a small hotel to stay, but we had to wait before we could enter the room, as the rains had entered every single room in the small hotel.... After half an hour we arranged to meet with our contact person from Kitulo National Park, Geoffrey and our guide, Jaffari. Even though there is no information online, these 2 persons were extremely helpful and knowledgeable about what was possible, so we were finalizing the plans for our 2 days in the National Park. The park basically consists of 3 areas, the Kitulo grasslands, Njombe valley and the Livingstone forest. We wanted to spend 1 day each in the forest and the grassland, as that is where Kipunji and the flowers are. We would be camping in the park as well. We decided to spend the first day in the forest, then camp on the grasslands and spend the second day in the grasslands. Because Kipunji is nice, but the grasslands were supposed to be extremely rich in wildflowers and especially orchids. Through our talking it became clear that both did not have very high hopes of me actually seeing a Kipunji, but we would still try. Fortunately Jaffari, could arrange cooking materials and gas for us, so we would not have to bother. They also made arrangements for a car that would drive us to the campsite first to drop all heavy stuff and then drive us to the edge of the forest, as Matamba is the closest town to the national park, but it is still 12 kilometers away, without public transport. But there is a 4x4 that can be arranged (which we did) and alternatively there are motorcycles going the way.

So all arrangements were made and we were ready to find that monkey

 

Day 13 (January 5th)

Today was D-day for the Kipunji quest and by 8:30 we were ready to enter Kitulo national park in search of our monkey. Kitulo is said to be extremely remote, though it is easily reachable, but it gets about 10 visitors in a busy week.... Considering the beauty of that place and the diversity of birds, plants and rare mammals on the plateau and the surrounding forests that really is a shame. Due to the low visitor numbers, the warden in charge of the computer is extremely incapable of using it... Visitors have to pay by card and to pay a whole form needs to be filled in using a specific program. The warden was able to delete an almost completed form 3 times in a row, before he succeeded and we could pay the fees....

We then set off for the plateau and immediately after the park gate lay the campsite, which I thought would have been closer to the forest and we dropped our big bags here under a roof. From there we drove another 8 kilometers through beautiful montane grassland to the edge of the plateau. The plateau is treeless and covered in grassland, with an insane diversity of rare flowers and thus also in birds. Bird species numbers are not very high, but the line-up makes up for that. Straight after entering the park I saw an European quail and several Montane marsh widow birds followed quickly. Male widow birds have a bizarre breeding plumage. Normally they look like sparrows, but in the breeding season, they change their colour to black and yellow and if that is not enough they grow some extra tail feathers. These feathers are twice the size of the bird itself and very broad, so we dubbed these males "flowering sparrows". And because they don't look weird enough, they developed a ridiculous way of flying to attract females... Another avian highlight of Kitulo is the Denham's bustard, which we saw on the western side of the plateau. This is a large bustard with a very scattered distribution in East Africa.

When we were dropped at the edge, I saw that the forest did not actually start at 2000 meters above sea level, though we were 500 meters higher... And given the fact that we already saw rain clouds forming (rainy season in a cloud forest...), my hopes for actually seeing a monkey decreased somewhat. The hike to the forest edge was very beautiful though and made up for the shrinking chances of seeing a Kipunji... The descent was particularly slippery but went rather fast and relatively soon we found ourselves at the forest edge. The forest here is not an ordinary forest, but is dominated by giant bamboo, interspersed with Hagenia trees, apart from that, the flora was relatively similar to Europe, in terms of plant genuses represented. Here we saw some more birds including a Starred robin. There is only one path leading down from the plateau into the forest and this is also a path leading to a village, which we noticed when we were overtaken by some very loud villagers. Kipunji are said to be very shy and having these loud people walking in front of us, wouldn't increase our chance either. Our guide told them to be silent, but I was doubting how effective that would be. We waited a while to give distance us from them before we entered the forest proper. By then it had become very cloudy and is was clear that we did not have long in the forest, before we would get huge rains and we also still had a 12 km hike ahead of us to reach the campsite, the hike included getting back to the plateau, so also a lot of climbing involved....

When walking into the forest, I was off course easily distracted by every noise and movement and soon I was walking a bit behind my girl friend and the guide. Within 15 minutes of entering the forest, I saw a monkey jump away out of the small bamboo next to the path, scared of the people walking there. The monkey had a very strange shape, it was the size of a baboon with a shorter tail than the sykes's monkey and colossuses, which also occur in the forest... Could this have been my Kipunji? Off course it was gone in the vegetation and remained invisible when we scanned the trees and bamboo. In the mean time I did see a Livingstone's turaco, which was a welcome lifer, but it was not a monkey... We decided to leave the trail to where we thought the mystery monkey would be. Within moments the monkey appeared and it was immediately that this really was a Kipunji, unfortunately it disappeared quickly and we could not relocate it and it probably had gone down a steep slope.... It was a short sighting, but we had seen our biggest target and we were now two of the very few Europeans who have actually seen this monkey at all, which is not a big surprise as it was only discovered in 2003 and lives only in 3 remote forests... We felt incredibly lucky as Kipunji are said to be very shy and most people from the national park had hardly ever seen it and were rather doubtful we would succeed... We decided to push our luck and walk a bit further to see if we could find something else, but except for calling Angolan b&w colobuses we saw/heard nothing.

We kept dry until we reached the plateau, when a real tropical rain started, which came and went the whole time, drenching us completely. We did see a nice Red-winged francolin though and we scared a Common duiker, which resembled much more the common duiker of the Ethiopian highlands, than one from the Tanzanian lowlands. We arrived soaked at the camp site, but extremely satisfied.

I know of only one other adventure of "tourists" to find Kipunji and those people spent several days in the Udzungwa scarp in an extremely remote forest, to see one Kipunji... We were more lucky, finding one within 15 minutes and I feel that if you devote more time you have a good chance seeing them. You can hire a porter and then you can easily camp in the forest where the Kipunji are found and if you are silent you should be able to find this monkey if you devote 2 days to it. The Livingstone forest where we saw the Kipunji is very beautiful and apart from Kipunji it also houses Rungwe dwarf galago and Abbot's duiker, 2 other Tanzanian mammal endemics. Plants and birdlife are also very special and I would love to spend more time in this forest, but preferably in a drier season, as the rains are really horrendous here, making it extremely cold and misty....

Mission accomplished, day 2 we could devote to walking the plateau looking for plants and birds

 

Day 14 & 15 (January 6 & 7)

Kitulo National Park is famous for it's flowers and is also known as "the Serengeti of flowers" and "Gods garden" and both names are very applicable. Kitulo's main feature is an open grassy highland and they used to get some snow years ago, that seems to be a thing of the past now, but it was still only just above zero when we woke up on the plateau. Fortunately the weather was good for the whole day and we spent walking through the grassland with our guide who was very knowledgeable when it came to plants. There are over 40 species of orchid on the plain and numerous plant species that are (near-)endemics to the plateau. The highlights are listed in a good small guide by the Wildlife Conservation Society (Orchids and Wildflowers of Kit ). We were in the Kniphonia season and at one point there was a huge field turned red and yellow because these flowers dominated and these flowers were visited by a large number of Malachite sunbirds, which are among the most beautiful sunbirds around, being large, with a long tail, and being completely bright green (at least the males....). Other common species included African stonechats, Pallid harrier, Montane marsh widow bird and the ubiquitous Augur buzzards. The only mammals we saw were several Common duiker and we missed the Southern reedbucks which also occur on the plains....

After 5 hours of hiking we were very satisfied with the sheer number of flowers and the beautiful landscape and we drove back to the little village of Matamba.

The next day we took the early bus to the main road to continue our way north with as destination the town of Iringa. As it was market day 3 buses were packed at 6 am and ready for the drive down from the plateau. Fortunately this driver showed great skill in the descent, unfortunately our next bus driver showed remarkably little driving skills.... After waiting for 1 hour along the main road for a bus to stop that was not full we were placed in a bus that had 1 free spot left, but as we were two I was gently placed in the path between the seats. It became clear very quickly that our bus driver thought he was driving a motorbike, instead of a bus with 80 passengers.... He did overtake anything that moved and he overtook even by going of the road driving on the gravel next to it, to avoid a collision with oncoming traffic. I assume he did not want to wear out his brake pads, not even for speed bumps. I have never felt so uncomfortable in a moving vehicle.... The statistic of over 10.000 traffic deaths per year in Tanzania was also not helpful in calming us down, especially because we passed multiple accidents along the way.... After about 3 hours of sheer madness, he got a fine for speeding (no surprise here...) and he changed his driving slightly. After a total of 5 hours of fear we finally arrived in Iringa, which happened to be a very relaxed highland town, just what we needed and they have some of the best food I have come across in Africa, which was also welcome after the rice and bean parties in the previous days.

Next stop: Ruaha National Park, which is one of the largest national parks in Africa with an extremely high species count by savannah standards (20 antelope species, almost 600 bird species).

 

Having lived just outside Iringa for a year at the end of the last century, I would concur with this positive mention of it - and of its food. We spent many happy hours in the Hasty Tasty 2 cafe, enjoying good food and wondering what ever happened to Hasty Tasty 1. And Ruaha is wonderful: I'm looking forward to your account of your time there.

 

This trip, which lasted 24 days costed about 2800 USD per person, only excluding the flight from Europe to TZ. Main expenditure was hiring a car for several days and the costs of the national parks. Accommodation was either camping or relatively cheap hotels....

My last trip in Ethiopia must have been about 1000 USD for a whole week, of which 60% was the rental car, excluding the flight.

In Madagascar I could travel for 4 weeks on 850 USD using public transport only, and excluding the flight to get there. Accommodation and national parks are just much cheaper there.

 

This pricked my ears up. Which parks did you visit? I thought safety was an issue in Madagascar, but perhaps not?

Great thread, by the way. Add me to the tally of (very) jealous readers.