Visit to Waza Wildlife Reserve
on Tomas in Africa (Cameroon), 21/Jun/2008 18:17, 34 days ago
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The Waza wildlife reserve, which is billed as the best in West Africa, is around 100 kilometres north of Maroua. Four of us hired a car and headed north early one morning. It was a beautiful clear day and the journey to Waza turned out to be very pleasant. We drove mainly through an almost perfectly flat plain but with mountains rising like islands, mainly in the distance. Those nearby were heaps of rocks which must have been thrown up in some volcanic eruptions. We drove through the small town of Mora which had a surprisingly lavish“Palais de Justice”. The road was quite good but we had the customary incident, which in this case was a blow-out after hitting a pot-hole at speed.At the entrance to Waza we picked up a guide and then spent the day driving on rough tracks through the reserve. There were some watering holes with lots of birds: marabouts,“grues coronets” (crested cranes)?, herons, occasional ostriches and some birds of prey (which looked like eagles) soaring overhead. There were lots of gazelles and various other bigger animals in much the same mould. The most evocative animals we saw were giraffes, which usually kept at a distance and watched us warily. There were lions and elephants there somewhere, and other animals such as jackals, but we did not see them. We did not see any snakes but I see them occasionally in Maga.While for me this was a significant experience, being my first visit to a wildlife reserve, I think that Waza must now be a shadow if its former self. Poachers are not controlled effectively and have greatly reduced the wildlife. We came across a group of poachers wading through a watering hole and guiding the fish to an area where they could catch them. When they saw our guide, who is a bailiff, they quickly ran off into the bush. There was one particularly extensive watering hole which was almost completely devoid of wildlife and the guide said that it used to teem with life but the poachers had taken everything. Despite these comments, I thoroughly enjoyed the day and will go there again, perhaps to get a glimpse of lions and elephants.
