In the African leg of my 1990 - 1992 Round the World Birding trip, we slotting in a day and a half at the Vitoria Falls to see the most impressive waterfalls in Africa. We should have had an afternoon & the following morning's Birding at the famous waterfalls. But frustratingly that didn't work out as planned. We had been in the Okavango, Botswana and flew at lunchtime to the Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. When we went to reconfirm the onward flight back to Johannesburg for the following afternoon, we were told that while the tickets were issued, the flights were not confirmed. South African airlines were totally unhelpful. Fairly quickly they decided to allow my RTW travelling buddy Keith Turner & I onto the flight. But they refused to do the same for Jerry Warne who had joined us for the Southern African leg of the trip. We lost the whole afternoon trying to resolve the problem without success. They just didn't care that we were picking up a hire car in Johannesburg the following day & were heading straight for Namibia that evening (which we couldn't do if Jerry wasn't on the flight). By the end of the afternoon, their only suggest was to turn up very early the next day & hope somebody didn't check in.
It was an early start the following morning to get to the gorge viewpoint for my only Taita Falcons. Then it was on to a path alongside the river before it reached the falls. Fortunately, we quickly saw the remaining four Ticks for me: White-crowned Plover, Half-collared Plover, Southern Black Tit & Morning Thrush. There was time for a quick look at the famous Waterfalls, before having to leave early for the airport. As expected, when we arrived at the airport to start lobbying, we were met with the same uncaring SAA staff, who changed their story to "we would have to wait until check-in closed before we would know if they would let Jerry on the plane". At the last minute, they did confirm there was room for Jerry on the plane. My memories of seeing the Victoria Falls remains marred by the crap we received from SAA.
Now we were going to have the next couple of days staying by the second best Waterfalls in Africa: Calandula Falls. But first we had to get there. We left the hotel in Uige just before first light for a different patch of dry forest close to Uige that Niall had read about, but hadn't visited. After about forty-five minutes there, we decided to abandon that site & return back to the roadside forest where we had heard the White-spotted Flufftails & Gabon Coucal. In hindsight, we should have headed straight for the roadside forest location, but the original plan had seemed a good idea on paper the night before. We knew this would cost us a couple of hours lost in the afternoon around the Calandula Falls area, but as we would have two full days Birding there, we were hoping this wouldn't be a big problem. In the end, we failed to see either of our target species. We returned to the hotel for mid-morning, picked up our bags & checked out.
It was only a one hundred and sixty mile drive from Uige to our hotel at the Calandula Falls. But we already knew this would be well over a four hour drive given the poor state of the roads. After an hour or more of driving, we pulled onto a dirt track for a few miles to look for some dry country species. The habitat had changed & we were now in stunted woodland. This was a frustratingly brief stop for not much more than a half hour. Personally, I would have liked longer and would have given up the last hour or so of Birding at the end of the day, as it was a good Birdy spot.
Niall pulled off the road around lunchtime by a small patch of remnant forest in a sea of regularly burnt grassland, for some coffee & lunch. He had a couple of large flasks for hot water from the hotels, a couple of heavy duty large metal coffee presses and some large packs of ground coffee. Once or twice a day, we would get a top up of fresh brew coffee in the field, which was always appreciated. Very quickly we could hear Turacos calling from the trees and the others had brief views of them bouncing around in the trees and confirmed they were the endemic Red-crested Turacos. Eventually, one flew from the wood to a nearby group of trees and I had excellent flight views of my last Turaco. This species was right at the top of my target list for the trip and I was really pleased to have seen it this early in the trip. I knew the camera was set with point focusing in case I saw it moving in the trees. Therefore, I reckoned I would have struggled to get the central focusing on it in flight and was fairly convinced I wouldn't have obtained any worthwhile flight photos. There wasn't time to change the camera settings & I just settled for enjoyed the views. I hoped we would have seen some more in the trip, but we never had good views of any others.
We finally arrived at our accommodation for the next two nights at the Pousada Calandula Lodge. The lodge overlooks the waterfalls and provides breath-taking views of the Calandula Falls without the constant hassling of locals trying to be your guide to see the falls. This is because it is located on the other side of the river to the site the majority of the tourists go to view the waterfalls. One of the potential problems we had with the accommodation throughout the trip was Niall was booking and reserving rooms, but he had a problem being able to pay for the accommodation from South Africa. So, we were often uncertain on arrival if we had a confirmed booking for the evening. The lodge looked locked up & deserted as we pulled up. Fortunately, there was somebody in the hotel, they were expecting us & they had good supplies of food in the hotel. The deserted look was because we had the place to ourselves for the two nights we were there.
We checked in & confirmed they had food for the evening. That was essential as it was over twenty minutes on the poor quality track and potholed road before we reached the main road. It was then another twenty minute drive to the uninspiring town of Calandula which would have been the nearest place we might have been able to find food. There was time for a walk for the last hour of light along the approach road. The highlight was seeing my fifth & final Tick of the day: Greencap Eremomela.
