Maasai Giraffe
Giraffa camelopardalis
Douglas, Tumaini, Dona and I left Simba Farm right after breakfast. We were headed back to Arusha town via Arusha National Park. The park has a great variety of wildlife, partly due to its encompassing Mt. Meru and therefore has a great diversity of ecosystems within it.
We took the "back way" to the park, wandering through small villages and across a crumpled volcanic landscape. There were large boulders just lying around everywhere. Eventually we arrived at the Momella Gate to the park, where we picked up a ranger, Dominik, to accompany us on our hikes.
Our plan was to drive up as high as we could and then hike to the bottom of Mt. Meru's crater, but we saw a lot of game at the Waterfall Hike trailhead so we adjusted our plans to do that first instead.
There were quite a few giraffes in the first meadow by the trailhead, along with warthogs and waterbuck. At one point we got to within about 4m of a giraffe, which gave you a totally different perspective on their height — their whithers is over my head! Wow!
We found a cool little frog. In Dona's picture, it looks like it has some kind of injury with sores or red fluid on parts of its body. But I don't see them in my image so maybe he hopped from one place to another and picked that up along the way. Nobody remarked on it at the time...
We came across a bazillion ants busily going somewhere. You definitely wanted to pay attention to where you were putting your feet.
We were hiking to the Tululusia waterfall.
As we were enjoying the waterfall, another group of hikers came up the trail behind us and we about fell over. It was Sid and his climbing group! They were on their way down on the final leg. Our plan had been to meet him back in Arusha at the end of the day, but he talked with his guide and broke off to finish the day with us. A treat for us, for sure.
Once back at the car, we headed up the mountain. Along the way we got glimpses of red duikers, bushbuck, and a suni.
The road up the mountain is a two-track in parts, and because of the high rainfall around the mountain and the steepness of the road, it historically gets severely rutted and impassible. So now the two-track is concreted in parts. But only the tracks, as concrete is expensive and laying it down up there is labor intensive. The problem with that is a two-track only works well for vehicles with approximately the same wheelbase, and our vehicle was a bit longer than whatever the road was designed for, particularly on curves. The concrete tracks are in parts much higher than the ground they are on, so if you go off the tracks you end up stuck, the same as if you were in mud and spun your wheels and dug holes.
We were doing pretty well, but in places only part of some tires stayed on the road. Eventually one wheel went off the road completely with a resounding "CLUNK!" and the Land Cruiser stopped dead. It didn't take a rocket scientist to understand the situation. The axle was resting on one of the brackets for the wheel-spring. I thought we would have to jack the vehicle up and then pile rocks under the wheel. But Douglas got us out with an ingenious alternative. We piled rocks behind the wheel to make a short ramp. Then he put the vehicle in 4WD with the differential locked and backed up onto the rocks. There was a little grinding at first as the free wheel was pushed across the rock it was resting on, but it quickly raised back up on the rocks we had piled behind it. Then we piled more rocks in front of the wheel so we could drive forward back onto the two-track. Those are the kinds of really useful life lessons they don't teach you in school... The pictures below were taken on the way down, where we built up the sides of the place where we went off so we could make it back around.
At the end of the road we hoisted our day packs and hiking poles and headed up a trail. For Sid, this was the second time he was climbing up Mt. Meru, although we weren't going to the top this time — only to the bottom of the crater.
We didn't see a lot of birds, but we did see some cool ones. The highlights were a Bar-tailed Trogon and Hartlaub's Turacos. Unfortunately, we didn't get any good pictures of the turacos.
It was a pleasant hike through the forests on the side of the mountain, with big trees hiding the birds but not so thick you couldn't get glimpses of them.
The crater was pretty impressive. It was big, and the walls were steep. Unfortunately we couldn't see the upper parts of the rim due to cloud cover. The parts of the walls we could see were deeply eroded and covered with vegetation. The crater floor was almost perfectly flat, with a nice meadow.
Dona found some cool wildflowers on the way up, in the crater, and on the way down.
After returning to the vehicle we headed back down the mountain. We didn't have much time left but we headed over to the lakes to check for waterbirds anyway. We were glad we did.
Douglas and Tumaini delivered us back to Kiota Guest House, where we had hugs all around and said good-bye. We had a relaxing evening, a great dinner, and more opportunities to take pictures of Bush Babies. Our flight home the next day didn't leave until late in the day so we had a relaxing morning cleaning up and wandering around. Then we headed to the airport to fly home.
The bug in the picture below looks like it was laying some eggs or depositing something else on the leaf.
It was pouring rain at one point while we were waiting in the airport. We were sitting in the restaurant area of the waiting room, which is a slightly sunken area with tables. The ceiling started leaking, and then a veritable waterfall was coming down. In short order there was a lake forming underneath the tables. I think we moved three times and finally had to leave the area altogether.
When we got home we discovered our bags must have either been out in the rain or in a leaky hangar, as the books in the top of my pack had gotten soaked. Ugh. Our Birds of East Africa was in pretty bad shape and broke in half when I opened it. Dona's bag had wet things in it also. We should have filed a claim of some sort; maybe we could have gotten a new copy of the book. Oh, well, it's a reminder of a great trip!
