Wednesday, Nov 15 Camp Manze in Selous

I had a restless sleep, tired but unable to get rested. I hear lots of nightly sounds. We have a view of the lake so there are always birds, sometimes elephants, giraffes, monkeys, impalas, and/or baboons.

We are going for a walking safari this morning from 7-9 with our guide Zack, a trainee, and a ranger with a gun, just in case. We are walking to learn more about the trees, the dung, the flowers, etc. We do see impalas, Wart Hogs, and a Hyena but they stay away. We are never afraid of the Impalas. They are the ones that are scared off when they see us. It’s nice to stretch the legs for a few hours as we have been riding in jeeps for 9 days now. At 9 we have breakfast, just the 4 of us, and then we return to our tents to get ready for our 11 am bush ride. We will have a bush lunch and be out until 6 pm or so.

Ready for our walking safari

Guide Zack, Trainee guide, and a Ranger with gun

Our guide Zach, Impala in background

Impala walking away

Hyena

Vervet Monkeys at the main camp. This is going on as we eat breakfast.

They are getting closer as they probably smell the food.

We meet our guide and driver and head out at 11. We look around as usual to see Wildebeast, zebras, Wart Hogs, young Giraffes, and then I spot something up ahead. We drive closer and to our surprise and enjoyment, we find the pack of 8 Wild Dogs. We watch them sleeping for a while then one at a time they get up and soak themselves in a water hole nearby. It’s actually more of a mud hole as they get out covered in mud. They return to their sleeping position so our guide says that we’ll leave them for now and check them out again around 5 pm when it’s not so hot and they might be moving around more. That’s fine by us as it is a big world out there and we are ready for anything.

Wild Dog Scatching (typical dog behaviour)

Cooling off in the mud bath

Stepping into his bath

Walking out of the water hole

After a short ride someone spots a Pearl-Spotted Owlet. It is so little that it takes a few minutes to locate it in the tree. That was a great sighting once again as it is only on average 71/2 inches in height.

Lunch is at another lake, this one is called Nzelabkela. We will be eating while we watch about 25 hippos playing and mating in the water. In the distance there is a group of elephants arriving for a drink of water. There is a very tiny elephant in the herd. So cute!

We stay and chill for about 2 hours before continuing on our way. We see Vervet Monkeys (the males have blue balls) and a Nubian Woodpecker.

Going to eat

A Pearl-Spotted Owl. I could have watched it all day.

Two Hippos playing

Close up

A Glossy Blue-Eared Starling preparing to have a drink

Eurasian Swift. Seemed to be preparing a next in the palm branches

A Nubian Woodpecker

Leaves at the perfect height

Our lunch stop

A Fisher Eagle

A little later we get lucky again when someone spots monkeys in a tree. They are the very shy Colobus Monkeys. We don’t get the greatest shots as they hide behind the leaves, but we can still see them.

We then see a baby giraffe with his huge dad and his mom.

A Colobus Monkey

Dad and baby. The male and darker in colour than the female. 

We return to see what the dogs are up to. We decide to wait it our for awhile to see if anything will happen. We take a few pictures but we already have many of them sleeping. I take a picture of a Collared Palm Thrush near the dogs. We wait a little over an hour when one or two of the dogs start moving. They go and wake up the rest of them. This was fun to watch as they were very playful and jumping around, etc. After a few minutes of this they head off. We had seen a few Impala in the area in the last hour and didn’t know if there were any still around. We go bushwhacking, trying to catch up to the dogs when all of a sudden we hear a yelp. We think that they have a kill. We backtrack and find them. They have already torn apart a young impala. Unreal what they can do in such a short span of time. We sit and watch them for another 10-15 minutes. Their faces and paws are red from the blood. It was quite disgusting but that’s the reality of nature. At the same time as this carnage was taking place our guide tells us to look in the background, up the hill. There, two zebras are mating. Such amazing things to see in the wild. They start leaving and we follow them a bit then decide it’s time to leave. Back at the camp around 6:45 again. We always arrive when it’s dark so not much light for a shower and to get ready.

A Collared Palm Thrush

Before the kill. The dogs play together. It's like a big powwow and then moments later they're off.

Devouring the impala

Still going at it.

Wild Dogs eat the animal immediately. They do not wait until it dies.

Bloody face

Another bloody face

Dinner at 8. There are always interesting discussions around the table as people come from all over the place and have lots of different experiences. There were 5 people there for one night only which means they only had one half day of safari. They leave again after breakfast tomorrow morning. As we sit and talk after dinner, our host, Sean turns and shines his flashlight near a palm tree. It’s a Genet, a small spotted cat. It’s very elusive and difficult to see as it usually only comes out at night. Sean tells us that we can sometimes see them on our decks as they eat the moths that are dead on our kerosene lantern outside. We return to our place at 9:30.

About an hour after being asleep, Ron wakes me to say he thinks that there is a Genet on our deck. He heard something on the side of the tent. I look out, can’t see anything and roll over again. Not long after I get another shove telling me to look outside. There at the front of the tent is the silhouette of a Hyena. Oh no. I would have preferred a Genet. The Hyena walks in front of the tent and then puts it’s face at the zippers. Not knowing if we should make noise to distract it, just leave it alone, of blow the whistle, we decided on the latter. In a second the Masai was running towards out tent, flashlight beaming and yelling. I told him that there was a Hyena at our door. Of course by then the Hyena was long gone. The Masai walked around for a few extra minutes shining his light and then he went back to his station. We then heard him talking to another Masai and they were both laughing. We quickly understood that there was no danger at all. We still had a hard time falling asleep after that incident. It was another restless night unfortunately. We did have a good laugh the next day with Wendy and Andre who slept through it all. Nice friends eh?

One of our rescuers earlier in the evening