Road Trip Day 5 - Yankari Game Reserve

So the moment had come to actually see some real animals living in the wild in Nigeria (that is animals that are tided to power poles for sale to any taker. We had the option of taking our own car or joining a couple of Dutch women who had been in Nigeria for only two weeks (one of those staying at Yankari - why? I have no idea). Consider our luck and the obvious pounding the rangers cars in the car park had taken we opted to join the tour...

We were now officially on our first Safari!!

In the most of the rest of Africa the Swahili word "safari" means "journey". In the old days this was a "journey" to go and shoot the biggest thing you could find and get the locals that were carrying you around to lug it back to your place so you could stick it up on the wall in the pool room. These days its a very eco-friendly, technological affair where you stay in "tents" that are decked out like a marquee at the Melbourne Cup and have air-con and cruise around in special tour buses.

In Nigeria, the word "safari" basically means "hold on tight, we're gonna tear around in the bush with no real goal in mind and if you see any animals just yell stop!! - though I doubt we'll see any animals anyway because a few years back someone else went on safari and shot most of them..."

Fair enough...

Harmattan sunrise in Yankari

So after tearing around the bush in this old land rover that was born before I was, we'd seen a few Needbok and antelope looking thingys (that's their scientific name...) and the usual baboons etc. We somehow came across a pride of lionesses sitting in the dead bush, looking quite hungry - there isn't much around in the dry season. But, like us, they hadn't seen much else for a while so they thought they'd come an have a chat.

here kitty...

They looked hungry... how strong are these doors again?

Plenty of elephant shit but no elephants. Does kitty know something we don't??

The guide bravely drove over tress and smashed through bush on our "eco-friendly" tour, looking for elephants - unfortunately to no avail. But we were pleased to the lions. Apparently they hadn't seen any since before Christmas. Chris hadn't ever seen a lion before - he comes from jungle territory in the east where anything larger than a gnat has been killed and eaten years ago.

After all this excitement it was still only about 7:30 so we had the day to kill down by the hot springs - the main attraction at yankari. Amazing, groundwater - bright blue from minerals - comes out the bottom of this cliff at quite a current - and they're warm!! So on a cold morning it was perfect.

A few hours and beers later, we'd been lying by the springs catching up on some reading and figured we should go back to the campsite for lunch. George got to spend some quality time with our neighbours!! The local building workers just throw rocks and bits of timber with nails at the baboons to stop them stealing their tools, however us white folk hadn't evolved that far yet, still trying to be nice.

Unfortunately baboons are like children who just keep pushing something until it breaks. In this case our tent. It was great fun for them to jump out of a nearby tree and land on our tent - kind of like a jumping castle. So while we were lying by the creek, they were at the campsite perfecting the "tent bomb"...

Given enough time, these guys would turn the space shuttle into a box of spare parts. Problem is, they're smart! And I mean smart. Once they see you do something they'll remember it. So George had to wait for them to go before unzipping the tent otherwise, they'd learn how to get in - which thankfully they never learned how to do. they did however, try the door handles on the car while George was inside trying to get us some lunch. Sneaky little f*#kers !!

The local builders had no interest in helping us. I think they we're still trying to work out why the hell two white folk would set up a tent in the middle of a building site. Good question I guess. but the baboons got bored and left when they realised that there was no food and the tent had fallen down so the "tents bombs" didn't have a soft landing anymore...

Deputy Sheriff Poombah lends a hand getting rid of the baboons