Friday, July 15th:

While we were packing up to leave Selous, we realized a young bull elephant was right outside our tent.  We unzipped to take a look from the porch.  The elephant faced us, put his ears out, trumpeted, and made a slow false charge toward the tent as we scrambled back inside.  He made a few more threatening lunges and then did the same to the neighboring tent for good measure.  Then he went to a palm tree growing at a slant and put his leg over and rubbing got a serious crotch scratch. He repositioned with a front leg over for an armpit scratch.  After making a few more threatening charges and throwing some palm fronds around he departed.

Samwel and Daniel took us on the hour long drive to the airstrip where we found our small plane waiting. They weret a great guide and driver pair and will be a tough act to follow. They waved to us from the land rover as our plane took off.

The 1.5 hour flight to Ruaha was smooth enough.  Ours was the second airstrip so we had to take off and land twice.  The take-offs from the bumpy, inclined airstrips are thrilling enough, but the landings are perilous.  The pilot must circle the airstrip once to ensure no stray giraffes, zebra or elephant are in the way.  The circling involves steep banking such that the small plane is literally sideways. I am white knuckled and sweating.  The spotting of several large herds of elephant before even landing was a welcome distraction.

Our new guide Kahimba met us at the airstrip along with Henry, a guide in training. The airstrip is a long way from the camp, so we had an all day game drive with a picnic lunch arriving at camp around 6:30 PM. Immediately it was clear the ecosystem was entirely different from Selous.  We crossed hills of high bushes (not the acacia of Selous), very tall grasses and many medium sized baobabs.  We saw some zebra, warthogs, and kudu, but they were harder to spot in the denser vegetation.  All the baobab were severely scarred on their lower halves where elephant routinely strip the bark with their tusks in the dry season to chew for water. Another big difference is that in Ruaha, as in all national parks, the cars must stay on the roads whereas at Selous, a game reserve, the cars are free to drive wherever.  Ruaha’s grassy undergrowth looks to benefit from this rule.

We eventually dropped down into the Mwangu river bed spotting herd after herd of elephants much larger than those we’d seen in Selous. The river itself was a narrow trickle in a wide sandy bed.  Along with the elephant we saw troops of baboons and banded mongooses in the river bed.  We also found a great diversity of birds counting almost 50 species, many we’d never seen before.  The abundance of elephants was euphoric.  At every turn we encountered them, from babies to large tusked bulls.  They dug and drank water from under the sandy river bed.  They grazed on the tall river bank grasses which they pulled out with a twist of the trunk.

Leaving the river bed we travelled uphill through bush country.  We travelled fast in this tsetse fly zone.  Elephant dung was smoking from a container attached to the back of the vehicle to discourage the biting flies.  We saw giraffe and adorable baby impala bouncing with their herd in the baobab forest. As we climbed and dusk fell the air grew cooler and the trees grew larger.  We began to see some big trees and dense bushes and then a beautiful male bush buck..

We arrived at the tented camp and enjoyed our dinner outside with the other guests.  They had made a birthday cake and sang for Ruby.  We all donned our coats for the first time since the Usambara mountains.  Hot coals under the dinner table and hot water bottles and thick blankets for our beds made the cool temperatures a treat.

Saturday, July 16th:

There was notably less birdsong at dawn than in Selous. Mostly we heard the chirps of insects and the songs of doves from afar.  The tent was darker because we’d closed all the flaps against the cold. Still we were up to early, tossing and turning before dawn.

At breakfast with our hosts Rebecca and Andres, the table was covered in bees. Ruby had to continually move bees aside from her breakfast of pancakes (crepes) and honey.  A rascally vervet monkey lingered at the tent’s edge hoping to get some fruit cocktail.

We had an all day game drive with Kahimba and Henry. We began driving back the way we came down from the higher country.  With a goal of identifying 100 bird species we stopped frequently. The huge eagle owl we saw was amazing.

Kahimba got a call that a leopard had been spotted.  Although it was a long ways off we decided to go for it.  We drove at a good pace passing along a beautiful little mountain ridge full of granite boulders and outcroppings and flowering trees.  We saw the prints of a leopard dragging prey in the sandy road.  Finally we came to the baobab tree where the leopard had been spotted to find it gone having walked off into the bush.  Kahimba decided to pursue a bit further, illegally driving off the road. We were rewarded with a great although brief view of the leopard relaxing in the shade of another baobab and then stalking away through the tall blond grass.  The animal was big and incredibly beautiful.

We continued to the Ruaha river where we watched a herd of 10 bull elephants drinking and sparring with their tusks.  We drove along the Ruaha under a canopy of acacia shaped like umbrellas observing the wildlife in the river.  Suddenly we saw two impala running fast chased by a lioness.  The impala got away. Later we saw more lions sleeping in the shade in the heat of the afternoon.  We also saw rock hyrax, tiny dik dik antelope, grant’s gazelle, and fox like jackels over the course of the day.

We enjoyed drinks around the fire with the other guests and dinner set up in the dry river bed.

Sunday, July 17th:

We had another all day game drive with Kahimba and Henry.  Soon after leaving camp we encountered four bull elephants in the road.  We watched them for a long time as they shook an apple ring tree vigorously until the ripe seedpods rained down.  Then they deftly picked up each one from the ground with their trunk and ate it.  After about seven rounds of shaking and eating, the elephants moved on.

We continued down the road and before long came upon three of the camp’s staff on foot.  Their car had broken down including the radio and they were attempting to return to camp on foot, but found themselves amidst the bull elephants, the youngest of which was trumpeting and had his ears up.  We gathered the scared guys into our car, radioed the camp to send a car to them, and drove them back to their vehicle.  Along the way we stopped to see a large herd of buffalo in the riverbed the guys had spotted.

We drove through the many landscapes and ecozones of Ruaha park.  A highlight was passing through a forest of tall umbrella shaped acacia and being flanked by running giraffes.  We stopped for lunch in a spot full of dramatic boulders standing at precarious angles.  The girls enjoyed being out of the car and scampering around the rocks.  In the afternoon we checked out a large hollow baobab that had been an owl’s nest.  The floor was littered with the tiny bones and skulls of ground squirrels.

We continued to identify birds in the quest for 100 species.  Some favorites are the red billed ruaha and crowned hornbills, the bare faced go away birds, and the many large birds of prey.

In the evening we had a little down time before dinner.  In the early part of the night I heard an elephant dismembering a tree near our tent.

Monday, July 18th:

On our final 1.5 hour drive from the camp to the airstrip we finally spotted ostrich.  The male was huge and easily spotted in his bold black and white feathers and pink neck of the breeding season.  The female was camouflaged in dusky grey feathers.  Later in the season, the female will sit on the eggs by day and the male by night, each with plumage appropriate for disguise.

Kahimba and Henry saw us off on a little jet to Arusha.  This plane seats fewer, but flies higher and faster.  A driver met us at the airport and delivered us to Rivertrees, a lodge on the outskirts of Arusha. The road was under construction, congested and very dusty.  It was a slow ugly slog through Arusha.

Rivertrees was an oasis from the road.  The larger property sits on the fast flowing Usa river.  Large trees, some with monkeys, line the river and dot the lodge.  In the late afternoon, Carrie arrived.  The adults spent the day relaxing in the restaurant enjoying the first good wifi we’d had in weeks. The girl spent the day on the foot trail along the river finding forts and mapping their thorn and flora hollow spots.

Tuesday, July 19th:

We spent the morning around Rivertrees while Carrie slept in after her travels. In the afternoon a guide named Gabriel led us canoeing around Lake Duluti on the outskirts of Arusha. The crater lake opaque green water is full of birds. We identified 23 species.  We also saw large monitor lizards swimming and sunning on logs. Mt. Meru’s sharp peak rose over the lake and Mt. Kilimanjaro was also visible but further.

We enjoyed another relaxing evening at Rivertrees.  The grownups at the restaurant, the kids in the riverside woods.