Site Report: Nechisar National Park

Visits

• 2011-01-07: We needed a 4x4 for the next part of our journey, so we called our contact in Addis Ababa to have one sent to pick us up. 4x4 hire in Ethiopia includes a driver, and anyway, you probably need the translation that the driver provides. Our driver spoke a fair amount of English, but more importantly, he was very friendly, and he knew where the good restaurants were. From our hotel in Hawassa, we were looking at spending most of the day in the car, and I was not looking forward to that. The highlight of traveling on the road to Arba Minch was the steady parade of dancing children who would run to the road to greet the passing cars. Some other interesting bits from the road were a rusty bus stripped of all parts in the middle of the road and of course a drunk guy sleeping in the road. Arba Minch was the first place in Ethiopia where we saw a level of poor value for hotel. We stayed in a hotel that was easily double the price of a similar hotel almost anywhere. That was the one place that was full of foreign tourists which could explain a few things. Anyway, the next day, we ditched the tour groups and headed into the national park. Part one of our park trip involved walking out to the water supply for Arba Minch. The forest around there was quite thick, and it was difficult to see all of the monkeys and hornbills flying around. The springs were nice and clear, but it was a bit too chilly to go for a swim. From the springs, we took the 4X4 over the "Bridge of God" between Lake Chamo and Lake Abaya to get to our campsite on the Nechisar plain. We saw a lot of zebras on the trip, but otherwise, the few antelope that we saw ran fast away from us. It was pretty hot in the plains once it got to be around midday, so most of the game driving involved riding around with the windows rolled up and air conditioning... so not that great. I think that there are probably more cows in that park than all other animals combined which put even more of a damper on the game drive portion of the trip. We arrived at the campsite which was very well sited next to a mountain and some hot springs. There was finally a big enough group to eat the watermelon, and it was a great novelty as none of the scouts had ever eaten such a fruit. We walked around for awhile waiting for the darkness and our scheduled search for the elusive Nechisar nightjar. Of course, driving around at night, we did not see any nightjars. Maybe we would have had some more luck if we had brought a spotlight. We were all feeling very tired, and we started heading back to the campsite. Much to our surprise, right on the side of the road, was a caracal. That was an animal that I had never seen in all of my time visiting Africa. Just a few minutes later, I noticed a nightjar flying past the car. Then, in the span of five minutes, there were two civets. The camping weather was perfect as well.

Species Seen

Lifelists

• Africa
• World

Trips

• Africa: Egypt and Ethiopia