The plan to depart the Pousada Calandula Lodge overlooking the Calandula Falls at dawn failed. While we were ready to leave at dawn, it took about twenty minutes to find anybody in the hotel so Niall could sort out our checkout. Hotel payments always were complicated by Angola only accepting a limited number of credit cards in the country. Sometimes hotels wouldn't take credit cards or their machines wouldn't take Niall's South African credit cards. He always had the ultimate option of paying in cash. But that meant finding a larger town afterwards, with a working ATM machine where he could withdraw Angolan currency to top up his cash reserves. On at least one occasion, Phil had to use his credit cards to help Niall, when none of Niall's credit cards would work in an ATM. On a positive, diesel worked out about £1.10 a gallon: it was several years when I last paid that price for just one litre in the UK.
After a short stop at the bridge over the River Lucala, we returned to the Kinjila Forest. Very quickly one of the previous days guides and a different guide came to join us. We spent a frustrating couple of hours in the forest. We managed to get decent views of Cabanis's Greenbuls in the forest, which we hadn't seen properly on the previous day: albeit it wasn't a Tick for me. After a bit of searching, Niall managed to find our first Brown-headed Apalis: which was one of our target species for the Kinjila Forest. We heard a White-spotted Flufftail, but it was in an area where it wasn't going to be possible to get close enough to have a chance of seeing it.
The next frustrating species was the nominate subspecies of Four-coloured Bushshrike, known locally as Perrin's Bushshrike. Niall said there were some plumage differences between the Angolan Perrin's individuals and further East in their range, despite all being classified as the nominate subspecies. After a fair bit of searching, Richard and I managed to get views of this individual, but unfortunately, Phil was in the wrong place on both occasions. He had seen the Eastern population of the nominate subspecies, but he never managed to see one in Angola. I was pleased to see a showy African Broadbill again as the Broadbills are always one of my favourite families: albeit the family has now been split into two families.
We decided to head out into the Miombo area on the approach track about a mile or so beyond the village with the guides. We were looking for a Miombo Scrub-robin, but couldn't locate any. Fortunately, we did see one later in the trip. But we got jammy when a Dusky Long-tailed Cuckoo flew across the grassland: a bonus Tick for me. Soon after Niall decided to pay the guides and knock the Birding on the head.
We drove back to the main road for the 2.5 hour drive West to the town of N'dalatando. It was an uneventful journey apart from a short stop at a bridge over a river where we saw a few Little Swifts, Angolan Swallows & Lesser Striped Swallows.
We quickly found the Hotel Terminus in the middle of N'dalatando which was to be our base for the next couple of nights. The hotel knew about Niall's booking & the check in went smoothly.
After checking in, we headed out again for the remains of a wooded valley about a forty minute drive beyond N'dalatando. This would have been a great Birding place at some point. But as usual for Angola, the commercial trees were long gone and what remained were a few big trees with little commercial value. A few of the old Portuguese buildings had been occupied by villagers, with others living in the more traditional mudbrick houses. The valley now had areas of cultivation including fruit trees, which confirmed this was a more lush area with a higher rainfall than a number of the dry arid sites we visited. There was a reasonable selection of new species for the trip: none of which I had seen for at least twenty five years. So, I was focusing on enjoying the Birding, rather than photography. The highlight was seeing my first male Ludwig's Double-collared Sunbird. We probably saw a number of others, but they were females or immature males and we hadn't got our eye in on how to separate them from the similar looking Olive-bellied Sunbirds that were also there.
We returned to the Hotel Terminus at dusk. It all looked quite posh in the hotel & the rooms, like a modern 2 or 3 star UK hotel. But the appearance lulled us into a false sense of security: as the food service was typically Angolan. On the first evening, I asked that we ordered the food just after the restaurant opened at 19:00. The restaurant started filling up with other guests around 20:00 & their food arrived well within an hour of their arrival. Our food started to appear about 22:00 and then it came in dribs & drabs. Very frustrating given how early we had ordered. Not the ideal scenario when we were planning to be up for about five the following morning. It was better on the second evening, as we only had an hour & a half wait before the first plates arrived. Albeit they still appeared in dribs & drabs again.
