Full moon rises over the Usambara's

We leave the sultry coastal climate behind. The 70km’s of bumpy gravel that links Bagamoyo with the Dar-Arusha road is being built by the Chinese. It seems as if their philosophy is ‘development at any cost’ if the number of mature trees that have been pushed over to make way for the road is anything to go by, you would think that they were constructing an 8 lane motorway. The coconut palms and swampy grassland give way to the dry interior, which has been extensively planted with sisal.
Some on route guide book reading alters our course into the Usambara Mountains. From Mombo the narrow road that has been cut into the steep cliffs snakes its way high into the cool air of the Usambara’s, one gets the feeling that you are heading up to Darjeeling. Our destination, Irente View lodge is perched about 1000m above the valley floor, known as the Masaai Steppes. At this point we are approximately mid way between Cape Town and Cairo, as the crow flies. Cocks crowing are the alarm clocks of Africa and this camp had plenty, unfortunately they were the only birdlife we saw the entire day. We had anticipated seeing some forest species but sadly only patches, of verdant green rain forest remain, every available centimeter of the steep slopes is being cultivated, it’s difficult to imagine how they manage to till the land. However, driving around these mountains with the swirling mist made for a fantastic day. It is interesting to note that the Usumbara & Udzungwa mountains which form part of the Eastern Arc range contain more species of plant than America & Britain together. Also the fauna & flora have develops similarly to an island population resulting in a very high endemism of species, very worrying when you see how little is left untouched. We ate our lunch of locally made Mispel jam on bread before heading to the Pangani River campsite. It is hard to imagine that we are only 25km’s in a straight line from Irente, here the landscape returns to short scrubby thornveld and we start to see local herdsman dressed in dark purple coloured kikois with out of place plastic white sandals, similar to those we saw near Ruaha. We camped among Fever trees, an Acacia species named by early explorers due its sickly greenish yellow coloured bark and their tendency to grow near swampy mosquito invested areas. As the colours leached away, Greater Bush baby started to forage on the gum of the Acacias, their screeching call is different to those we hear in SA, the guide book says the call is used to identify the species. Before the full moon rose, fire flies flickered in the dark, it had been a good day. We look forward to Konstantine, Uli & Anka joining us again tomorrow.