Permits checked, and we were through the gates of Bale Mountains National Park and onto the Sanetti Plateau.
As we were driving across a hillside recovering from a burn less than a year ago, with freshly sprouting Erica arborea, our driver spotted an animal running: a mongoose? No, black and white striped, and legging it through the bush… amazingly, we all got brilliant views of a speedy Zorilla, a relative of the Saharan Striped Polecat that I’d hoped (but failed) to see back in January, and a spectacular start to our day on the plateau!
Up onto the plateau proper, white cushions of Helichrysum covered the landscape, looking for all the world like ashy rocks. Scattered amongst them were Giant Lobelias, looking for all the world like out-of-place palm trees.
The moorland was amazingly alive with rodents. Blick’s Grass Rats bounded from clump to clump, rock to rock, like hyperactive Pikas. A larger, greyer rodent was Black-clawed Brush-furred Rat, while a smaller, more rat-like species was Ethiopian Meadow Rat.
But the most entertaining of the lot led us a merry dance, a game of ‘whack-a-mole’, or should that be ‘spot-a-mole-rat’, the Giant Root Rat who would stick his big head up out of a burrow, nibble on some grasses and then just as quickly disappear underground again. Eventually we all got a look at this giant gingery fur-ball, but it definitely took some doing!