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ZAMBIA & TANZANIA
2003 "Water Cobra" Kasanga & Muzei, Tanzania
Kasanga was known as Bismarckburg when Tanzania was German East Africa. The fort on the promontory was originally a research station established by German explorer Ludwig Wolf in 1888 but during the Great War the Germans fortified the emplacement with mock guns made of wood which fooled the Royal Navy expeditionary force on Lake Tanganyika. We had to visit Kasanga to get entry visas to allow us to search Tanzanian waters in Lake Tanganyika. It turned out that the Customs Officer at Kasanga was an OBA fan and the Series 2 films were showing in East Africa at the time of our visit. Kasanga was also where we picked up and dropped off members of the expedition coming in from Dar-es-Salaam, ie. Charlie and Fiti, the snake catchers, Peter MacIntyre, the American cichlid biologist, and Xavier Medina, the dive master.
Large Nile monitor lizards (Varanus niloticus) lurked and basked on the stone jetty at Muzei, but did not permit a closer approach, while less wary Spotted-lipped skinks (Trachylepis maculilabris maculilabris) inhabited the shoreline vegetation. Muzei was where Toby's partner Oscar was based, and where there was an opportunity to photograph some captive turtles: East African black mud turtles (Pelusios subniger subniger) and Speke's hingeback tortoise (Kinixys spekii).
We ventured beyond Kasanga and Muzei, along the road towards the Kawala rail-link, in the hopes of finding reptiles on the African savanna-woodland but it was too hot for anything other than "mad dogs and Englishmen" to be out in the midday sun.
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