August 19-21: Saanane Island National Park

First order of business: the answer to the mystery structure in the tree is an arboreal-nesting ant. Most of you guessed termites or wasps, both of which are good guesses. Ants and termites are very similar but termites don’t have the narrow waist and have straight antenae. These ant colonies are abundant throughout the forest and woodlands here in Africa. The structure is made from masticated leaves, soil and some kind of saliva-like substance that acts as a glue. These ants are the arboreal counterparts to the ground-dwelling termites.

En route to the Serengeti from Kigoma and the chimps, I decided to make a brief visit to Saanane Island National Park located in Lake Victoria near the town of Mwanza.

Let’s begin with a satellite view of East Africa that puts Lake Victoria in perspective relative to the Rift Valley lakes such as Tanganyika. Here’s an image borrowed from the internet:

Lake Victoria is one of the African Great Lakes. It is not actually in the Rift Valley, instead occupying a depression between the eastern and western rifts formed by the uplift of the rifts to either side. With a surface area of approximately 23,146 sq mi, Lake Victoria is Africa’s largest lake by area, the world’s largest tropical lake, and the world’s second-largest fresh water lake by surface area (Tanganyika is by volume) after Lake Superior in North America. Lake Victoria is drained solely by the Nile River. What is most phenomenal about Lake Victoria is its fish diversity. Unfortunately, a large number of endemic fish species have become extinct since the 1940s for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the lake’s eutrophication caused by pollution from the shoreline development, but also due to the introduction of non-native Nile tilapia and perch. The complete disappearance of many endemic cichlid species has been called the “most dramatic example of human-caused extinctions within an ecosystem”. Despite this decline, the lake hosts more than 500 species of fish mostly belonging to a group known as haplochromine cichlids (note, I put this factoid in for Caitlin), which is far more species of fish than any other lake in the world, except Lake Malawi. Lake Victoria supports a huge commercial fishery, which initially was based on the native species but over the last several decades has switched to the non-native Nile tilapia and perch, although even these fisheries have been in decline over recent years due to the ecosystem’s rapid collapse.

En route to Saanane Island National Park, I had an unrewarding night stopover in a town I already forget the name of and in a lodge that I don’t want to remember, so we’ll leave it at that. Before heading to Saanane for the day, I ended up spending the night at the Rock Bay Resort and Campsite situated on a rocky bay (dah) of Lake Victoria. This place felt more like a country club than a campground on the shores of Lake Victoria. The landscape was extremely well-manicured, with golf-green like sculptured lawns built into a rocky hillside. It was actually quite a stunning setting if it weren’t so artificial looking. In any event, it served me well enough for my purpose. Here’s a photo of my “campsite”:

On a positive note, there were dozens of Mwanza flat-headed rock agama lizards (or just Mwanza agama) running all over the rocks, and the males have a brilliant mixture of pink and blue, as seen in this borrowed internet photo:

While at my stopover in Mwanza en route to the Serengeti, I opted to take a brief day excursion out to Saanane Island National Park, located a short distance offshore from Mwanze (5 minute boat ride). I camped next to the boat launch at the Mwanze Yacht Club – but don’t think of Atlantic Coast Yacht Clubs. This place was essentially a fenced-in patch of lawn with ablutions (dirty, but at least they had them) and a few boats tied up to the shoreline. Not surprisingly, I had this place to myself. While not the spectacular setting for a Lake Victoria shoreline campsite, it served my purposes. Here’s a photo:

Saanane Island NP (<1 sq. mi.) was established as Tanzania’s first zoo in 1964, eventually designated as a game reserve in 1991, and finally became a national park in 2013. This tiny little park – Tanzania’s smallest – is situated on a small island in the Gulf of Lake Victoria. Many of the large mammals in the Park were brought here when it was a zoo (or “animal garden”). But I am not visiting to see large herds of mammals, but rather to stretch my legs on the hiking trails, enjoy the lakeside scenery and see a few birds. As it turns out, this Park receives very few visitors (<50/year) and nobody spends the night in the nice campsite or the awesome bedded tented camps overlooking the Bay, so I had the entire island Park to myself, except for the overabundant Park staff. In fact, the Park is appears to be desparate for visitors as the tourism manager for the Park whatsapp chatted me after I returned from the Park begging me to spread the word on how nice the Park was. There were a few kilometers of mostly stone pathways snaking up and down and around the few rocky hills – it was actually quite nice the way they cut the trails into the stones in a very natural way. I did see the few large mammals they have on the island- very tame zebra, blue wildebeest and impala, and let’s not forget the lions (male, female, and cub) in the much-too-small enclosure – and picked up several new bird species and watched what I think was a black mamba (snake) speed away from me on the trial (yikes!), but the highlight for me was finding and watching a rather large (~16×12 inch) leopard tortoise (photo below). Here are some photos of my visit to the Park:

And let’s finish this post with another mystery structure for the few of you that like to test your identification skills. This structure was on Saanane Island. Answer will come with the next post: