Botswana safari

On Sunday, we had time for one last game drive in Chobe National Park before we left for the Okavango Delta.  On the way to the park, our guide saw fresh leopard tracks so he tried very hard to spot the leopard.  It didn’t happen, but we did see three lionesses and we stalked them for over an hour.  Two of the lionesses were on the left side of the road while a herd of impalas was on the right side with the river behind them so they could not escape in that direction.  The lionesses would move forward a bit, then sit and watch the impalas.  The impalas had guards posted at the back while the rest grazed.  We were pretty sure that the third lioness was further forward, and was going to chase the impalas into an ambush by the two.  Impalas are much faster than lionesses, so the latter have to resort to stealth and strategy.

It is amazing that we were totally engaged and on the edge of our seats as we sat there watching the lionesses, watching the impalas, and trying to figure out the strategy.  Finally, the impalas realized that the lionesses were there and they took off … fast.  The two lionesses had to give up.  We were right that the third lioness was further forward, but when she came back to the two, we saw that she had hurt her foot and was limping.  We think that is why the planned attack failed.

In the end, it felt like watching a 0 - 0 soccer game; nothing happened if you just look at the final score, but the drama gripped us for well over an hour.  I wonder how often lionesses succeed in their hunts and how often they strike out like they did this time.

After a quick lunch, we went to the Kasane International Airport to board our tiny, one engine plane to the Okavango Delta.  A tiny company called Mack Air runs charter plane service in Botswana.  The airline magazine in the seat pocket had biographies of all of the pilots, and I was reassured that our our pilot was twenty seven years old because he looked like he was seventeen.

I knew before I came that the Okavango Delta is the largest inland delta in the world, but I had not thought about what that meant.  The Okavengo River flows into a vast area that has only a few feet of elevation change, so the water spreads out in all directions, creating marshes and islands.  Just driving to our camp - Sanctuary Stanley Camp - was an experience.  The guide told us we would be going through water.  That was an understatement.  Large sections of the road were underwater and the water was over three feet deep.  Our vehicle seemed to be part boat.

Just for comparison, you can see in the last photo that our vehicles are four feet tall in front and the water frequently came over the front.  Also, you can see on the left side there is a periscope.  Apparently this feeds air to the motor so it does not stall when it is underwater.

Our guides told us that three lionesses had feasted yesterday on a zebra that they had killed.  They took us to the place where they were lying under a tree looking full and lethargic.  Then we drove near the kill site and found a male lion sitting nearby.  And we saw all of these lions just on the way to our camp.  We haven’t even been on a long game drive yet.

On Monday morning we were scheduled for an Elephant Adventure, but I had no idea what the adventure would be.  It turns out that two odd people, Doug and Sandi, found each other and three elephants about thirty years ago.   So they have been living here in Botswana for all this time, raising the elephants, and showing them to the tourists.  We learned all about the elephants and had the opportunity to touch them and interact with them.

Eventually, we all had lunch:  the people sitting at a table set up for us, and the elephants standing near us, while Doug and Sandi continued to talk to us about elephants and life in Botswana.  Sandi is from South Africa and visits her family once a year.  Doug is from Boston and has not been back to the US since 1987.  Imagine the culture shock if he went now.

After our afternoon break which found me in my natural habitat reading at poolside, we were taken out on makoros in the marsh.  Makoros are flat bottomed canoe-like boats that are propelled by poles.  It was like riding a gondola through the canals of Venice.  Sorta.   Very peaceful and interesting riding in the fading light.

The road to the makoros was even deeper than the roads we drove on the day before.  Our guide said we were hurrying to watch the sunset.  Then, after driving through a particularly deep lake, there was our bar, set up at roadside as soon as it came out of the lake.  Amazing.  After drinks and appetizers, we got back in our vehicles to return to camp.  I was in the second car.  Suddenly we stopped as the driver of the third vehicle had radioed that he was stuck in the middle of a lake.  We all got out as our driver backed into the water, attached a winch, and pulled the car out.  We are not in Kansas, Toto.

It is not every day that I get kissed by an elephant, take a ride in a makoro through a marsh, and drive through four feet of water.

After a morning game drive, on Tuesday we flew once again on Mack Air.  Our group is big enough to require two planes - a twelve and a six seater.  I always choose the smaller one.  According to the airline magazine, our pilot this time had graduated graduated flight school yesterday.  Okay, it was really last year.  Still …

The roads in this part of the delta are dry although there are watering holes everywhere.  Our camp, Sanctuary Chief’s Camp, is the nicest of all of the Sanctuary Camps we have stayed in. All of the Sanctuary camps have private cabins with secluded porches, excellent dining, animals wandering around, and a swimming pool.  At Chief’s Camp, however, we each have a small pool on our veranda, and behind the resort is a watering hole with hundreds of birds and animals.  They warned us that there are two elephants that roam the property and lions nearby.  We are not allowed to walk to our rooms after dark without a security guard.

There are more animals at Chief’s Camp than at Stanley Camp, and our afternoon game drive on Tuesday was the best one so far.   We saw a rhino in the wild - a very rare sight.  Then we saw some wild dogs.  Interesting looking animals.  Unlike hyenas, they look just like dogs, and they have beautiful markings.  But they hunt in large packs and are quite viscious.  Finally, we came across a pride of lions:  four females and at least eight cubs.  We watched them from no more than twenty feet away for quite a while, and they seemed quite unconcerned about us.

Our game drive on Wednesday morning was equally good. We had barely started when one of the other vehicles radioed to us about some lions near the camp, so we turned around and went to the site.  Two lions were sitting there.  Then we realized that there was a dead cape buffalo nearby.  The lions had killed the buffalo and already feasted, so they were taking a rest before continuing to eat.  One of the guides saw a leopard walking so they followed it and radioed to us.  By the time we got there, the leopard had climbed into a tree, and then we saw a lion walking nearby.  Apparently, there had been a confrontation between the lion and the leopard, and the latter had gotten the worst of it.  He had a large gash on his side, and climbed the tree to get away from the lion.  We followed the lion to where he joined another lion and three lionesses, and then we watched the five of them for a while.  It never gets old.

Later we saw a herd of wildebeest, a huge herd of cape buffalo,  a dazzle (herd) of zebra, as well as a few giraffes and elephants.  We realized that we had seen the big five - lion, leopard, elephant, cape buffalo, and rhino - in a day.  Not quite a single day, but in a twenty four hour period.

I have not mentioned them much, but we have seen incredible birds, especially here in the Delta.  Lots of water fowl like herons, cranes, spoonbills, storks, and pelicans, but also smaller, very colorful birds. My new favorite is the saddle billed stork.

During our afternoon break, I went to my natural habitat to read, but I did not have to go far since we have private swimming pools on our verandas.  After a while, I realized that there was a loud crashing sound behind me.  I had heard it for several minutes as I was reading but it did not really sink into my consciousness.  Finally I looked up from my kindle and saw half a dozen impalas grazing quietly in front of me.  But I still heard the crashing noise behind me, so I looked over my shoulder and saw:

I wasn’t sure what to do.  We had been told that there are elephants often in the camp, and if we see one while on the veranda, we should back slowly into the room.  But the door to my room was towards the elephant, so I just sat there and watched as he came closer and closer, eating branches and trampling trees.  Then he took a long drink out of my pool.

I thought, he is not interested in me; I can just sit here.  Then I thought, this is a wild animal; he can reach over with his trunk and grab me if he wants.  (Although I could not think of any reason that he would want to.)  Then I remembered that I had unlocked the door to my bathroom and that was directly behind me, so I backed into it.  You can see where I had been sitting when the elephant took the second drink from my pool.

I wondered if the elephant would drain my pool, but he moved on, continuing to munch on the trees.  The impalas stayed for a few more minutes and then they moved on, too, leaving me to return to my kindle.

At the beginning of our game drive on Wednesday afternoon we checked again on the dead buffalo.  His carcass was still there but we did not see the lions.  We returned in the dark at the end of our drive and found the lions eating the carcass again.  In the morning, we saw a parade of hyenas walking behind our camp from the direction of the kill site.  We drove there and found buzzards working on the skeleton.  In twenty four hours, the lions and then the hyenas had eaten all of the meat of a large cape buffalo.

Our last two game drives were unspectacular until you remember that on an unspectacular drive you see elephants, zebras, giraffes, impalas, lions, and a vast variety of birds.  I still cannot do justice to describing the two safaris I have been on.  Kenya and Tanzania were like a giant game of Where’s Waldo.  Against a background of thousands of animals, you look for the rarer ones.  Botswana was more like a treasure hunt; you could drive for half an hour or more without seeing anything and then stumble upon something.  But even when you saw nothing, you knew that there were hundreds if not thousands of animals right there that you could not see.  Sometimes we would follow a strolling lion for a while; then he would sit down and simply disappear into the tall grass.  If you had not seen him walking, you would never know that he was there.  It is hard to believe that a giraffe or elephant could blend in, but they are so well camouflaged that sometimes you were practically on top of them before you realized that they were there.

On our last morning at Sanctuary Chief’s Camp, we sat on the veranda overlooking the water and just watched the waterfowl and impalas that are always there, along with a group of warthogs that joined them.  My elephant friend from yesterday returned, eating the branches next to the veranda.

I do not have the words to describe these safaris, but the land is beautiful and seeing animals in the wild is an incredible experience.