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Day 5-7: Lake Manze Camp, Selous Game Reserve

The plane took off from Dar Es Salaam’s secondary airport reserved for much smaller planes regularly used for domestic flights. Every other flight on the board was scheduled for Zanzibar, but we were headed in a different direction: down south.

After some confusion and waiting, we were eventually escorted to the aircraft that would take us in the midst of the Game Reserve. As soon as I saw the propeller plane I thought to myself “This is not going to end well.” There were six of us on the plane, although I think we picked up a few more along the way from a secluded landing strip in the middle of nowhere. No wait, they got on when we left but that was also in the middle of nowhere. The landing strips were literally made of sand and couldn’t have extended for more than half a kilometre. This was our second landing during this trip and amazingly the Cessna Caravan handled both extremely well considering the circumstances. I would have been up for another take off and landing, but unfortunately a Land Rover especially equipped for safari tours was waiting to take us to the camp.

We arrived at the Lake Manze Camp sometime in the afternoon after having had a brief safari tour with our guide Emmanuel. We were briefly introduced to the staff before being escorted to our tents by a member of the Maasai. I was a bit confused, because I had thought the Maasai were a pretty isolated group and couldn’t really understand what some of their members would be doing in the middle of a tourist business such as this one. It turns out their services have become useful to many places like this as guardians and protectors, although I have no idea how they themselves feel about it since they only spoke a few words of English. I tried asking one of them something, but I only got a grunt in response and felt it was wise to leave it at that. Some were a bit more opened than others, but it was clear that they had no reason to bond with us since our stay was only temporary and the language barrier obviously meant we had no common means of communicating with one another other than nodding politely to thank them for their help.

Our tents turned out to be well equipped bunkers coupled with two entrances and of course nets to keep the mosquitoes out. This was after all a malaria risk area, but hopefully the Malarone pills we were popping would keep the bug out of our systems. We would later discover that there were quite a lot of them due to the lake nearby, but to my knowledge nobody had fallen ill from them.

The bathroom section was the most peculiar thing I’ve ever seen. First of all, a tent, a toilet and a shower with hot running water in the middle of the wilderness? And not just one tent, but a dozen of them carefully placed apart so each one would enjoy their own privacy. Who would have thought there was a camp like this, where you could shower under the stars at night and live among the animals in peace and harmony? Amazing! Of course by nightfall, the only light sources available were the moon and two kerosene powered lanterns at both ends of the tent, which was a bit inconvenient since it tends to get very dark out here. So dark in fact, that we weren’t allowed to leave our tents without a Maasai leading the way and making sure no snakes or other wonderful creatures such as lions would eat us alive. At night one could see dancing lights around the forest (fireflies) and hear the occasional grumble from the distance by some large creature.

There was an informal get together every evening at seven thirty where all the guests and (some of the) staff would gather at the bar for drinks and chat about what they had seen that day, before eventually proceeding to the dinner table. We were still adjusting to the idea that this place was about fifty meters from the shore where hippos hung out. The camp would also be graced by the presence of a few elephants who frequently passed by to say hello. These elephants, they told us, were of course not domesticated, but meant no harm although they tended to eat a lot of the branches from the trees nearby. Indeed, these intelligent beasts, while cute and adorable, would leave a tremenduous path of destruction behind then while eating anything that resembled something green and delicious. Apparently their digestive systems have some how escaped the natural laws of evolution and remained extremely inefficient leaving these creatures in a constant state of hunger. We had of course seen a handful of animals already during our short safari trip to the camp earlier in the day, but elephants had not been one of them. They were missing, or rather displaced for some odd reason. Nobody knew of their whereabouts.

There were still many new animals to see. After all, the Selous Game Reserve was host to hundreds of species of animals ranging from mammals to birds, insects and other creatures whose names I can’t remember. We had not even scratched the surface and I was already having a hard time choosing which pictures to keep on my camera and which ones to throw away, since this was all so new to me. I must have already accumulated a few hundred pictures in one afternoon alone and I tended to delete those which were blurry as soon as I had taken them.

The next day we set out to do a full day safari with a new guide called Victor. We encountered many more species of animals and even got to follow a leopard for almost an hour. I was told this was something one would only experience once in a lifetime, so we had been extremely lucky. Somehow our driver and guide knew exactly where it was; hiding in a bush somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Pure luck or some kind of safarial instinct I have yet to understand? Of course by this time, the sun was frying our arms and faces as it reached its critical point up in the sky. We would eventually get a bit sunburned, but nothing compared to what I would later experience during my stay in Tanzania.

The great thing about Selous was the fact that the drivers were allowed to go off road and reach places where no man had gone before – well technically that isn’t true, but for that particular day it was. Sometimes we would venture to places I thought we’d never get out of, but these guys were good. Amazingly the Land Rover did not get stuck once, although the driver had to keep the four wheel drive on most of the time. The roads (if there were any) had been severely affected by the rain and one could see four, five or even six tracks running beside each other when drivers tried to go around these soft spots. We were not alone after all, for there were a handful of other camps in the area.

It turns out Selous had had a few short rain showers in the past days which had painted the landscape with a beautiful green colour and would eventually make acquaintance with our Land Rover later on that day. And when I say rain, picture someone pouring a bucket full of water on you rather than getting gradually wet in a constant soothing rain. Luckily the car had a roof and the driver was quick to cover the back and give us rain jackets so we wouldn’t be entirely soaked from this unusual weather phenomenon. The rainy season was months away or had just passed, I forget. Either way this was far from normal. The rain only lasted for a short while and then we were off again looking for new animals to shoot with our cameras. What we were seeing was something straight out of the National Geographic channel: Impalas, Zebras, Giraffes, Elephants, Hippos, Buffalos, Waterbucks, etc. I mean I tried writing them all down, but the list just kept growing and growing until I finally gave up.

We stayed in Selous for three nights and four days. Unfortunately we didn’t get to see any lions, although we spent a whole afternoon searching fort them. We did however have the privilege of meeting Rafiki (which means friend in Swahili), a huge elephant who likes to hang around the camp. We also got a chance to go on a boat safari where we were introduced to crocodiles, more hippos and of course lots and lots of birds. We even saw a buffalo come and take his afternoon bath with a few birds helping him clean up from fleas and other insects that were glued to his skin. A turtle popped its head up on the surface at some point but it was too shy to come out and greet us properly. The boat’s engine scared most of the animals away so we had to use stealth mode every now and again and turn it off. The waters around Selous were partly very shallow, but our skipper Rachid always managed to get us going again without having to get out of the boat. He told us that he had once done so and by coincidence he had stepped on a small crocodile who in turn decided to take a bite and left a few nasty marks on his leg. Not a very good idea then to go swimming in these waters.

All in all, this safari was everything you’d expect from such a trip. Lots of animals, beautiful scenery, exciting roller coaster driving and close encounter experiences that will forever stay vivid in my mind. I wanted to thank the entire staff at the Lake Manze Camp for providing us with a nice quiet environment where we could sleep in the middle of nature while still having a few basic necessities that made our stay as comfortable as possible. The food was excellent, every night. No exceptions. The loading point for batteries and other electrical equipment at the bar was also a blessing. I must have used up two huge batteries a day. I didn’t know how power hungry my Canon was until now, although it wasn’t designed to be used non-stop for an entire day. I was also very grateful for Paolo and Daja’s company (the camp’s managers) as well as all the background information that Richard, a British teacher at the camp, was able to provide us. P.S. Thanks for lending me the lens!

Tomorrow we leave this wonderful region to join civilization again. A gray squirrel was desperately looking for food on the floor near the bar. It reminded me of that funny prehistoric character in Ice Age who kept causing trouble while pursuing a chestnut. The night fell like someone had simply flicked a switch. The grasshoppers began their nightly symphony and soon the lanterns were extinguished. I lay there in silence, listening to all the strange sounds around me. Not before long, I was in a deep sleep.