Cooked bacon for breakfast and
actually made sandwiches for en-route – it would make a change from biscuits
for lunch. The drive was due to take 3
hours but once again it took quite a bit longer – the tar road coming to an abrupt
end and transforming into a corrugated sandy track causing “Thompson” to side
slip and skid in trying to get back on track.
On arrival in Ruaha we paid our
park fees and Ian decided to buy a recommended book on Ruaha birds – the
official looked a bit perplexed but we persevered and paid for the book and a
map. Unfortunately we didn’t get the
look at it before buying and it is clearly meant for birding experts not for
complete novices – no pictures – the park map may prove more useful!! I have challenged Ian to decipher the
descriptions to identify at least one bird that we haven’t seen before out of
the 571 described in the book (he has just told me he has identified the
Cardinal Woodpecker - who knows though!). Stopped for lunch watching the hippos and crocodiles.
Camping tonight on the Ruaha
Public Campsite no. 1. We have great
views over the Great Ruaha River with dozens of elephants coming down for some
water. Slightly nervous though about the
oranges – we have packed them in a plastic bag inside the defunct fridge in the
hope that the elephants can’t smell them (elephants have a thing about fruit)
but in hindsight we should have got rid of them before we arrived. Darkness falls very quickly once the sun sets
and we quickly found ourselves in semi darkness with 2 elephants just below us,
so had to pack all our gear away in rapid time – no time for doing the washing
up so we ended up going to bed wondering whether elephants would be attracted
to the small of curry emanating from the back of the truck.
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