Photo by Dona
We arrived at the Amani Nature Reserve in the evening. It was drizzling, but we were happy just to be there. The drive up was our first real test of our rental Rav4, and it did fine.
We had arranged ahead of time to make sure they were expecting us and we had a place to camp, but when we got there we discovered a large group of kids on a school outing from the international school in Dar es Salaam. The powers that be found us a nice camp spot a little removed from all the school campers, and we had an enjoyable evening. They appeared to be great kids and it seemed like a good opportunity for them to all learn a little more about the natural environment in Tanzania.
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| Creek in Amani Reserve
Photo by Dona |
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| Student Tents |
We were glad we had found a tarp to rig over our cheap tent, that's for sure.
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| Our Campsite
Photo by Dona |
We had arranged to be served meals at Amani, and they were pretty good. Breakfast was healthy and we always had great fresh fruit. As usual, it was more than we could possibly eat, and more than we were used to.
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| Breakfast at Amani |
We had arranged for a guided birdwalk the first morning. We thought we would be heading out from camp, but it turns out we needed to drive a ways to get to the starting point. The result was we were a bit late starting out, but we had a good walk anyway.
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| Flower Xxx White
Photo by Dona |
Flower Xxx Pink White
Photo by Dona |
Amani Flower Xxx Blue
Photo by Dona |
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| Xxx Weaver Nest
Photo by Dona |
We found some cool millipedes and centipedes. Or at least we thought at the time they were millipedes and centipedes. It now appears that the centipede may actually be a millipede, as centipedes are only supposed to have one pair of legs attached to each body segment.
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| There's hardly room for all those legs! | Photo by Dona | Many legs make traveling light work. |
| Millipede | ||
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| Centipede | |
There were quite a few slugs around, a result of the damp environment. It made me feal like I was back growing up in Bellevue, WA.
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| Slugs |
We got a good look at a Jackfruit tree. You certainly don't want to camp to near one of those guys. That's a lot of bombs hanging in the air up there.
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| Jackfruit |
Just like here at home, some of the pretty flowers were in fact nozious weeds. But most weren't.
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| Flower Noxious Weed | Flower Xxx Purple |
There qere a fair number of butterflies about, and we enjoyed chasing them down.
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| Xxx Orange | Xxx
Photo by Dona |
Xxx
Photo by Dona |
| Butterflies | ||
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| Dragonfly
Photo by Dona |
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| Lizard
Photo by Dona |
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| Xxx Nest
Photo by Dona |
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| Flower Xxx Orange
Photo by Dona |
Hibiscus
Photo by Dona |
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| Tree Xxx Fruit
Photo by Dona |
Much of the land around the Amani preserve, and some of the land in it, has been turned into tea plantations. Many of them were on steep hillsides, which did not seem like a very good idea.
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| Amani Tea Plantation | |
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| Fungi | |
Our guides showed us a cool plant which was a kind of fly trap. Its leaves were not nearly as broad as a Venus Fly Trap, but they closed up the same way when touched.
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| Leaf Open | Leaf Closed |
Several of the walks we took from camp ended up lower down on the road we took to get here, near where the road crossed a creek. On nice days, people spread their laundry out to dry in the sun. It seems like a strange way to do it, when you're used to a clothesline. But we do the same thing more of less sometimes, spreading things to dry by draping them over shrubs. Spread on the grass seemed like an ok idea, but some of them were spread on the more or less bare ground; it seems like they would just pick up more dirt doing that.
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| Clothesline | |
Our guides showed us a raspberry plant, which we tried. They were pretty good, although not as good as our cultivated ones.
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| Raspberry |
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| Flower Xxx Red |
Our guides were Ali and Rajab, two local guys who were Shambaa. Shambaa was their first language and their English wasn't super, but we got along well and their English was way better than our Swahili.
They both had young, sharp eyes and quick reactions, so our slowness and diffulty seeing things sometimes must have been a bit frustrating.
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| Rajab, Ali, and Dona |
This part of the world has a lot of spice plants, and it was interesting seeing them growing in the wild instead of ground up into powder in jars.
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| As seen normally | Leaves | Flower |
| Cardamom | ||
As usual, there were army ants everywhere. The people in Tanzania have different words for different kinds of ants. Black ants (army ants) are called one thing, reflecting the fact that they cause painful bites when encountered; but yellow ants, which don't bite, go by a different name.
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| Army Ants |
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| Flower Xxx Magenta |
There were not a lot of open grasslands, and the domestic animals we saw were fenced in. So their owners had a daily chore of going out and finding some feed, cutting it, and bringing it back to them. That's a lot of work; I think I would focus on grains or at least reduce down to only one goat.
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| Confined Cows |
There is a butterfly house project in Amani, so the boys took us to see it. It is in a bit of a delimma, as it gets income by both providing chrysalis to butterfly houses in other parts of the world, and by showing local visitors actual butterflies and chrysalis. So every butterfly they allow to hatch is an expended resource they could have sold. So there was not a huge profusion of butterflies wafting around the enclosure, but there were enough to make it a nice experience. We wondered how many escaped, however, as the netting was in need of repair. I hope they used some of the donations from people like us who visited to repair the enclosure.
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| Butterfly Xxx | Butterfly Xxx | Butterfly Xxx |
The butterfly below was really difficult to see. Even with the photograph blown up it took me a while to find it; for a long time I thought it was just a picture of some leaves and I had missed the butterfly altogether. It'll be easier for you, as it's already cropped.
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| Well Camouflaged butterfly |
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| Butterfly Xxx | Butterfly Xxx |
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| Butterfly Xxx |
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| Butterfly Xxx | Butterfly Xxx |
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| Butterfly Larve Xxx |
The birds were generally difficult to take photographs of. The light was pretty pour in many cases, and they flitted around in a hurry. So mostly we just enjoyed them. And some we still can't identify.
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| Xxx
Photo by Dona |
Xxx
Photo by Dona |
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| Purple Banded Sunbird
Photos by Dona |
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| Snail
Photo by Dona |
In the village where the butterfly place was located many of the residents were harvesting cloves and drying them for sale; they also were collecting cinnamon bark.
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| Cloves On Tree | Amani Clove Picking Ladder |
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| Cloves Drying |
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| Flower Xxx Magenta | Flower Xxx Lavender
Photo by Dona |
Flower Xxx Purple
Photo by Dona |
Flower Xxx White Red
Photo by Dona |
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| Amani
Photo by Dona |
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| Creek |
As in many parts of the world, local residents had small personal gardens which needed a lot of hoeing.
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| Man Gardening |
People in Africa use their heads as a third hand. Or at least women do. They must have much stronger necks than westerners do. Whether it was water, food, eggs, books, or something else, few people seemed to carry things in their hands. Carrying things on your head strikes me as a good idea, since the load is directly over your legs. So it is probably easier on your back in that regard, but the load is also being directly carried by your back as well as your legs, which doesn't seem like such a good idea. Hmmm...
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| Woman with Bucket |
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| Cinnamon Bark Drying |
Back at camp in the evening, I noticed there was a huge clamshell in the corner serving as a planter or pot of some sort.
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| Giant Clam Shell |
We took several night walks with our host, Peter, who is a South African Botanist and is very interested in Chameleons and Frogs. We came up with an Usambara Three-horned Chameleon (female), a Pygmy Chameleon (Rhampholeon Temporalis), and a number of different frogs. There were also boatloads of crickets laying eggs.
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| Pygmy Chameleon, Rhampholeon Temporalis | |
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| Cricket Laying Eggs |
My favorite was the tiny Barbours Forest Tree Frog (Leptopelis Barbouri).
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| Barbours Forest Tree Frog Leptopelis Barbouri |
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| Spotted Reed Frog Hyperolius Puncticulatis | |
We also found a Rocket Frog, which jumps off like a rocket when you try to catch it; and an African Clawed Toad (Xenophus Laevis). The neat thing about the Clawed Toad is that it was one of the first Pregnancy Tests. Not only that, but Dona's father used it on his mother to determine that she was pregnant with her older brother. Our host loved that, as this was the first person he had ever met who actually had used it (more or less; it was Dona's father and mother, but we didn't quibble about that).
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| Frog Bufo Brauni | Rocket Frog |
The sun came out on occasion, so we did some laundry and spread it out to dry.
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| Amani Camp |
Our cam at Amani also has spiffier accomodations, fancy tents which are much roomier than ours. There are also several shelters which we made use of for eating, taking naps in the afternoon, and playing bananagrams in the evening.
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| Amani Accomodations | Amani Refuge |
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| Amani Accomodations | Amani Toilet |
One of the walks winds down past some cliffs to a creek. There are violates growing on the cliffs, but unfortunately they were not blooming. There were also gravestone-looking tablets with crosses on them placed here and there, which we found detracted from the overall enjoyment of the natural environment.
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| Amani |
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| Cliffs with Violets | Rock and some Stage Of The Cross |
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| Amani Cliffs | Some Stage Of The Cross |
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| Dona by Cliffs | Amani Creek |
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| Common Waxbill | Flower Xxx Red White |
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| Wasp | Woman with Hoe |
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| Bee Hive | Butterfly Xxx |
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| Flower Xxx Red White | Black And White Mannikin |
On one of our walks we came across a place where someone was building a new cabin, essentially appropriating land in the reserve which was supposed to be maintained as forest. One of the commonest and most significant problems for habitat conservation in Africa.
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| New Cabin |
We saw a couple of butterflies on a dead plant stalk, and then a whole bunch of them. I suspect it was some sort of mating orgy going on.
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| First there was just one ...
Photo by Dona |
Then there were two...
Photo by Dona |
Then there was a butterfly heap.
Photo by Dona |
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| Butterfly Xxx Heap | ||
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| Flower Xxx Yellow
Photo by Dona |
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| Tall Trees |
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| Usambara Three-Horned Chameleon (F) | |
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| Butterfly Xxx |
We thought the Forest Fever Tree (Anthocleista grandiflora, "Mboga" in Swahili) was a bit strange looking, with a great bunch of branches sprouting upward from one juncture.
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| Tree Xxx
Photo by Dona |
Tree Xxx Leaves
Photo by Dona |
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| Flower Xxx Red
Photo by Dona |
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| Amani | Amani |
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| Amani Tree Plantation |
After two days it was time to leave, so we packed up and headed back down the narrow, rutted, slippery, twisty road, then north via Irente Farm to Mambo View Point.