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!

Hunting Painted Dogs. Part Four.

Day 4 - A Romantic Interlude

Sunrise

This morning was, thankfully, a late rise. 6am. Yeah. Great. 

As Annick was unable to tolerate spending the day in a jeep (the bush massage was not appropriate for her abdominal discomfort) we opted instead for a morning’s romantic trip upriver.

Generally speaking, hunting for dogs by boat is not the most effective option. 

Spoiler alert: We didn’t see any. 

So we left our camp (as seen in the above photo) in a flat bottom boat with outboard motor. And paddles.

Romantic yes? 

This is the Rufiji River, a wide expanse of water that eventually empties into the Indian Ocean. It’s banks are full of life. Unfortunately, so is the water. 

Kingfishers abound. This Pied Kingfisher was showing off his catch.

Whilst this Malachite Kingfisher looked on in envy.

A Saddle-billed Stork stood admiring the view. Being the tallest stork in town, his view was a good one. He was probably pondering the rationality of his name.

There were many other animals in the water itself apart from fish. Everywhere you look there are hippos. And worse.

These mahoosive whale-related beasts may be everywhere, but they are notoriously difficult to photograph. A bit like whales really. As soon as you get within range, they bugger off. Dive, dive.

In this case; Run away! Run away!

Usually, only their nostrils and eyebrows are visible above water, although we did happen across this happy hippo pair, reluctant to leave the safety of their sand bank. Reluctant because, if they rejoined their pod, just a few meters away, the calf would likely be killed by the boss man. I suspect that she had been sleeping around.

As we persisted in remaining close, photo-snapping away like a frenzied crocodile (as opposed to the other sort), the mother decided that she would charge towards us. As we were in deep water, they passed us by beneath our boat. We remained unscathed, which was nice because there are more than just hippos in that water. Anyway, being charged by a baby hippo is kinda cute.

As we went further upriver, the valley sides got steeper, the banks came closer together and the water ran faster. Simple physics you know.

Here we passed by a couple of our co-campers. There was Jamie, happily fishing for Tigerfish (even the fish here sound dangerous). Sindy seemed more reluctant. Perhaps she had heard that, only days before, whilst removing fish from hook, something else leapt for the very same fish. Teeth met hand. It ended badly. For the hand.

The fish wasn't too happy either.

What was it that had those teeth? On turning the bend, we saw it, heading in their direction.

(Cue 'Jaws' music.)

Should we warn them? If so, how to do so in time? The crocs travel faster than we could. We would only arrive in time to see the remaining flesh and bones, if any.

They were everywhere, littering the banks. Who would be crazy enough to get out of the relative safety of the boat and go fishing on these deadly banks?

We decided it best to carry on and remember them as good friends.

Sad really.
Funnily enough, we havent seen them for a while...

We finally arrived at the furthest point we could navigate, as the waters were now travelling rapid enough to be called, er, rapids.

Ian, our intrepid guide, leapt out to battle off any hiding crocs. Thankfully he was armed with a stick. And sandals made from motorbike tyres. The crocs stood no chance.

This was to be a toilet stop. Tricky that. If you squat you have to develop the habit of 360 degree vision. And standing there dangling seems an invitation to disaster. Like fishing for crocodiles really.

Still, we survived intact, and we pushed off and floated downstream, using the paddle to beat off the hippos.

Like I may have said before. Romance isn’t dead.

On our return, we stopped at the camp for an onion-free lunch, followed by a much anticipated and very much needed, onion-free, siesta.

We set off mid afternoon to continue our hunt for dogs. We had not given up, although a feeling of impending failure was beginning to descend upon us. We had, by now, traversed most of there territory. Unfortunately their territory is the size of Greater London! But with notably less pubs. 

We found this pack of hyenas instead.

These animals are not the most beautiful, but they have hidden depths. Although, as their role in well known films tells us, they do scavenge, actually 90% of their food comes from hunting. And they are bright! Probably more intelligent than chimps. They can solve problems as a group, often using silent communication. Other communication though is a bit of a laugh.

Who’s the boss? The females. They have three times the amount of testosterone than the males, and they have willies!! Being a male is not easy for hyenas. 

A bit like for us really. (Ooops. Did I just type that out loud?)

One of their favourite aperitifs is this cute little bambi. A new-born Impala can run within three hours. Those three hours must rate as one of the world’s most tricky. They are easy pickings, sitting ducks. But you’ve gotta be close. Baboons have perfected this by evilly befriending adult impalas. They do so by dropping tasty leaves from the trees. Then, when the cute little baby is born, whoosh. Gone. 

Isn’t nature wonderful?

One of the predators that would munch on this little munchkin is this guy.

Yup. Another lion. From a different pride this time.

We seemed to fall over these beasts all the time. Many guests we met had seen none. Time to appreciate our guides, Ian & Simba.

One thing in common. The do all seem to want to show me their teeth.

Photographing the teeth of hippos I found much more difficult. Maybe because these big lumps are now being killed by the thousand. For their teeth. It is ivory after all.

It has long been assumed that hippos are a type of ruminent like the cow or antelope, but no, they may have four stomachs, but they don’t regurgitate to chew upon their own vomit. They make up for this lack of antisocial behaviour by violently wagging their tails whilst pooping, thus spreading their shit everywhere. 

Charming.

We finished the day with a light meal. This time the manager had the sense to segregate us, to stop me disturbing the peace.

We had taken it easy today to give Annick's internal parts time to put themselves in order. It seemed to be working.

We were wrong.

To be continued in the next blog, predictably entitled Part Five.

Day’s End

Daily Bonus: Annick's favourite iPhone image from Day 4:

A boat trip amongst deadly killers. Romance could die at any second.

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.
The Next Part is Here!