Going for a Walk

Mufindi Highlands offers endless possibilities for long relaxing walks.

Forest plantations of pine and eucalyptus on uplands and crops in lowlands where there is water year round.

Vervet monkeys move around the landscape at will to find the best food of the season.

Amazing army ants are always on the move in huge colonies and do not build nests. They form aggressive raiding groups that move across the landscape in a broad front and attack anything that can be eaten.

Hard to imagine these are all the same species. Huge fighting ants with massive mandibles guard the column and snap at anything that moves, real or imagined.

Bees and bugs feed at the end of a bamboo stem cut to collect expressed xylem liquid for ulanzi wine.

Termite mounds are not as large as in the Serengeti and Selous maybe due to cool high elevation climate. They seem to be restricted to certain soils and can be very numerous. Huge flying alates fill the air during nuptial flights in the rainy season. They fly mostly at night and can fill your house in a few minutes unless you turn out the lights and stuff rags into all the openings around the door.

Everyone makes bricks. This is a particularly large operation likely close to a good source of clay. The openings at the base of the kilns are filled with wood that is burned to fire the bricks.

Unilever’s tea plantations offer lots of roads for pleasant bicycle rides. This plantation produces tea for Lipton Tea.

Ngwazi Reservoir stores water for the Unilever tea plantation.

We can circumnavigate the lake by bicycle and have a picnic on the side opposite from our school.

The lake is visible from our house at the school. This is the opposite side of the lake.

The reservoir was stocked with fish on the 4th of March, 2019 according to the sign. Some of the fish in the market probably come from Ngwazi Reservoir

Clear skies to the south.

Walks in the rainy season are at risk of rain that comes nearly every afternoon. East winds push in warm moist air from the Indian Ocean during the period November to April.