Kibo Home B&B
Dona, Nandetom, and Ram
Dona and I arrived in Arusha/Moshi about 21:00, exhausted from our long travel. Ram had arrived a few hours earlier and presumably was recovering at the Kibo Home B&B where we had booked rooms. It was 88°F (31°C) when we arrived, and a note in my diary says "Don't bring both down sweater and pile vest unless climbing Meru or Kili." Since I was still relearning how to walk after falling off the arena roof, I wasn't going to be climbing anything.
We were met at the airport by a taxi sent by Kibo. The driver, Honest Venance Silayo, was friendly, good company, and already knew his way to Kibo since he had taken Ram a few hours before. "Knowing where you are going" is non-trivial in this neck of the woods, as there are no street signs and things like Google Maps aren't much use. I see there is an "Honest on Time" taxi service but that is not him — he has his own car and doesn't work for someone else. Honest told us he is Chaga, and that "Kilimanjaro" means "our mountain" in Chaga. However, the Wikipedia reference above suggests other, slightly different, meanings, such as "White Mountain" and "Unclimbable Mountain." In any case, we can recommend him as a taxi driver:
Honest Venance Silayo
Box 61, Moshi, Tanzania
+255 755 292 538
+255 656 915 460
+255 784 556 581
Why three numbers? I don't know, but I know Dona and I had trouble a few years ago because her service in Tanzania only worked with certain prefixes — apparently different companies don't necessarily work together.
Our hostess at Kibo, Nandetom, was great.
Our itinerary for the week put us in Mkomazi National Park for three and a half days, and then up in the northern Usambara Mountains at Mambo View Point. Mkomazi butts up to the border with Kenya; on the Kenyan side is Tsavo West National Park, renowned for its elephants and other wildlife. Now that Mkomazi is a somewhat protected area, wildlife, which doesn't respect borders, is spilling over to help repopulate the area. We had high hopes for some good birding and maybe some cool surprises.
Max, our driver from Leopard Tours, met us the next morning with a Toyota Land Cruiser outfitted for seven passengers plus a driver. In addition to Max, we had Sharif as a camp handyman and cook. Our vehicle did not look like the one referenced above; virtually all safari vehicles are ordered with custom configurations. Ours looked like this. Max and Sharif sat up front, and Ram, Dona and I each had a whole row to ourselves. We were going to be "roughing it," camping in tents while in Mkomazi. We towed a trailer behind with all the camping gear and any of our personal gear we didn't want immediately accessible.
In the Leopard Tours pre-trip handout we were told to bring our own sleeping bags, so we had brought light-weight bags we used in Namibia and elsewhere. However, it turned out that Leopard provided good cots with nice foam pads, sheets and blankets, so we didn't need our own bags.
We headed down the highway to Same, where we turned off and headed to Mkomazi; once at Same it's a short drive to the park entrance, where we checked in. We were there for a half-hour or so and enjoyed taking pictures of the birds and critters hanging around.
Our campground was in a spot that had quite a collection of birds. We spent most mornings sneaking up on them before breakfast. And breakfast was a real treat. Sharif set out mango juice; a fruit plate with superb pineapple, watermelon, mango and banana; crepes; and eggs and sausage. We stuffed ourselves.
The African Orange-Bellied Parrot pictured below is also known as the Red-Bellied Parrot.
On our first night at camp, as we were organizing stuff and getting ready for the morning, one of the screws holding my glasses together fell out. It was lost somewhere, maybe much earlier in the day. Fortunately, I had a glasses repair kit with me. Unfortunately, the one screw in it was a tad bit too small and just stripped out. I had an emergency extra pair with me, but after some fiddling and scrounging and thinking about it I managed to kludge a repair with a staple we scrounged somewhere.
There are a number of "special" campgrounds that are farther in the bush; we didn't check any of them out, unfortunately. They have to be reserved, but apparently you can do it when you show up at the park. Something to remember for next time.
The photos below give an idea of what this part of Mkomazi looks like. They were taken on the way back to camp. The South Pare Mountains in the background are not in the park. Mambo View Point, where we went after leaving Mkomazi, is up at the top of the Usambara Mountains, a similar range a bit further south, on the edge facing the park.
We spent three and a half days birding in the northwestern part of Mkomazi. We saw quite a few birds...
I think it rained pretty much every day, but mostly it didn't rain when we were out exploring. However, on one occasion it poured pretty hard right before we left camp. Even the birds looked bedraggled as they tried to dry off.
There are quite a few different starlings in East Africa, and most of them are better looking and I hope less of a disturbance than the invasive European Starling we have here in the United States.
There are also a lot of different weavers in East Africa. We got a kick out of watching them build their nests, each species with its distinctive architecture.
Hornbills are one of Ram's favorites. We didn't have a lot of different species, but we sure had a lot of the ones we did have. We got a kick out of watching them devour large insects, like the African Grey is doing below. The coolest were the ground hornbills, which looked almost like vultures because of the red on their heads.
There were also boatloads of shrikes. We kept trying to find one with a big frog or agama speared on a thorn, but we never did.
We came upon a small flock of Long-tailed Fiscal Shrikes doing some kind of wild mating ritual, all bobbing up and down frantically flashing their tails around.
We had to watch out for all the spurfowl, francolins and sandgrouse running around in the road.
We saw quite a few raptors; I was surprised by the number of pygmy falcons.
The Whydah's were still able to fly, which continually amazes me. How they have avoided extinction by predators is beyond me, given how poorly they fly with those long tails. The Pin-tailed Whydah is a brood parasite, and has unfortunately been introduced in California. Despite being a cool-looking bird, it would be better if it stayed in East Africa where it is native.
Then there were the outlandish barbets. They look like something a child painted.
We were delighted with all the bee-eaters, but disappointed that we did not find any carmine bee-eaters. We saw them on our first visit to Mkomazi a few years ago and we really wanted Ram to see some, but it was not to be. Something saved for next time.
Then there are the crazy birds. I really wanted to see a Secretary Bird kill a big snake, but while we saw a fair number of Secretary Birds, we never saw any arguments with snakes.
There were Go-away birds pretty much everywhere, and as their name suggests, they warned everything else that we were there and that they should "go away."
The first time we came to Tanzania, Dona really wanted to get a picture of an African Hoopoe. We did see a few, but we did not get any pictures. But this time we saw quite a few and managed to get some pictures.
The Hamerkop is a prehistoric looking bird; they make you feel like you would be wise to look up, down, and all-around for large and dangerous things from ancient times. They have a really weird posture, low slung in some cases and upright in others. They can also have huge nests.
The colorful rollers were a treat, as always.
We found that it worked pretty well for each of us to have a whole row to ourselves in the vehicle. That way we could shoot out of either side without interference, and the first two could usually shoot forward without problems. The person in back sometimes had to work around those in front, but it usually wasn't too much of an issue. However, as I wrote in my dairy, "3 is ok for this vehicle, 6 will be way too crowded."
We spent three full days in Mkomazi, but we barely scratched the surface of the park. We spent the entire time in the far northern section, partly because of all the rain which had made many roads impassable. One day we stopped for lunch by a small stream. We were disappointed because it looked like there should be lots of birds around, but there weren't. It was not the best time of day; I would have liked to go back early in the morning.
There was a small tree at our lunch stop that had some reddish leaves on it; or at least they looked like leaves, mixed in with its regular green leaves. They turned out to be a seed pod.
In addition to the weird seed-pods Dona got a great shot of a Red-veined Dropwing dragonfly.
My dairy / notes also say "Bring a folding stool! Useful in shower & @lunch." That's because sometimes there weren't good logs or rocks to sit on, and Dona and my old bones found it a bit difficult to sit on the ground. As for the shower, I think that was because the showers in the campground had no shelves or hooks, and a stool would be handy to put clothes and things on while you were in the shower.
We didn't see many sunbirds in Mkomazi, which was a disappointment.
But we did see some really cool Vulturine Guineafowl. There are lots of Helmeted Guineafowl around, but these were pretty crazy different.
Whew! That is a lot of birds, and we saw a lot more than that. While we were roving around looking for birds, we ran into a few mammals. There were some small herds of elephant, and we often saw dik-diks scrambling for cover in the low brush. There were also Hartebeest and Gazelles but they were quite a ways off, and we caught glimpses of kudu.
The best way to differentiate a Grant's Gazelle from a Thompson's Gazelle is that the white on the rump of a Grant's extends above the tail, while on a Thompson's it doesn't. Some people think that if the gazelle has a black side-stripe it is a Thompson's, but that is not always the case; some Grant's also have the side-stripe.
Then there were monkeys, mongooses, and giraffe. We got to see some young giraffes sparring — they wrap their necks around each other and beat their heads against each other, and in this case one tried to lift the other's hind leg out from under him.
The giraffe species can be differentiated based on the pattern of blotches on their coats; there is a nice chart in the Wikipedia article referenced below.
In the campground camped next to us was a photographer from Norway with three students from a bird club in Arusha. He said he was taking pictures for a bird guide to Mkomazi that a friend of his, a professor in Dar es Salaam, was writing. Unfortunately, Per has a drinking problem, and on top of that he really wants you to know how much he knows and how ill-prepared you are. He kept us up with his drunken talking in the evenings. One morning when we talked to him he had already had eight beers before breakfast, but insisted he did not have an alcohol problem. He couldn't understand why his girlfriend had left. The boys, Abdul, James and Jonas, apologized for his behavior. We tried to ignore him; I felt sorry for the boys, as they were nice kids and seemed to be conscientious, hard workers.
On our third day we were heading out as usual for some late afternoon-evening birding when we came across this:
Per's vehicle, flipped over in the road. Per was lying in the road, drunk, but otherwise not obviously hurt. The boys were a bit bewildered; one seemed slightly injured. Another safari vehicle showed up a bit later, along with some workers from the park.
Max has been in the guide business for quite a while; as a result, he's pulled more than one vehicle out of a bad situation. There was a berm on the side of the road, but other than that the ground sloped gently away, albeit with a few trees and shrubs in the way and some shallow holes here and there. We trimmed the worst branches off the trees and shrubs and Max drove down and backed up at right angles to the vehicle. Everybody scrounged and we found enough chain and heavy webbing or rope to make a flip-line. Then Max drove slowly forward and turned the vehicle upright.
There was a lot of broken glass all over, and the road looked wet in places. Amazingly, there didn't seem to be blood anywhere, and the boys still seemed fine.
Another couple from our campground showed up heading back towards camp. We asked if they could take the injured student in to the hospital to have him checked out. I think it was Jonas but I'm not sure; Dona thought he might have a fractured patella. The couple agreed to take him in, so he squeezed into their car and left. Per insisted he was fine and was not interested in going back with the parks folks. There was not much more for us to do there, but the evening was pretty much shot so we turned around and worked our way back to camp.
We hadn't been doing any hiking, so we arranged to go for hikes all day the next day. This involved driving back to the main gate / ranger station and arranging for an armed park ranger to accompany us, a requirement in most of the national parks in Tanzania when exploring on foot. The next day we drove back to the gate and picked up Stan, our ranger. Then we headed north to a picnic area by a lake, where we planned to start walking.
We had been to the lake a day or two before, but hadn't seen much — no waterbirds except for a lone Jacana. I noted at the time that evening that the bottoms of my feet were sore and my legs were pretty tired just from standing in the vehicle.
We started out planning to walk around the lake, but we soon discovered it was too wet to do that. We switched directions, noting that elephant(s) had been that way recently. Soon enough we came across a young male, and he was a bit upset that we were there. We backed away, but apparently I did not back away fast enough because everyone gave me grief...
We didn't walk all that far, but we sure did get tired. We had some good views of giraffes, a quick glimpse of a honey badger, and some more distant zebras and hartebeest, as well as some good birds and butterflies.
Towards the end of our hike we each lay down to rest for a bit. Ram took off his glasses and sat them on his chest. Unfortunately, he got up in a hurry at one point and forgot about them, only to discover it a bit later. We looked pretty hard but never did find them. Fortunately he had another pair along, but he also sent a note to Dawn to bring him a spare pair when she came.
When we got back to camp, Per and all three boys were there. Per had somehow managed to get a new car. He was back, and had three bottles of hard liquor, Cognac. Jonas said he "will be ok," patted his hip and said "crushed a little." We weren't sure what that really meant. He was limping a little but he's young and things heal a lot better and faster when you're young. We wish him the best. The boys were scared, and had tried hiding the booze but Per found it. What can they do? They're young and inexperienced and he is the one with the power.
When we were talking about how Per could possibly be given a new vehicle and allowed to drive it around the park, Max said it was probably because it was tied to the government. Because Per was working on a government contract on a project for Tanzanian Parks, he didn't get a citation. The park service is crazy for not taking him off the project. Turning a drunk lose on park roads with tourists on it is crazy; talk about bad publicity if he hit someone!
The problem with butterflies is there are so many species that look similar, so for me it's often impossible to figure out which is which — particularly since they won't sit still and all I ever have is an often poor photograph. Couple that with the fact that they often look completely different when viewed from the bottom than from the top, and the fact that they are often dimorphic, and I'm ready to throw up my hands and call it a "medium-orange-and-black-guy". When I look in a guidebook it may show one species and I think "That's it!" But upon further investigation I discover there are other species that look pretty much the same. Such is the case with the Acraea shown in the middle below. It looks just like the Acraea serena which our field guide, Insects of East Africa by Dino J. Martins, mis-labels as Acraea eponina, the "small orange acraea", but gives the correct name for of "dancing acraea". The iNaturalist link above also calls Acraea serena the "small orange acraea". In this particular case, if one believes the wikipedia article, it's Acraea serena, a.k.a. "dancing acraea", formerly mis-identified as Acraea eponina, a.k.a. "small orange acraea". Confused yet? Yeah, so was I. In most cases, it's not a case of mis-labeling but of similar species. Sometimes the similar looking species aren't even in the same genus, which makes it really frustrating.
During our walk we found some porcupine quills, but we did not get to see an actual porcupine. Dangit! The quills are huge, growing up to 50 cm long! It's unclear to me whether the quills we found were from the Crested Porcupine or the Cape Porcupine (Hustrix africaeaustralis), as this area is in both of their ranges and the quills look similar. In any case, African porcupine quills are much longer than those of the North American Porcupine, whose quills are only a few inches (5 to 7 cm) long. Dona stuck them in her hat, but they kept falling out.
The photo below shows the tents we stayed in at the campground. They didn't have a lot of extra room in them, but then we didn't spend all that much time in them either. We made good use of a cafeteria/kitchen building nearby where Sharif prepared meals, we ate, and played muggins (a form of dominoes), bananagrams, and reviewed pictures. The tents seemed to keep the bugs out fine, although there weren't that many bugs around. On the other hand, even a few bugs usually find Dona, and she did pretty well here.
We had one last morning looking for birds, then returned to camp, where Sharif fixed us his usual outstanding breakfast. Then we broke camp and packed up. Sharif would be leaving us after this, and Max would drive us up to Mambo View Point.
Our original plan was to drive up to Mambo View Point from the north side, but the road on that side was washed out and impassable because of all the rain. Leopard Tours sent another vehicle to pick up the trailer with the camping gear and Sharif in Same. So we drove back down to Same where we said good-bye to Sharif.
The dung beetles have really weird looking heads. I suspect it's useful as a shovel to dislodge and allow them to get under or into stubborn, sticky poop.
When we got to Same we waited for the other vehicle to make sure Sharif wasn't left stranded. While waiting, we watched life unfold in a small town. I am always amazed at how much African women can carry on their heads, and how well they can balance it all. They all have perfect posture, and maybe that's more-or-less required if you're carrying things on your head. In any case, you don't see many men carrying things on their head.
Because many people don't have cars and motor-bikes, you see a lot of two-wheeled carts. It's impressive how much one person can move around with one of those. I don't have a clue how much all the food in the cart on the left weighs, but the woman on the right has a cart full of water jugs. She has about 15 jugs, and each one holds at least 20 gallons. That's 300 gallons, which is over a ton!
