Anyway, of that more later. We started off on what was to be around a 4 hour drive – I could have flown between reserves, but I’d thought that this way I would get to see more of the country. In this, I certainly succeeded, but I saw perhaps more of the quality of the road system that I really needed to. John’s term for it was being given a free massage – there are some good metalled roads, but the majority are rough dirt tracks, with no signposts, only John’s 16 years experience kept us on track.
Along the way, we stopped at Thomson’s waterfall (no relation to the gazelle, I’m told)
Whilst there, with inevitable entrepreneurial spirit, I was accosted by a chap who insisted on showing me his chameleons. He did this by putting one on my arm, which it proceeded to run up and down. Unfortunately it was my right arm, and my camera was in my right pocket, so I had to wait until he removed it before I could take this:
Moving swiftly on, we next stopped at the equator, where there was yet another retail opportunity. One thing they did do there, which impressed me, was demonstrate the coriolis effect. I know, of course, in principle, that water rotates down a pipe in different directions depending on which side of the equator you are located. What I hadn’t realised is how little distance you need to be from the equator to see the effect. By putting water into a bowl with a small hole in the centre, and placing a match stick as a floating tell tale, you could see which way the water rotated – as the water ran out, the match rotated one way from as little as 5 metres to one side of the equator, and the other way the same distance the other side. On the equatorial line itself, it didn’t rotate at all. Impressive to have this actually demonstrated. Apparently, the Masai use this as an aid to navigation – the further you are from the equator, the faster the rotation.
After that, we made progress to our next stop – at last an actual Serena “hotel” – the tented camp, which was all it had promised. From my tent, I look out over a water hole, where various animals come to drink – most of which you’ve seen in earlier pictures, but one we haven’t seen so far – the not so friendly warthog:
Whilst sitting on the porch of the tent, I was visited by a bird with the most startling colours
When I saw some later and asked John what it was, he told me it was a form of starling. Actually, he told me the proper name, but I have to submit, I’ve been given so much information over the last few days, I’m beginning to suffer from information overload, so suffice to say it’s a starling.
After lunch, we went out on a game drive, but this time stopping at conservation areas within the park. The first was a chimpanzee reserve. This had been fenced off to keep predators out, but was still around 250 acres. Most of the chimps are rescued animals from people who still think that various body parts are a remedy against various ailments. They reckon the costs of looking after the rescued chimps is around $6000 per year, which is fairly frightening – you can see more at www.olpejetaconservancy.org but in the meantime I succumbed and sponsored one of the ones here:
Wandering round the chimp area, with a very helpful ranger, took up quite a bit of time so we moved on fairly rapidly, stopping to see a male water buck,
and the last of the 3 types of giraffe – the reticulated:
which again has very different markings, but also is the only one of the three to be able to survive in extremely low water conditions.
Our last stop was to see a black rhino fairly close up, which from previous comments you may think a strange decision. It should be said that this one – known as Baraka – is blind, and kept in a small area of his own, where rangers look after him 24 hours a day. Again, they have problems with people who think that the horn of a rhino is a better specific that Pfizer’s little blue pill, and who kill rhinos just to take the horn. The reason for Baraka’s sawn off appearance is to reduce his attractiveness to such people, but they also have a 24 hour guard, as he isn’t really able to look after himself. However, it does mean you can get up close and personal – I didn’t need to use much zoom to get these:
With that, we headed back to the lodge in time for tea, medals, and an attempt to post this – internet access hasn’t been as available as promised, so this should be a bumper session! Once complete, an early night is called for, as we have an even longer drive to Ambosele in the morning.
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