|
The game viewing starts the moment
the plane touches down. A giraffe races beside the airstrip, all
legs and neck, yet oddly elegant in its awkwardness. A line of
zebras parades across the runway in the giraffe's wake.
In the distance, beneath a bulbous
baobab tree, a few representatives of Ruaha's 10,000 elephants -
the largest population of any East African national park, form a
protective huddle around their young.
Second only to Katavi in its aura
of untrammeled wilderness, but far more accessible, Ruaha
protects a vast tract of the rugged, semi-arid bush country that
characterizes central Tanzania. Its lifeblood is the Great Ruaha
River, which courses along the eastern boundary in a flooded
torrent during the height of the rains, but dwindling thereafter
to a scattering of precious pools surrounded by a blinding sweep
of sand and rock.
A fine network of game-viewing
roads follows the Great Ruaha and its seasonal tributaries,
where , during the dry season, impala, waterbuck and other
antelopes risk their life for a sip of life-sustaining water.
And the risk is considerable: not only from the prides of
20-plus lion that lord over the savannah, but also from the
cheetahs that stalk the open grassland and the leopards that
lurk in tangled riverine thickets. This impressive array of
large predators is boosted by both striped and spotted hyena, as
well as several conspicuous packs of the highly endangered
African wild dog. Ruaha's unusually high diversity of antelope is
a function of its location, which is transitional to the acacia
savannah of East Africa and the miombo woodland belt of Southern
Africa. Grant's gazelle and lesser kudu occur here at the very
south of their range, alongside the miombo-associated sable and
roan antelope, and one of East Africans largest populations of
greater kudu, the park emblem, distinguished by the male's
magnificent corkscrew horns.
A similar duality is noted in the
checklist of 450 birds: the likes of crested barbet, an
attractive yellow-and-black bird whose persistent trilling is a
characteristic sound of the southern bush, occur in Ruaha
alongside central Tanzanian endemics such as the yellow-collared
lovebird and ashy starling.
<<< Back to Tanzania
Page
|
