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| Ruaha national park |
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The game
viewing starts the moment the plane touches down. A giraffe
races beside the airstrip, all legs and neck, yet oddly
elegant in its awkwardness. A line of zebras parades across
the runway in the giraffe's wake. |
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In the distance, beneath a bulbous baobab tree, a few
representatives of Ruaha's 10,000 elephants - the largest
population of any East African national park, form a
protective huddle around their young. Second only to Katavi
in its aura of untrammeled wilderness, but far more
accessible, Ruaha protects a vast tract of the rugged,
semi-arid bush country that characterizes central Tanzania. |
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A fine network of game-viewing roads follows the Great Ruaha
and its seasonal tributaries, where , during the dry season,
impala, waterbuck and other antelopes risk their life for a
sip of life-sustaining water. |
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Ruaha's
unusually high diversity of antelope is a function of its
location, which is transitional to the acacia savannah of
East Africa and the miombo woodland belt of Southern Africa.
Grant's gazelle and lesser kudu occur here at the very south
of their range, alongside the miombo-associated sable and
roan antelope, and one of East Africa largest populations of
greater kudu, the park emblem, distinguished by the male's
magnificent corkscrew horns. |
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A similar duality is noted in the checklist of 450 birds:
the likes of crested barbet, an attractive yellow-and-black
bird whose persistent trilling is a characteristic sound of
the southern bush, occur in Ruaha alongside central
Tanzanian endemics such as the yellow-collared lovebird and
ashy starling. |
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