Hunting Painted Dogs. Part Five.

Days 5 & 6 - The Hunt Continues

Day 5 - Alone

Sunrise 

Things were moving. Unfortunately, things were moving mostly in Annick’s gut. She had discovered that the view from the open bathroom window is not quite as charming at night, despite the odd bat flying in and out. This kind of physiological catastrophy waits for no man. Not ideal for a day in the African bush where toilets are nearly as rare as wild dogs. 

Note to self: next time, pack the bloody Imodium! 

Thankfully the camp was well provisioned with such things. I wonder why. At least the tablets were in-date, I knew this 'cos it was written in pencil.

The camps electric supply had also failed, blown by a helpful electrician. Several bits of equipment went with it, including our battery chargers, the ice maker, the internet router and, worst of all, the manager’s electric toothbrush. Contact with the outside world, already shaky, had been lost. Help for Annick was far away indeed. 

This left me in a quandary. Do I stay and twiddle my thumbs whilst Annick oscillates between sleep and the loo? If I go and search for the dogs and find them, how unfair would that be?

She insisted that she was ok, so off I went, promising not to find any dogs.
I always keep my promises.
I went out alone...

We soon happened across a lactating lioness, all on her own. No cubs, no pride. Life can be tough.

We visited areas new to us, in the vain hope of spotting doggy life, but, although beautiful, all we spotted were dodgy trees.

Here is one.

Not a tree in the full flow of life. This one seemed a bit thin too.

Giving up in disgust, we scooted back to see how the patient was doing. 

Thankfully she was slightly better. This meant we didn’t have to call out the flying ambulance, something we couldn't do anyway until the router had been repaired. 

Another sortie in the afternoon (still alone) produced little but the usual giraffes.

Although we finally got close to an elephant.

We were pleased to see him

But he wasn’t pleased to see us.

The elephants here are definitely smaller than their northern cousins, with smaller tusks. This is forced evolution by human selection. Their numbers have halved in the last 10 years, due to very heavy poaching. Us humans have a lot to answer for.

Zebra are not too common here, either that or they are well camouflaged. Seriously? Stripes for camouflage?
This one was doing the usual run away thing, but thankfully gave me the opportunity for one of those bucket-list shots...

Was he running away from us? Or from this girl? This was a lioness that we hadn't seen before,

and yet, it too had a missing lower right canine. 

Open wide.

If someone tells you that a natural diet is the best diet for dental wellbeing, well, you know better.
The local mongooses (mongeese?) looked on in stunned silence.

We headed back, stopping for the obligatory sunset photos.

Annick’s day had been very unpleasant, but she was finally getting better. 

As for the dog hunt, it had stalled. We were getting nowhere. There were no signs of them. It was as if they’d up and gone on holiday. Did they even exist? 

Despite man’s atrocious record with wildlife, there is a kinda romantic view (born of the Victorian era) of our hunter gatherer origins. Sadly this is so wrong. Most species on earth were driven to extinction by them well before we settled down as farmers. Today, there are problems with all humans, including those few that have remained hunter-gatherers. The dogs we searched for in Kenya are no more, killed by the distemper spread by their dogs as the tribesmen killed the owner of the camp. In southern Serengeti, one of the only two packs there were killed by Masai, simply because they had killed one of their goats. So much for Nature's guardians.

Had these dogs suffered the same fate? We needed another plan.

We needed 'Plan B'.

 Day's End

Daily Bonus: Ian's favourite iPhone image from Day 5:

Sadly, being on the loo all day is not conducive to good photography. No pics from Annick today.

_____________________________________________

the very next day... 

Day 6 - Plan B

Sunrise 

The day started well. Annick was weak but well enough to come on a drive. More back-seat driving.

We hadn’t gone far when we saw this leopard, lying in a Baobab tree, looking right at us.

This was certainly a good sign, Leopards are not easy to find. They are truly magnificent cats, extremely powerful. Maybe things were looking up.

Normally, this would be the find of the week, but we were on a mission. We were looking for bars dogs.
To find these dogs, we needed to change our tactics. First, we needed to find tracks.
To get to their hunting grounds, the dogs had to cross the main sand river. If there were to be tracks anywhere to be found, we would find them there.

We headed towards the dry riverbed, stopping to watch a couple of Vervet Monkeys discussing our plan.

They didn’t think much of it.

Neither did the lapwings.

And the giraffes simply hopped it.

One of the many drawbacks to this plan was that it involved driving along a river bed.

Driving along a dry riverbed is not generally thought to be a good idea.

It may be ‘dry', but there is water there, just under the surface. That is, after all, why so many animals come here. They dig for water.

We, too, found it.
We were stuck.

We called for help. 

We were rescued by another truck, on which was the the ambassador of the EU. Amazing rescue service here!

Unfortunately, being British meant he could not long retain his job as EU ambassador. Another casualty of Brexit.
The bee-eaters carried on regardless.

We eventually escaped the riverbed and continued on. 
But no longer in the riverbed, Plan B was dead in the water. 
We had to fall back on Plan A.

On escaping the frying pan, we ended up in the fire. 
We soon came across a small herd of elephants. The matriarch, however, was not too impressed by our presence. After trumpeting and charging at us, we remained stock still and totally silent, holding our collective breathe. Each attempt at turning on the engine resulted in further aggression. The bush was full of the sound of trumpeting. We were cornered in by dense bush and even denser elephant.

We were effectively held captive by elephants.
...

Whilst the mother kept her beady eye on us, her kids were having a rough and tumble.

This involved a great deal of head-banging,

nose wrapping,

and ear flapping.

After a daring escape (the elephants got bored and left) we went on our way, wondering if our luck would improve.

Nope.

10 minutes later; flat tyre. Who was volunteering to get out and fix it, whilst elephants hovered nearby? Assuming elephants can hover.

Oh well, after all this excitement we needed a pee-stop and lunch. In that order.

Nice skulls. Previous diners?

Some impala wandered by, acting as predator bait. 

Didn’t work.

The local baboons stacked themselves on a tree to watch us.

A wildebeest wandered by, looking strangely cool compared to their northern nutters (remember the guys who threw themselves at crocodiles in the Mara?)

We came across yet another wild animal poking its tongue out at us.

She was hiding her teeth.

Yup, we'd seen her before. We were repeating ourselves.
And still not a sign of the dogs. The hour was late and we had failed once more.

Just before returning, Ian suddenly stopped the car. He pointed at two impala. I thought this was maybe his sense of humour, but he insisted that we looked and listened. We saw two impala, not looking at us, but behind us. Then we heard some Guineas Fowl screaming alarm. Predator!

It took a while, but then I spotted this guy again. The Guinea Fowl were on neighbouring branches, mocking him. Daft buggers.

Leopards would normally be the highlight of a safari, but we wanted dogs.

Time for a new plan.

Time for Plan C.

C for ‘cunning’...

 Day's End

Daily Bonus: Annick's favourite iPhone image from Day 6:

We got quite close to this giraffe. It was 'armless.


To be continued in the next blog, terribly entitled Part Six.

Part one of this amazing story, 'Getting There' can be found here.
Part two of this amazing story, 'Selous Game Reserve' can be found here.
Part three of this amazing story, 'A Near Miss' can be found here.
Part four of this amazing story, A Romantic Interlude' can be found here.

The Next Part is Here!