Chad '22: Return to the Wild

[Kitsafari]

that's an awesome bird list garnered for a non-birding trip @inyathi. 

 

Thanks so much @inyathi @gatoratlarge @Zarek Cockar for a fabulous triple-voice TR and a comprehensive informative report especially on OROA and Ennedi. I thoroughly enjoyed going on the rides with you three, and very jealous of the antelopes seen at OROA. 

[Atravelynn]

page 1--the colors, the rock formations, those paintings, wow!  Plus tanks and snakes.  What a place.

Page 2--colors, rocks and paintings continue and a cheetah (rock painting).  Cute little Lesser Egyptian Jerbo.  I saw the rock hyrax!  Having sunny days was important to fully enjoy Ennedi.

page 3--there is no such thing as getting too carried away with photos, @inyathi.   OROA and Zakuma produced a cornucopia. 

Page 4--Impressive bird list!  Thank goodness the Ipad was not lost.  Close call.  Very easy to have happen when charging.  Should I be lucky enough to follow in your collective footsteps, I'll remember that okra can be slimy and avoid it.

 

I like those skinny strip-like photos for shots like an expansive herd!

 

One amazing trip and a fantastic shared adventure!  This report is very informative and will undoubtedly send many visitors to these remarkable destinations that you have illustrated so well for us in both photos and words.  I am sure saying goodbyes was a bit sad.

 

If you had not gotten to go to Rigueik floodplains, do you think you would have seen quelas or other big flocks?

Edited April 18, 2022 by Atravelynn

[gatoratlarge]

21 hours ago, Atravelynn said:

If you had not gotten to go to Rigueik floodplains, do you think you would have seen quelas or other big flocks?

@AtravelynnI'll let @inyathiand @Zarek Cockarweigh in but on my first visit to Zakouma we passed an oxbow lagoon just loaded with thousands? of white pelicans, morose marabou storks and other water birds...other spots, thousands of whistling ducks and knob billed geese....and quelia were almost inescapable near little pools of water scattered all around the park, but to see the thousands of black crowned cranes and the murmurations of quelia I would say Rigueik is by far the place to see them best...what say ye?   Interesting, as you might expect, it changes slightly from visit to visit...I suppose because of how dry or wet it's been.  This time we didn't get the view of thousands or hundreds and hundreds of pelicans in the same way as the first visit but for me, seeing the quelia coming in to roost and for a last drink at dusk was pure magic.   @inyathitold me his stay at Camp Nomade was the penultimate for the quelia murmurations.  Had the timing been perfect, we would have seen that as well as we had full access to Rigueik during our visit.

Edited April 19, 2022 by gatoratlarge

[inyathi]

 

 

I said in my posts about Ennedi, that I only knew the names of a very few of the places that we visited, however, since saying that I realised that in fact I did know the name of one of the major rock art sites that we visited, Manda Guéli Cave, because I posted a photo of the rock art there, taken from Wikipedia, back when we were advertising for an extra participant to join us, and the photo was labelled. In fact, the photo was taken by someone I follow on Flickr, a Canadian named David Stanley who is a former guidebook writer for Lonely Planet amongst others, and has visited almost every country in the world, he has an album on Flickr containing a handful of photos taken in Ennedi, a few of these are on Wikipedia. @gatoratlarge After you posted those Google Map links, I thought perhaps I should make more of an effort to and try and find out the names and locations of other places in the RNCE that we visited, helpfully the photos on Wikipedia have the place name and also coordinates, if you copy the coordinates and paste them into Google Earth it will take you straight there. Google Earth also has a photo layer, they got rid of the original photo layer that they used to have, but now have a new one, if you tick photos from the Layers menu and then zoom in on Ennedi, quite a few photos appear. Looking at these photos and also searching for photos of Ennedi on Flickr and there are quite a lot, and then looking at them on the Flickr map, I’ve managed to establish the names and locations of a few more of the places we visited, but I’ve not yet found all of them or established all of the names. You have to be a little careful looking at photos on Google Earth or the Flickr map, because they may not be in exactly the right place, some photos I found of the Labyrinthe d’Oyo on Google Earth are certainly in the wrong place, when I zoomed in really close, I thought that can’t be the right place, but when I found David Stanley’s photo of the Labyrinth on Wikipedia and pasted the coordinates into Google Earth, when I zoomed in, I thought yes this definitely looks like the right place and there were a good few other photos of the Labyrithe d’Oyo indicating that it had to be the Labyrinth. It’s taken me a long time to find the name and location of the place that we visited on our final morning, but I have come up with a name, Pináculos de Wimini, clearly the photographer who marked it on Google Earth is Spanish, assuming that name is correct, I am calling it the Pinnacles of Wimini, there are still a few other places that I’ve not found at all or not located precisely on the map, such as the Bottle of Bamena, that we referred to as the Champagne Bottle, I can find Bamena I’m just not certain where the Bottle is, but otherwise I’ve created a map on Google Earth with the various places marked on it, including Bamena just to indicate where that area is. Having done this I’ve edited my Ennedi posts to add in these names.

 

 

 

 

The very first rock art site we visited, is I think called Dibirké Shelter, but the little isolated mountain where it is, is called Degedey

 

We visited two different places with champignons - mushroom rocks, I’ve marked these as Champinons 1^st and Champignons 2^nd to indicate which ones we visited first, we visited a site at the back of the Terkei Massif which I’ve just marked Terkei, here’s a photo from there, that I didn’t put in

 

 

Terkei

 

Then a few days later after we visited the Guelta’ d’Archei, we visited Terkei Cave to look at the rock art, where we saw the galloping or “flying” horses, this is located at what I would call the front of Terkei, being the side closest to our camp. Having created that map, I can now add more of my Ennedi photos to the Flickr map, not all of my Flickr photos are on the map, but a large percentage are including most of my Zakouma photos from 2014 and 15, I've only added a few Zakouma shots from this trip, but I will add more if I can figure out where to put them, often I am happy just to put them in what I think is approximately the right place, if someone looking at one of my Zakouma photos and clicks on the map it will take them to the park, it doesn't really matter if I placed a photo on the wrong bend of the river.  

 

@AtravelynnThanks,

 

In my experience you really have to be at Rigueik to see the most impressive quelea murmurations, to see great clouds of them swirling around, dipping down to the ground to drink and back up again, in flocks numbering in the many thousands. You can see them drinking at other places, but not in such numbers, you may as we did this time, see them streaming overhead in their multitudes as they return to their roost, and that is still very impressive, but it’s not quite the same. The flocks in this video are even more impressive than what I saw on my 2015 trip, or at least the video is more impressive than anything that I filmed.

 

 

 

At Machtour and some other places you will see small groups of Black Crowned Cranes, and sometimes see them flying, much as you might see small groups of Grey Crowned in Eastern or Southern Africa, but you will only see them in their thousands on the plains at Rigueik. The cranes at Rigueik are a uniquely Zakouma spectacle, I’m not aware of anywhere where you will see big concentrations of Grey Crowned Cranes or anywhere else where you will see Black Crowned in such numbers as you see at Rigueik, other than down in the south at Mare Am Douloulou and Mare Sourane, where there can be large numbers, but I don’t think in quite the numbers you see at Rigueik. If you go to YouTube or Vimeo and look up videos of Zakouma, you will see scenes of antelope herds, big buffalo herds and giraffes all mixed in amongst the cranes and the masses of other water birds at Rigueik. You won’t really see this elsewhere in Zakouma, except again perhaps right down in the south, where you can also find big concentrations of birds.and decent sized herds of antelopes, Tiang, hartebeest and roan, but Rigueik is the jewel in Zakouma’s crown.

 

The following video is by @Michael Lorentzhe did ask me if I wanted to come on this trip, perhaps foolishly I said no, I didn't want to return quite so soon, I said I'd rather wait and go back once they introduced the rhinos, I suppose that is what I ended up doing, by going on this trip, at the time I just felt that it was a lot of money and it would be hard to top my 2015 trip, then I saw this video and though darn maybe I should have gone especially when I saw the elephant part. 

 

The video gives a very good indication of how amazing Rigueik can be, but of course, it is not always like that, and it does depend on when you are there, on this trip we didn't see a big herd of buffalo right out in the open as they did, nor giraffes, we saw some in the distance in the trees but not out in the open. 

 

Unfortunately, besides being prohibitively expensive at around £1,590 person/night Camp Nomade is now as I sort of knew, invitation only, it is no longer operated as a commercial camp, you have to be invited by African Parks, I guess this means you have to be a big donor in order to secure an invitation, I’m not sure how you get invited otherwise. I just know that I was very lucky to stay there when I did, as I won’t be staying there again, if I ever go back to Chad. Curiously looking up Camp Nomade, of the few travel agents I looked at, only Timbuktu Travel mentioned it being by invitation only, they say

 

Quote

This camp can only be booked by invitation from African Parks and is no longer operating as a commercial camp.

 

Timbuktu Travel

 

I don’t know exactly why AP took this decision, and whether it was the right one, but it must make sense to them.

 

If no one is staying at Camp Nomade, then you will have full access to Rigueik, if there are guests there, then you won’t be able to go there, at least whilst they are in residence, at some point they should go off fly camping and may even move down to the far south for a couple of nights, then guests at Tinga would have access to Rigueik during that time. I don’t know if Nomade is normally occupied throughout the season, since AP made it invitation only, but I would assume that during a stay at Tinga, you should typically get a chance to visit Rigueik, at least once, but I wouldn't want to say that that is definitely always the case, I think if you are seriously thinking of going, it would be worth getting confirmation from the travel agent or AP. 

 

Otherwise, there are always concentrations of Spur-winged Geese at Machtour, often with African Comb Ducks and perhaps whistling ducks mixed in, and on my first visit, we would see quite large concentrations of ducks and geese at various points on the river, and there are places away from Rigueik where you may see large numbers of storks and pelicans. It does obviously all depend on how much water there is, if you were to go later in March or at the beginning of April, when it is of course getting really hot, then the birds should be more concentrated as they hunt for fish in the last pools. On my 2015 safari we saw a huge flock of Great White Pelicans at an old oxbow called Medjalam someway down the Salamat, we didn't go there on this trip. 

 

As I said in a previous post, I wouldn't not have wanted to just go back Zakouma, if I had only been visiting Zakouma, I think I would have been quite worried that I would be disappointed compared to my previous visits, if you are going for the first time, I think as a regular safari goer you shouldn't be disappointed, provided you have realistic expectations as to what you should see and perhaps more importantly what you won't see. If you read some of the reviews of Zakouma on Tripadvisor many say this was one of their best ever safari experiences, but a couple say they were disappointed, because the park lacks the variety of animals that you find in Eastern or Southern Africa and in one case they didn't see a single elephant. If you know the history of Zakouma's elephants, and know that this means that you are not guaranteed great views or to even see them at all, then you'd be a bit disappointed if you didn't see a single one, but not too disappointed, if you went expecting to see lots of them, then you might be very disappointed. With the addition of Ennedi and OROA, I wasn't too worried that Zakouma might not deliver quite such amazing sights as I had seen in 2015.    

 

I was interested to read the following about Siniaka-Minia on Facebook

 

Quote

The first-ever camera trap study was conducted in Siniaka-Minia Wildlife Reserve in 2021! Twenty camera traps were deployed in the field for two months and detected 28 different wildlife species, including leopard, giraffe, Greater kudu, and serval.

 

Good to see that they recorded Greater Kudu, I think Siniaka should be a stronghold for the Western Greater Kudu (Tragelaphus strepsiceros cottoni) and AP have chosen a kudu for the new park logo, judging by some images I found online from a competition to design the new logo. I’d be very interested to know what the other 24 species they recorded were, maybe this information is online, but I’ve not found anything else on their camera trap study, but I’ve not looked that hard.

Edited April 21, 2022 by inyathi

[Atravelynn]

Very helpful reply, @inyathi, along with the video illustration.  Thank you.

[Photo-Kiboko]

Thank you for sharing this great trip report.

I have enjoyed it.

It has remembered me on my great time in Zakouma in April 2019.

 

Thank you for all the great pictures and information about Ennedi and OROA.

I hope, I have a chance to visit these places, too.

 

Best regards

Bernd

[Galago]

Thank you for such an interesting report with such wonderful photos.  Ennedi is beyond stunning and oh how I'd love to visit.

@inyathiI'm another Brit who's visited Zakouma twice, influenced by your TR and also by @Kitsafari  First was Feb 2018 at Nomade (before AP introduced the new pricing structure) and then March 2020 at Tinga. I stayed in the same building as you and I did suggest they put a few hooks in the wall for hanging stuff up, but that fell on deaf ears it seems!

Yes, Nomade is the place for quelea murmurations and I saw them in the millions there.  You did well with the eles. Ooh they made us work for it and, in the end, just a brief sighting as the light faded.  I understand the herd has split now.  We were allowed to water the bull eles at HQ but I think it was a favour to our guide (Doug McD) because were were instructed not to breathe a word about it back at Tinga! 

Reading all this TR makes me want to go back again.  Thank you!

[Jakob]

On 4/12/2022 at 4:44 PM, gatoratlarge said:

For those into maps (I love them!) One of our party used Google Maps to drop pins at all the below locations  hopefully the links work:

 

Dropped pin Ennedi Camp

 

https://maps.google.com?q=16.7721125,21.7925768&hl=en-US&gl=us&entry=gps&lucs=s2se,a2

 

Dropped pin Oroa Camp

 

https://maps.google.com?q=14.8838570,20.0767710&hl=en-US&gl=us&entry=gps&lucs=s2se,a2

 

Dropped pin Oroa airport

 

https://maps.google.com?q=14.8069513,20.0830581&hl=en-US&gl=us&entry=gps&lucs=s2se,a2

 

Dropped pin Zakouma airport

 

https://maps.google.com?q=10.8882155,19.8165481&hl=en-US&gl=us&entry=gps&lucs=s2se,a2

 

Dropped pin Tinga Camp

 

https://maps.google.com?q=10.8374614,19.7799859&hl=en-US&gl=us&entry=gps&lucs=s2se,a2

 

Dropped pin Salamat camp

 

https://maps.google.com?q=10.7953411,19.7709405&hl=en-US&gl=us&entry=gps&lucs=s2se,a2

 

I obviously need to learn how to "drop pins"  as this is what I have always missed, without knowing how to achieve it! I think it adds a whole lot to the experience to be able to look at maps to see exactly where the giant Fig with all the Barbets was located.

[Jakob]

Thanks for a great report on a fruitful trip! It makes me think of going back to Tchad some time, when the stars are aligned.

[gatoratlarge]

@JakobI think you flew in on the plane as we departed Zakouma on my first visit to Tchad.  A second trip with Ennedi and OROA on the itinerary is definitely worth consideration!  So many wonderful places to go in Africa but I would definitely consider a third visit once the rhino population gets bolstered!

 

[Jakob]

@gatoratlargeThat's right. You were enjoying the lounge when my company got to the arrival hall.

 

The thing is that there is just too much to consider

[inyathi]

@GalagoI am so glad that you went twice, it's good to know that I didn't oversell it, I wouldn't want people going somewhere on my recommendation only to think, I don't get it, what's so amazing about this place, why did we waste all this money coming here, it also goes to show that I am not completely mad, that Zakouma is somewhere worth visiting more than once or even that just going to Chad is not daft. As an indication of how amazing this trip was, my album on Flickr now has 987 photos and 13 videos in it, I thought 1,000 was a nice round number, thanks to uploading all those photos, I think I've sold the idea of visiting Chad to at least one of my Flickr followers and maybe another one. 

 

@JakobDefinitely worth considering a future visit,  as far as I know the next batch of rhinos will arrive in Zakouma in December and it looks like the reintroduction of Addax and Scimitar-horned Oryx to Ennedi should start quite soon, AP's Annual Report from 2021 said that having surveyed Ennedi for suitable release sites, reintroductions should begin this year, I've not seen any updates on this, it maybe that they are planning to do it later this year, I don't know, but I would imagine that certainly within a few years, both large antelope species will be back in Ennedi, that would be one more reason to visit Ennedi and a good reason to return to Chad.

 

I've just been going back through my bird list for this trip, after submitting our records to WABDaB the West African Bird Database, I realised that I needed to go back and correct a couple of mistakes, I decided at the same time, that I should add on the birds that Zarek  @Zarek Cockarsaw, but I did not, since he'd sent me his bird lists, so I have gone back and edited my earlier post, in which I'd posted my bird list, that then puts the total number of birds seen by the two of us up to 187 I think, which is pretty respectable, that's another 30 species on top of my total, I think there must have been a few moments when I was asleep,  I'm not sure how I missed all of these additional birds otherwise.   

[Hads]

Well done on a splendid trip report @gatoratlarge, thanks for sharing.