Hunting Painted Dogs Part One

“It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

J.R.R.Tolkien

Introduction:

This is the story of our adventure; our fourth trip to Africa searching for the amazing Painted Dogs (or Painted Wolves as they prefer to be called). These dogs are not actually painted you understand? That would be cruel and extremely time wasting. But they are amazing. Honestly.
Here’s a picture of one I took in the Serengeti.

We all but failed to find them in The Serengeti two years ago, where we did spot them in the far distance and in almost complete darkness. Not ideal for us photographic perfectionists. No giggling in the back please...
In Kenya, we totally failed. This is quite impressive as these dogs had been fitted with radio collars. We spent three days wandering around the bush with antenna in hand. Hopeless. I did get a picture of the bush though.
The story of our failure last year in Botswana can be read here: Hunting Dogs. 

So this was to be our latest attempt. We were to stay eight nights in the same camp (Sand Rivers), so as to give us the maximum possibility of finding the little blighters. That’s nine days. Thirteen hours a day. Who says I’m crazy?
So here is the first part of our story, of our trip to Tanzania and of our first afternoon there.

Part One

Day 1 - Getting There

Our trip to the heartland of Tanzania was to take four separate flights and thirty-two long hours. Thirty-two short hours would've been better.

We had set off from home at the ungodly hour of 4am, although of course most hours could be described as ungodly. Ok then, can you name a godly hour?
Transferring from plane to plane is, in my humble opinion, always stressful. Multiple queues, removing multiple items of clothing, replacing them in the wrong order, getting your belt twisted and misplacing your watch, dislocating your back while trying to replace your shoes and keeping one eye on different trays with different pieces of your life. Going the wrong way. Feeling part of a meat packing conveyor belt. And during all this, keeping your other eye on the time and asking yourself 'is there enough of it?'
Our transfer in Paris was all that plus one. On booking the flight to Africa, I had not realised one little fact, that the plane for the second leg of the trip took off from a totally different airport than the one we were to land in! Add into this maniacal mix: a delay in leaving Toulouse, plus the infamous car park known as the Périphérique, well, my watch reported my heart rate to be too high! I should have left the bloody thing in the airport after all.

On arriving at Orly Airport south of Paris, we hailed a taxi. That part was easy, as we were practically mugged by several of them in the arrivals hall. Our driver, a very pleasant young man, had a special app on his phone that drove the car for him. I must get one of those! He spent the whole journey looking at, typing on and talking to his little portable friend. Thankfully the taxi was equipped with an automatic braking system thus avoiding rear-ending a stopped queue of cars.
And people think that Africa is dangerous!
We arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport in the nick of time. That was the name of his taxi.
Mind you, he's not the only one that spends their lives playing with phones..

That is me telling Annick to stop playing with her bloody phone and get up the steps! (True!)

The flight to Nairobi was long and uneventful, in that there were no events. Apart from me losing several games of solitaire, watching a compressed film and reading half a dozen books. Sorry, there was one event. My kindle had decided that it didn't like airports and emptied itself of my entire library. I thus had to take the useless piece of junk to Africa and back for nothing because, for the rest of our adventure, I didn't come across an internet connection that did anything other than laugh at me.
Sleeping would have been a good option, but unfortunately I don't find that being stuffed into a small space with my feet finding their resting place somewhere near my bottom particularly conducive to sleep. To that end I had tested out several flight pillows. All of them looked daft and most of them force your neck forward to somewhere near where your feet end up. I had chosen the one in the photo above as being the only one that didn't do that, although it did look daft. Well, you may be surprised to find out that it, also, was a pile of poops. After about twenty minutes use it simply felt like a python on heat. My neck started to overheat making sleep even more unlikely. Another useless piece of junk to cart to Africa and back.

We arrived at Dar es Salaam at two o'clock in the morning, or, as Annick puts it, "bloody two o'clock in the morning!" Then came the obligatory wait for the forgotten lift to our bed for the night. After a couple of phone calls to the sleepy proprietor, our lift finally arrived in an especially recycled car. Some bits had been forgotten. The trip to our bed for the night was short but memorable. African roads have a reputation for being in need of some attention, but I’d never experienced one like this before. I guess the word ‘road’ does not best describe them. 'Sand roller-coaster' would be more appropriate. It’s actually good fun. You should try it.

We only needed a simple room for the night, which is exactly what we got. Incredibly it did have air-conditioning. They had forgone the need of a remote control by fixing it on refrigeration mode. The one sheet supplied stopped us from having bits drop off. Thankfully the cold shower in the morning warmed us up...

Dar es Salaam is a busy place, with contrasting poverty and wealth. A bit like everywhere else on the planet really. Except Merthyr Tydfil.

Lots of street-side market stands and beggars is the norm, but this place was very clean and most people seemed happy. This contrasts sharply with many 'first world' cities.

Anyway, I digress. Back at the airport we boarded our small flying object to head to the Selous Game Reserve, an enormous park south of the Serengeti.
Here's a map. Study it carefully.

We met there two old friends; Ian, guide extraordinaire,

and Julien, a rubbish manager. (Just joking Julien, but call me ‘Philippe’ one more time...)

That's Julien posing for Facebook. Doesn't he look great? He's single you know...

We had planned our trip to coincide with the end of the dry season. Or, putting it another way, the start of the wet season.

After a quick profound siesta, we set off for our first game drive. The sun was already setting as Annick got into selfie mode...

This drive was to be just a reconnoiter of the area, to get an idea of what to expect. We soon got our first sight of Lake Tagalala. Love that name.

Appart from its beauty, it was notable for the huge number of nasty beasties in the water. Crocs and hippos to name but two. Extreme paddling anyone? More on this later.
In this northern part of this game reserve, hunting is prohibited, but sadly, across the river, it is not.  (More on this later too). However, as the giraffe is Tanzania's national emblem, all giraffes are protected. Sounds like good rational thinking to me. I have suggested that perhaps they could add the elephant to their national emblem. Simple solutions for complicated problems.
As a result, there is no shortage of giraffe, everywhere you look they are staring back at you.

They are always interesting to watch, especially when they practice their taekwondo.

It was getting late. In Tanzania the sun plummets like a giant ball of flame (erm...) out of the sky at 6pm every evening, so we left those graceful creatures sniffing bottoms at sunset.

As the sun disappeared, we stumbled across this guy. Clearly he'd seen tourists before.

One of my requests to our guide Ian was to see lions hunting giraffes. Not tonight mate.

The lion sleeps tonight...

That evening we had our first of some very fine food. It always tasted great, although as it was lit only by candles (brighter light would attract many timorous beasts), it was difficult to see what it looked like. The table conversation went well, with me doing my usual 'talking not eating' thing. Good food, good wine, good company. All was well with the world as we were later guided to our abode.
Little did we know...

To be continued in the next blog, cunningly entitled Part Two.

Day’s End

Daily Bonus: Annick's favourite iPhone image from Day 1:

Yup, this is how close we were!

Part Two Here!