Tanzania 11

Tags

Anthony Collins, baboon, Bilharzia, DRC, Fish eagle, Gombe Stream, Jane's Peak, Lake Tanganyika, Olive baboon, schistosomaisis, Tanganyika

The next day, Tuesday 23rd February, for various reasons I decided not to go out with the group (along with three others). Instead, I spent the morning being entertained by habituated baboons on the beach.    All of baboon life was there!

Scrabbling for crumbs left by picnickers the previous day!

She groomed him for 20 minutes in the hope of his service.  But she’s past her best, and in due course he told her to get lost.

 

Do not leave washed tablecloths to the mercies of the wildlife!

 

Lake Tanganyika is tidal and has waves, it is so deep and big.

When the others came back late morning, we all went indoors, upstairs to the dining room, to have drinks and snacks.  Somehow a big male baboon got into the building, up the stairs and onto the table, snatching crisps and biscuits, all in a matter of a few seconds.  I learned later that this one was known to be a thief, son of a mother thief.

We went outside, and watched the antics of the troop, all members of which had moved from the beach to the main building.

Despite the inside grill, this young baboon got in – to the bedroom of one of us!

Late afternoon, we were very pleased to make the acquaintance of Dr Anthony Collins, who had worked continuously at Gombe since 1967, working on a study of these very Olive baboons (to give them their full title).  We took full advantage of the opportunity to ply him with questions about Gombe.

The following day, our last, for the trek we were down to three plus organiser, due to injury, illness and uxorial concern.  This meant that if, while we were out, I were to feel that I could not carry on at some point there would be a spare local guide to accompany me back. (One is not allowed out trekking without this local expertise and experience.)  The aim was to get to ‘Jane’s Peak’, where, an advance party had told us, had just been seen some chimps.

The start of our walk

On the way up, Dr Collins joined us.  I was very pleased to make it to the Peak, but sadly we saw no chimps.  Our local guides, who had been scampering around and calling to each other, told us that there were nevertheless some to be seen, but quite a long trek further on.  Exhausted and sweaty, I decided not to continue.  However, instead of one of the local guides staying with me, it was Dr Collins who did so.

From Jane’s Peak.  The speck is …

… a young fish eagle

Dragonfly optional

Mature fish eagle

Over there, the other side of Lake Tanganyika, is the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Panorama at the top of Jane’s Peak

He and I  remained at Jane’s Peak – so named because she early on established that this was an excellent viewpoint to observe where her research chimps were – for the best part of an hour, and then gently made our way down back to the centre.

By far the best butterfly in the whole trip.  About 8 centimetres high, and rarely staying still, according to Dr Anthony.

Seen on the walk down, and not part of the habituated troop.  The baby is very young and still staggering around.

What a privilege for me this was!  Someone who always wants to know everything about everything, I had a captive source of information, a world expert on baboon behaviour, one who had lived at Gombe for nearly 50 years.  Dr Collins did not seem to tire of answering my questions, not only on baboons but on Jane Goodall’s work, and the continuing research at Gombe Stream.  What a lovely morning I had!  It was like having David Attenborough to myself!  I didn’t mind the absence of chimps, though was very pleased to learn from the colleagues who did continue that – after another 90 minutes’ exhausting trekking  – they had excellent sightings, a just reward for their efforts.  So we were all happy.

The afternoon was spent sitting around, on patio and on the beach, for as long as we could stand the heat, and Dr Collins joined us later on, staying for dinner as well.

We were to leave the next morning, to start the reverse of the journey back to Dar es Salaam – boat, a night in the guest house, three-hour flight, but had a couple of hours to spare before then.  Dr Collins invited us to go along the beach to the simple house in which he lives – ‘Jane’s House’ – where she still stays when she visits, as she had just two weeks previously.  (While we were allowed to explore the barn-like building, it would certainly not have been good form to take photos!)

Why am I finishing this account with a picture taken when I and three others were dabbling our toes in Lake Tanganyika that last afternoon?  Because it emerges that one (at least) of our number has come back with the very nasty disease, bilharzia, caused by minute worms entering the skin from bathing in fresh water in tropical regions. (More info here:

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/schistosomiasis/Pages/Introduction.aspx )

Now while I didn’t go swimming in the Lake at either Kigoma or Gombe, I had no option but to shower in water taken from it – and there was that dabbling of course.  I am awaiting the outcome of a precautionary test, but I’m not the least bit worried.  Treatment is simple and effective.

The water was lovely and clear and warm…

 

Tanzania 9

Tags

Arusha, Burundi, chimpanzee, Dar es Salaam, Gombe Stream, Jane Goodall, Jane Goodall Institute, Kasakela, Kigoma, Kilimanjaro, Lake Tanganyika, Olive baboon, Rift, Serengeti Select Safaris, Tanzania, Tarangire National Park, Tusk

Sorry to have left things so long on a cliffhanger.  Life, both good and bad, has got in the way since I last posted.

We’ve got to Friday 19th February, and we’ve had our last morning drive in Tarangire National Park.  We left the Safari Lodge around 3.00pm, for a three-hour drive back to Arusha, where we could use an ATM, and make little purchases in the shops, and were to say goodbye to the lovely local jeep-drivers and guides, Deo and Sammy, who had made our lives so interesting over the previous  week or so.  From there we were to transfer to a small coach to return to Kilimanjaro Airport, for an hour’s flight to Dar es Salaam, (on the coast) from where, the next day, we would have a three-hour flight way over west to Kigoma, on Lake Tanganyika.

Except that when we got to Arusha, I realised to my absolute Horror and Terror and Panic that I had not got my little bag, containing purse, passport and mobile phone, with me. It should have been in my backpack.  It wasn’t.  I must have left it at the Safari Lodge, either on the settee where I had been awaiting our departure, or slung on the back of my chair at lunch.

Sammy and Ian, our British leader, took over.  It needed only a few minutes to establish that the bag had been found at the Lodge.  OK, so far so good.  But I would need that passport in exactly 7 days’ time to get out of the country, not to mention that it was to have served as identity for three internal flights beforehand.  And my purse contained plastic for hole in the wall and a lot of cash.  Moreover it would be something of a nuisance, but manageable,  not having my phone.

Sorted, hooray, within another 10 minutes.  The next colleague of Sammy and Deo, from the fantastic company Serengeti Select Safaris, to make the journey from Tarangire would bring the bag to their HQ in Arusha.  SSS would then post it to Dar es Salaam Airport where it would be waiting for me the following Friday.  What a relief!!!

For cash, well, I had another bit of plastic in my backpack.  And as for passport for internal flights – I also had a photocopy of the key page in my back pack.  This just sufficed, though things were a bit sticky at Kigoma on two occasions, when it would have been better if I had also been able to show my visa – they are tight there because of illegal immigration from the very close Burundi.

And to jump to the end of the story, a week later, someone was indeed waiting for me at Arrivals at Dar es Salaam airport with a brown paper package in her hand.  She got a hug!  And all credit to SSS – they didn’t charge me anything for flying the bag from Arusha to Dar.  (The wildlife and development charity ‘Tusk’ have received a donation from me in very grateful acknowledgment of that fact.)

For a blog which is meant to be photos, sorry that was a lot of text, but I felt I should come clean about my stupidity, and I wanted to thank publicly the great kindliness and efficiency of the Serengeti Select Safaris.

OK, back to Arusha on that Friday night.  As we approached the town and airport of Kilimanjaro, it was getting dark rapidly, as it does in any country near the Equator.  But we could just make out Mount Kilimanjaro in the distance to our left, and I marvelled at the fact that my cousin-in-law had climbed it for charity quite recently – chapeau Nick!

Once at Kigoma, a bustling town on Lake Tanganyika, we stayed for two nights in self-catering accommodation – which was interesting as, of the nine of us, two were vegan, three vegetarian and one gluten-free.  We managed, but when we stayed there for one night on the way back, we decided to have a take-away!

No great wildlife interest there, but there was a very pretty bay in which some, but not I, bathed:

Our accommodation at Kigoma

Some children at the lakeside.  They presented me with a crab they’d caught

From Kigoma, on Sunday 21st February, we transferred to Gombe Nature Reserve, made famous by Jane Goodall’s research on chimpanzees, research which has been carried on ever since she started it in 1960, and now financed by the Jane Goodall Institute, for which at the age of 82 she continues to fly round the world for 300 days a year, promoting its work and fundraising.

We got there by the only possible means, a 90-minute boat ride, on the choppy Lake.  Here’s what Wikipedia says about it:

It is the largest rift lake in Africa and the second largest lake by volume in the world. It is the deepest lake in Africa and holds the greatest volume of fresh water, accounting for 18% of the world’s available fresh water. It extends for 676 km (420 mi) in a general north-south direction and averages 50 km (31 mi) in width. The lake covers 32,900 km² (12,700 sq mi), with a shoreline of 1,828 km (1,136 mi), a mean depth of 570 m (1,870 ft) and a maximum depth of 1,470 m (4,820 ft) (in the northern basin). It holds an estimated 18,900 cubic kilometres (4,500 cu mi).^[5] It has an average surface temperature of 25 °C (77 °F) and a pH averaging 8.

I was just thrilled to think that I was actually on the Rift, a very gradually widening geological split in the African continent.

One of the several fishing villages on the lake

Olive baboons, the first of many we saw…

Jetty at the Park headquarters where we stayed.

After some lunch we rushed out for our first trek into the jungle, on the steep-sided Lake edge, in search of elusive chimpanzees.  Some of us found the pace very fast, and pushing through the jungle (machetes not allowed) very difficult indeed. It was also incredibly humid, which (partly) explains why my photos are not brilliant. Moreover, to our disappointment of course, we didn’t see many chimpanzees, though this first one is the alpha male, Ferdinand,  of the habituated Kasakela troop.

Mango tree