Many of the safari camps in and around Selous Game Reserve offer their guests the opportunity to go on a walking safari. Selous Riverside Camp on the banks of the Rufigi River is no different. The hikes are relatively short, lasting around 1-2 hours and don’t cover more than a mile or two. The terrain is usually fairly easy for most people and everyone on our hike was wearing sneakers or similar comfortable shoes.
Walking safaris at Selous Riverside start early. They woke us up at 5.30am for a 6am start. There was just time for a quick cup of tea or coffee before boarding the vehicles to head to your chosen hiking location for the day. Since Selous Riverside is located outside of Selous National Park, we were also going to hike outside of the park. Our destination was about 10-15 minutes away and we were soon on our way, through a nearby town and down one of the many back roads where we stopped.
There was quite thick vegetation around us, but the paths that had been cleared by the passing elephants and hippos were clearly visible, so we followed them. Our group of 6 walkers was accompanied by an armed ranger and a local tracker. We were given a short briefing explaining the procedures in case we came across any wild animals and once everyone was happy we hit the road. The ranger led the way and we all followed single file with the tracker trailing behind.
Although it was quite unlikely that we would encounter larger wild animals such as elephants or leopards, mainly due to the noise we made, our ranger told us that he had seen a large selection of these animals during the walks. This type of walking safari is more about smaller things like bugs, plants, and birds. The first item of interest we found was a termite mound that was at least 2 meters high. The ranger explained that although the termite mound looked quite large, two-thirds of the system was underground. Pretty impressive when you consider the size of the little creatures that built it.
The only inescapable sound was the almost deafening sound of the cicadas that surrounded us. Measuring between 1 and 2 inches, cicadas are similar to locusts and if you look closely you will see them all over the trees. They go through a 17-year life cycle and are prey to just about everything in nature. They also showed us plants like the Sausage Tree, which takes its name from the sausage-shaped fruit it produces. However, the fruit is much larger than the traditional English breakfast sausage, growing up to one meter long and weighing over 10kg.
The walk lasted an hour and although it was all too easy to get the feeling that it was not much different to a walk in a forest in England, the occasional footprints we found reminded us that we were in Africa. . Once back in the safari vehicle, we soon headed to the camp for breakfast before heading off for another day on safari on the Selous Game Reserve.