jgrussell – my world

Up early this morning. VERY early. About 2 a.m., give or take. There is nothing that gets your heart pumping quite as much as hearing a great big adult male lion roar just behind your tent. I couldn’t find the iPod quickly in the dark and the lion moved off, after giving off an even-scarier purrrrrrrrr sound, roaring twice more farther and farther away (thank heavens!) before I could come up with it, but that’s okay — all it would have recorded was the pounding of my heart, I think! (Fred says that just as the lion did his purrrrrrrrr sound, the oil light in front of my tent went out. He was convinced that the lion was sitting on my doorstep, bib around his neck, knife and fork in paws…)

Grant went looking for the tracks when it got light enough to see — not as close as we would have thought (I would have said, oh, 18-24 inches behind my tent, personally) — probably 25-30 feet away at the closest. Heart-pounding distance no matter what. (If you have a good internet connection, check out this site — cursor down to the Sounds section — to hear something of what we heard!)

Now… there’s no delicate way to discuss this… but you know… when you get scared like that, you have to go. I mean you have to go. And there was no way, no way in God’s green earth, that I am getting out of the tent with an adult male lion wandering around, possibly with bib and knife and fork. So… now what? No chamber pot issued as standard camping equipment! So I’ll tell you what — it’s called IMPROVISE!! I had packed a bunch of plastic zip bags just in case I needed ’em for anything. So you take one one-gallon plastic bag and tuck it inside another one-gallon plastic bag, you put the whole thing on top of a towel (in case you miss…) and you aim as carefully as we female types are capable of aiming. Then you zip the inside bag, zip the outside bag, and go back to bed. (Necessity is the mother of invention after all. Nobody said anything about the father. He can just, well, stick it outside the tent flap if he has to!)

Sigh…

Khwai river bridge

Once the sun was up, we headed off on a long hard drive from Moremi to Savute today. The first thing you face on your way out of Moremi is the bridge over the River Khwai (sorry, the reference is irresistible). It’s made entirely of mopane poles.

Then there’s the rest of the drive. The distance itself isn’t all that much — I think Grant said it’s about 180km — but though there is a nominal speed limit in the parks of 40km/h, the roads of Botswana do not permit anything even vaguely approaching that speed. Four wheel drive is essential, there is deep sand or brush or both, you never know when approaching water if it’s safe to drive through or whether there’s a hole 4′ deep hiding underneath. It’s a sure bet that I wouldn’t have wanted to drive for ten minutes on that stuff, and Grant has been driving us around for DAYS.

elephant

On top of the condition of the roads, there’s the issue of game. You never know when something is going to come out of the bush just in front of you, and you have to be aware of everything. It’s a bit disconcerting to be driving along and have an elephant suddenly decide it wants to cross right in front of the vehicle.

The first hour or two of the trip was actually a game drive in and of itself. Elephants, hippos, giraffe and more. We came to the conclusion that it would be a dog day when Fred spotted a black-backed jackal just to the side of the road.

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But once the animals thinned out a bit, it was just a long haul. Lunch was in an area where there was but a single tree, and in the tree were roughly a kazillion (or two) red-billed queleas. Grant says they’re a real nuisance, and can gather in such numbers that branches will literally break off under their weight. We were also “joined” for lunch by a warthog or two that stood within easy run-for-your-life distance and looked at us as though they were just amazed at the sight. (Sometimes I wonder if we’re not as much a spectacle for the animals as they are for us.) The lunch area was also one where Grant has seen lions before but… sigh… once again the most we saw was tracks and no lions.

Savute turns out to be even more sandy that Moremi (so the driving was even tougher) and yet more rocky as well. There are actual outcrops rising from what is otherwise a very very flat marshland. We should be able to see some Bushman rock art on our way out on Sunday. We did our usual camp-day arrival routine: dropped the trailer with Nami and Likan to set up camp and headed off for another game drive. Fred and I think this is wonderful but I’m amazed that Grant isn’t exhausted already yet with the driving.

We saw lots of different antelopes, including an impala licking a termite mound (for the minerals it has), and more interesting or impressive birds — a juvenile Bateleur eagle, a tawny eagle (which kept moving so I don’t think I got a shot), another fish eagle (they are so darned impressive), some noisy little birds called lapwings, a Meyer’s parrot (the only parrot in Botswana) — and all kinds of elephants.

juvenile bateleur eagle	Impala with termite mound
Blacksmith lapwing	Meyer

We also saw lots and lots of lion tracks but… no lions. That doesn’t mean no CATS, however. Fred simply has the best eyes of anybody I know. We were driving through an area of grass and reeds all painted a golden orange by the afternoon sun. Suddenly he sings out that there’s something moving in the grass. Now, for the life of me, I couldn’t see it. Even after he pointed it out, I’m not sure I would ever have seen it on my own. Turned out it was a serval — a simply gorgeous cat with great big ears. Bigger than the wildcat by orders of magnitude (the wildcat runs to about 3-7 kg (6.5-15 lb.) while the serval runs to 13.5-18 kg (30-40 lb.)) and just simply beautiful, especially with its eyes catching the light and its body so very well blended with the grass until it turns its back and you see those black and white ears.

Serval in grass

After spending time watching this marvelous cat, we got to see yet another spectacular sunset.

Waterhole sunset

Giraffe in setting sun

Maybe… just maybe… tomorrow lions????

Awakened during the night by the sound of hyenas screeching through the camp. It is a bit disconcerting — those are BIG canids! Grant reminded us to be very very careful about leaving the tents during the night. He showed us the tracks where the hyenas had been hiding when Fred and I did our last walk down to the ablution area after dark. (The ablution area is very very basic here at Moremi: working toilets and showers just barely big enough to get clean in. Fred had the right idea, to wear swim trunks etc. down to take a shower and actually change back here in the tent. Dumb me ended up trying to change there and keep things dry at the same time: not an easy task!)

Up just at daybreak (sun not even really visible on the horizon, just a red line showing where it will be). Vervet monkeys kept trying to steal parts of meals (and managed to escape with a tomato!). Probably not much fun for the camp staff, but a lot of fun for us tourists for whom this is all so very new.

Lilac-breasted roller

Two game drives today here in Moremi. This morning it was misty at first and the meadows were full of lechwe standing in the mist. Then, for the most part, it was birds birds and more birds.  Saddlebilled stork, plover, black harrier, Burchell’s coucal (who was Burchell anyway? ah… a botanist), a fish eagle that stayed in place long enough for us to make a whole photographic study of it, jacana, hammerkop, ground hornbill and more. I never thought of myself as any kind of a birder before this trip — even told Grant I wasn’t one — but he’s making sure I see the interesting birds and sparking my interest anyway. One in particular, the lilac-breasted roller — national bird of Botswana — is simply the most beautiful thing I may ever have seen.

Marsh harrier	Fish eagle	Burchell
Lesser jacana	Hammerkop

vervet monkey

Also saw wildebeest, hippos, elephants (including with a young one) and, finally, a vervet monkey that stood still long enough for me to get a good solid photo.

This afternoon’s drive we were around water a lot so we saw the white-faced whistling duck (I didn’t really hear it whistle, though), the pygmy goose and more. We also saw a bird that Fred insists on called the “pterodactyl bird” and so I am NEVER going to remember its name without writing it down (it is, for now and forever, officially christened the “pterodactyl bird” in our family!) — the Kori bustard. And we saw a goofy looking critter than looks, at a distance, something like a moose in its head structure called the tsessebe.

White-faced ducks

Kori bustard

And though we looked and looked and looked, and found all kinds of tracks, we still didn’t see any BIG cats. That’s in capital letters because we sure did see a cat: a cat that actually looks like it could be lolling around in anybody’s living room. Called the African wildcat, it’s a gorgeous and very aggressive small cat that can (and often does) interbreed with the domestic cat, so it’s listed as endangered in a lot of areas.

African wildcat

So… dogs yesterday, the wildcat today, maybe BIG cats tomorrow! That is, if we can get any sleep. Grant had to go tell off the noisy bunch at the nearby campsite to get ’em to pipe down. Their excuse: “But we’ve come so far!” Grant, shepherding around the pair of us, who’d come 8000 miles, was not impressed.

In camp in at the Khwai campsite in the Moremi Game Reserve waiting for dinner to be served. Flew back into Maun this morning, hooked up with Grant Craig of Papadi Safaris at the airport. Because of the cold front, he decided to switch to a closed vehicle (openings in the roof for photos) and I for one am grateful. It is COLD in those open vehicles! Did some shopping for snacks and drinks (including plenty of bottled water) and set off.

The road from Maun to Moremi begins as a paved road. Then it turns into gravel. Finally it turns into sand. And it isn’t supposed to get any better until we get into Kasane at the end of the trip! Oh the roads of Botswana are a joy…

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Grant has brought along a camp assistant (I will butcher the spelling of even the short forms of names, I’m sure…) called Nami for short and another field guide who he wants to work with him in the future named Likan. So there are three of them, and two of us! Amazing…

Nami, Likan & Grant

We are not 15 minutes down the road before we feel entirely comfortable with Grant and his crew. Grant is, I think, a little younger than I am (early 50s, perhaps), quiet-spoken with a wickedly dry sense of humor. He’s obviously a perfectionist, wants things done right the first time around, and makes you feel thoroughly confident that he knows what he’s about. Likan is very quiet but with a ready smile and an easy way about him. Nami is even more quiet than Likan, but gets things done. Nice group. And even before we got into the reserve we saw elephant and giraffe and some more lion tracks. (Eventually, we are going to HAVE to see lions. At least I hope so!)

Once we arrived at the campsite, the team disconnected the trailer and took down our gear, then Grant took Fred and I off for the first game drive of this mobile safari. Here in the reserve we have seen impala, which Grant calls “moneybacks” (“we call them moneybacks because if you don’t see them, you get your money back”), red lechwe, young male kudu, zebras, pelicans, storks, guinea fowl, young fish eagle, francolins.

Saddlebilled stork

red lechwe

Young kudu

Grant took us out to a location that is frankly gorgeous to take sunset shots, and unless I am very wrong, there are going to be some terrific shots in that group.

Moremi sunset

We started back to camp and then — just at dusk when we were really late for getting back (the camps have hours for the gates to be open) — we saw a truly amazing sight: Fred spotted and we stopped and watched a large pack of wild dogs who had just taken down and were in the process of devouring a red lechwe stag. The light wasn’t good enough for photos but I got a little bit of video from the S5 where you can at least see what’s going on.

Wild dog are so rare, it was just astonishing to see them. They yelp as well as bark and demolished the lechwe in minutes (the pack was 12 dogs or more — hard to count with the lighting being so bad). (Note: we found out later that people travel for long distances just to have a chance to see these wild dogs — and we got ’em the first night out. And with a kill! Not bad!)

There are hyena and baboon tracks throughout the campsite so it’ll be interesting to see what we find by morning, but there’s a noisy bunch at a nearby campsite so it may not be all that much.

Up early, and a momentary terrifying scare when I thought I’d lost the power cord to the Hyperdrive. It would have meant taking only as many pictures as could fit on the SD cards I have with me. I know that 28Gb sounds like a lot of space, but I’m shooting in RAW, each photo takes about 24Mb of space, so a 4Gb card holds only about 200 photos. For the most part, I’m shooting with a new camera that I’m not entirely comfortable with (Canon 450D XSi) and a rented lens that I’m not entirely comfortable with (though it’s gorgeous in what it can do — Canon 100-400L), so I do NOT want to be limited. Fortunately, I found the cord — right where I’d put it for safekeeping…

Nice breakfast, back onto a small plane with George and off to Maun again.

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There was only one hitch: our safari operator was not there to meet us. The driver brought us over to the office for Gunn’s Camp where a nice lady took Grant’s name and phone number, went inside, came back five minutes later with a white face and said they’d made a terrible mistake. Turns out we WERE supposed to have three nights, not two. She offered to have us flown back out with the night at the main (upscale) camp rather than the bush camp, where drinks are included in the tab. Let’s see here… two extra small plane rides, an upscale camp for the night, and free booze. Somehow we didn’t see this as much of a problem.

So we were flown black out to the camp.

But this time we stayed at the upscale main camp: beds, en suite toilet & shower, laundry service and more. Nice gesture by the camp and a lovely end to a totally lovely experience (including tea at 3:30, another bush walk, then sundowners (otherwise known as evening drinks!) and dinner).

One scary moment in our last mokoro ride of the day: our poler did a quick reverse and back out of the channel and then had each of us stand up to see a hippo in the channel not far away. Hippos are so incredibly dangerous to folks in these small boats… Ulp…

Despite that, it’s impossible really to describe the peace of a mokoro ride:

or the peace of the delta itself…

Lilypad in Okavango Delta

Ribs, mokoro poler

Up at dawn this morning for a light breakfast and then a mokoro ride over to and a 3-1/2 hour game walk on Chief’s Island. Our mokoro poler and guide, Mr. Ribs, knows his stuff but it is a little disconcerting to be walking around a wild game area with a guide who has nothing more to protect us than a walking stick…

We saw red lechwe, impala, blue wildebeest, zebras, a whole troop of baboons, warthogs, a fish eagle, a whole bunch of marabou storks, a red-billed hornbill, a saddle-billed stork and a journey of giraffes. Walked forever down trails covered with elephant tracks and/or elephant dung looking for elephants and didn’t find any. (We saw them this afternoon from the deck instead!)

zebras	Marabou storks
elephant tracks	elephants

Saw lion tracks and a bush with lion hair on it, hyena poop and a buffalo skull but none of the live beasts. Ribs told us to stand our ground with lions, climb the nearest tree with buffalo and run a zigzag pattern downwind from an elephant. (Gulp…)

Gunn’s Camp is fun — basic amenities but that’s really what I wanted, to get some feel for the real Africa. It’s a little scary alone in a dark tent at night, or going into a toilet that has to have a half-door to keep the warthogs out, but it is headed in the direction of the Real Thing. And it’s a very good feeling to know that Fred is screaming distance away…

Went out by mokoro to a hippo pool this afternoon. It was excellent, not so much for the hippos (which are very dangerous to these boats so you don’t go very close!), but for the elephants! Two of them were in the marsh and crossed right about the same time we poled through. Unbelievable to be so close and in such a vulnerable position. It really brings it home what it means to be out there with wild game…

Good dinner and good talk with the South African group staying in the camp, and off tomorrow back to Maun.

(written 6/9, 1:20 p.m.)

We’re sitting on the deck at Gunn’s Bush Camp on the Boro River in the Okavango Delta in Botswana, sipping sodas and watching elephants cross the marsh in the distance… Sigh… it’s a rough life.

Arriving in Maun

Fred and I left Johannesburg for Botswana yesterday. No problem with the Air Botswana flight to Maun — the camera backpack (Lowepro Fastpack 250) fit easily in the overhead and nobody bothered to weigh anything. The Maun airport is very small with a single line for passport control and another for customs. We left our big bags in the Moremi Air office at the airport, and then George, the Air Moremi pilot, flew us on a single engine aircraft up to the Delta. I managed to get some video en route and particularly of the landing — George said it was a little hairy because of some warthogs on the runway!

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We were greeted by the Bush Camp operator, Craig, and immediately had a bit of confusion. He said we were there for two nights; I thought we were there for three. The paperwork is back in Maun with the rest of our luggage… Craig said he’d check it and later confirmed it was two nights. Not what I remember, but… that’ll teach me not to bring the paperwork.

Mokoro

We then were introduced to our mokoro poler (mokoro = singular, mekoro = plural, for what are now fiberglass canoe-type boats propelled by a single operator using a pole in the marshes of the Delta) who gave us a ride over to the camp by mokoro. We dropped our stuff off in our tents and went off for another mokoro ride before dinner. At dinner we socialized with a large group of South Africans on a safari of their own which appears to track our itinerary in large measure. After dinner we all sat around the fire talking, then watching a genet raid the kitchen and a scops owl fly in and out of the trees. Had a long discussion with Craig and his brother-in-law Jeremy, both Zimbabwean ex-pats, about the wisdom of staying in Zimbabwe (as opposed to Zambia) for the Victoria Falls part of our trip. We’re getting two very different views from blacks and whites. Blacks uniformly say not to stay in Zimbabwe, that it’s too dangerous; whites uniformly say we’ll be fine in the tourist areas because the regime has a great need for the hard dollars tourists bring in. Will have to discuss this with Grant…

Then one last trip to the “ablution block” (shower/toilet area) before bed. This is a funny set-up: open to the sky, reed half-doors (to keep the warthogs out), but plenty of hot water etc. I’m not sure what I was expecting but this is just fine. We were told to be make sure we used the facilities before we slept and to be very wary of leaving the tents after we retire (hippos may come up into the camp after dark)…

There were wild night noises — birds, frogs, crickets, hippos splashing up into camp and warthogs squealing very loudly (the camp operator, Craig, says they were either fighting each other or being attacked by a leopard!). Slept reasonably well despite being on a bed roll in a tent on a wooden platform some 18-24″ from the marsh. However, I won’t turn down Craig’s offer of a second mat to add to the bed roll.