Botswana
Presumably, if you are reading this, then it is June 18th and I am en route from my Botswana tour to my Namibia tour. I am probably at an airport and have been too lazy to update this message to clarify exactly where. The key factor, though, is that all is going as planned. I expect to lose access to the internet almost immediately, so don't be surprised if I disappear again until the 29th, when I resume my journey home. I get back on the afternoon of the 30th, when I expect to begin a prolonged TVgasm (Lost, Dollhouse, Pushing Daisies, Colbert, Doctor Who, et al)
(Actually, it's June 19th and I'm at a hotel missing breakfast...)
Since leaving Leroo I have to start by saying that not everything went as intended.
This is the middle of the dry season. May through September are expected to see zero days with appreciable rainfall. This is a big benefit for travel at this time of year, because it means that most water holes dry up, and there are only a few places for animals to find water. Since water is essential for life, those few locations of water become a place of congregation for large numbers of animals, and the best place to see a predator attacking its prey.
Early afternoon on my first day with the mobile camping safari, it starts raining. It proceeds to rain heavily for much of the next two days with only a few breaks. I was told that the second day alone saw two inches of rain. This is all but unheard of. Even in the rainy season, there are normally only 5 days of rain per month. The last time this much rain fell in June was 88 years ago.
There was intense thunder and lightning in several episodes, and everyone insisted that this is what they'd expect for November. To add insult to injury, my tent was not waterproofed properly, and water leaked through the seams and zippers leaving puddles on half of the floor, but luckily none dripping down from the top, and I moved my things from the floor in time to prevent them from getting wet.
This made for fairly poor wildlife viewing, as expected. The sandy soil has very poor drainage, and temporary water holes popped up all over, allowing the wildlife to remain scattered. During the rains there were still herbivores as before, but nothing much was happening. We had to keep the windows of the vehicle closed, or open them when out of the wind to defog the windows. It was also a serious problem for the roads, which are all packed sand and thus don't drain well. Driving was very difficult, and we did get stuck once in the mud for an hour.
Things did improve gradually as the trip went on, but I suspect that we saw a fair bit less than what might be expected for June. What can you do? Enjoy things as best you can.
Despite the issues with the rain, the experience was still quite amazing, as my photos will testify (as soon as I can get them up). There will be a lot of them, but to be fair it was a 2 week stay. If I were to try to make a chronological list of the things I did, I suspect that my few readers would dwindle significantly, so instead I'll just present some basics of the trip, highlights, and observations. After the first few, I'll put the rest behind another cut.
The basic nature of most days was as follows:
6:15AM wake up and simple breakfast
7:00AM begin a drive to see the critters
12:00PM get back, have lunch, and rest during the heat of the day
3:00PM have some tea or what not
3:30PM get back out and drive some more until after sunset
6:45PM return to camp
7:30PM dinner, campfire, then sleep
Every other day, when we moved camps, we would have to drive throughout the day with no break, just a lunch out in the parks somewhere. This schedule will probably surprise a lot of people. Ethan, awake at 6:15AM? Ethan, spending 8-10 hours driving each day? Yes to both. And amazingly, despite the jarring roads made worse by rain, I was never sick in the vehicle. Amazing. The short flights on the tiny planes were another matter entirely, however. I only had a few of those in Botswana, but I'll have quite a number of them in Namibia which is making me at least a bit nervous.
The drives looking for animals are a strange beast themselves. Most of the time you're just driving, and very little is happening. I would sometimes be listening to audiobooks to help pass the time. You quickly lose interest in yet another impala sighting. But when something big happens, everything changes in an instant.
Eight of my ten days was on a mobile tented camping safari. (The other two days were at a remote fly-in or boat-in lodge on the Okavango Delta) I must admit that, in the rain, I did not adapt quickly, but after things dried out I fell into the routine and became used to it. My tent was about eight feet by eight feet, with a roof a few inches taller than my head in the middle. In the back was a sectioned off area with a drop toilet and a bucket shower. The main tent had just the bed, a cot bed, and some flimsy shelves that folded out from the tent itself.
It was pretty sparse. There were 2 LED lights which put out enough light, but no more than enough, and not quite enough to unpack bags without pointing the light straight into the bag. The main problem was the bed, which gave me some unpleasant back problems. It was a metal cot, with metal handles at the head and foot that blocked my feet, and a middling size pad of some material. It was a difficult sleep either on the bed or moved onto the floor.
But to the positive were the five people who were running the safari, and there were just three of us on safari. We had a guide (Stanley), chef (Ikateng), waiter (Malaki), and two camp stewards (Bester and Barnes). Our chef, using standard ingredients and an outdoor coal-fired oven, managed to cook us some amazing meals given the circumstances. We always had a table with drinks, a table to eat our lunch and dinner, and at night a fire to sit around.
The stewards would always have paraffin lanterns all around camp to light our home, and one in front and one behind (in the bathroom) each of our tents to last the night. One strict rule: after we enter our tent for the night, there is no coming out again until the next morning when they wake us, excepting for the protected back bathroom. We definitely heard lions roaring nearby on a few nights, along with the distant sound of hippos, and at our last location the elephants arrived to snack on the trees each morning.
The stewards made sure that we had fresh water in a basin in front of each of our tents, hot water for a shower whenever I asked, did our laundry every other day, gave us a hot water bottle each night, recharged the battery for our LED lights, not to mention moving the whole camp every other day. I was very impressed with the amount of work they all put in, and with the awareness of how much more effort and less time with the animals we would have had without them.
Of course, there's the guide. He had an amazing eye. At one point he noticed a spot in a distant tree, and we came around to find the remnants of an impala carcass hanging from a crook in the tree, presumably put there by a leopard several days prior. He also spoke far and away the best English of anyone I've yet met for whom English was a second language. For him it's one of eight languages, and he taught language at a school in Zimbabwe before becoming a guide. At first I thought he was quiet and not overly friendly, but with time he opened up and we had good conversations every day.
About the animals? Oh yes.
I saw, at one point or another, just about every animal we might have seen. Some of the glimpses were fleeting, such as the cheetah and hyena. The various "antelope" species, along with giraffe and elephant, were so numerous and frequent that we actually became somewhat blase towards them, unless they were doing something unusual like elephant wading through a wide river. Lions and other cats always got our strong interest. The lions mostly ignored us and went on with their lives, but the cheetah and leopard were wary. There is a deep-seated instinctual fear when you hear a lion roar in the distance. The wild dogs were a big find, though, and wonderful fun to watch. Hippos are so enormous and burdensome that it's amazing how they can survive.
Plenty of crocs all over the place here. The Okavango Delta felt a bit like the Nile, with papyrus-lined channels and crocodiles hiding everywhere. The Okavango is an amazing thing -- a river that pours into the desert and never leaves, either evaporating or soaking down.
I never saw any dinosaurs, though. I am highly disappointed.
* I did not hear "the wild dogs cry out in the night". Nor did I see Kilimanjaro, being that it was probably two thousand miles away. But I did see the african painted wild dog. A pack of around a dozen. They had recently had a kill, but it was hidden within bushes to protect it from competitors, so I never saw the carcass. I did catch some fleeting glimpses of a lone hyena trying to get to what was left, but he was fought off by the dogs. One of the dogs had a red muzzle from the kill, yet still they were all adorable as they basked by a pond to digest. The dogs were clearly tightly bonded as a pack, and it was fun to watch them play.
* There are tons of herbivores. More varieties of antelope (c.f. deer, elk, except those aren't in Africa) and many of them. Especially the impala. The kudu have adorably ridiculously colored ears. For the most part they were all always relaxed and eating grass and/or leaves continuously. They're much more likely to die of age or disease than a predator, and their lives seem much easier than those of the predators, who have to work hard and usually fail. There were also zebra and giraffe in goodly number.
* The biggest herbivore is of course the elephant. There are many, many elephant. In fact there are too many. They are extremely destructive to the environment, killing many trees either by removing the bark or by knocking them down to get at the highest leaves. They're also very destructive to human infrastructure, as they can only be stopped with continuously electrified fence, and will happily knock down utility poles and anything else they fancy. Other countries have been culling the monstrous herds, but if you don't cull an entire herd then the remainders become pathologically aggressive towards humans. Botswana has so far not started down this path, but there is significant conflict between the tourism industry and the local people living their lives.
* Most of Botswana has more than one thousand feet of continuous sand beneath your feet. There is no hope of bedrock. Despite this, and the semi-arid rainfall levels, much of the country is either grassland or savannah rather than bare desert, but there isn't any forest. The trees are lucky to survive, what with horrible nutritional levels in the soil and the elephants and the constant "browsers" eating the leaves. Only a tiny part of Botswana in arable land. Most people raise livestock in small villages, or else live in a town. Almost all produce is imported from South Africa.
* I played "Who's on first" with our guide when he told me that the house-cat-sized leopard-skin cats we were looking at were "serval cats". I kept hearing "several cats". Stanley spotted several savute serval cats.
* I saw lions on several occasions. A family with three cheetah who were very anxious and wanted us to go away. And a leopard out on the hunt. I had not thought that cats were capable of this, but the interaction between a male and female lion was distinctly romantic. He was licking her, and she was absolutely basking in it, but what was astounding was when he gave her a scalp massage, putting his huge paw on her head and pulling back. She was ecstatic. Quite a sight. As to the leopard, she was spotted by an impala, i.e. prey. Instead of running, the impala maintained a healthy distance, following the leopard as she left, and constantly the impala snorted angrily to let the world know of the threat. The various prey species, including birds, collude to raise the alarm and protect each other.
* 50% of Botswana is 15 years old or younger. Many small tribal villages have homes for orphans. These are statistics you'd expect from a war-torn country, but Botswana has been at peace for many decades. AIDS is killing its people, infecting more than half the adult population according to most estimates. The government provides free antiretrovirals, but still people die.
I'm certain I've left out a ton, but what else to do? If you actually care, and aren't bored of this post yet, just ask me and I'll happily talk in more detail.
(Actually, it's June 19th and I'm at a hotel missing breakfast...)
Since leaving Leroo I have to start by saying that not everything went as intended.
This is the middle of the dry season. May through September are expected to see zero days with appreciable rainfall. This is a big benefit for travel at this time of year, because it means that most water holes dry up, and there are only a few places for animals to find water. Since water is essential for life, those few locations of water become a place of congregation for large numbers of animals, and the best place to see a predator attacking its prey.
Early afternoon on my first day with the mobile camping safari, it starts raining. It proceeds to rain heavily for much of the next two days with only a few breaks. I was told that the second day alone saw two inches of rain. This is all but unheard of. Even in the rainy season, there are normally only 5 days of rain per month. The last time this much rain fell in June was 88 years ago.
There was intense thunder and lightning in several episodes, and everyone insisted that this is what they'd expect for November. To add insult to injury, my tent was not waterproofed properly, and water leaked through the seams and zippers leaving puddles on half of the floor, but luckily none dripping down from the top, and I moved my things from the floor in time to prevent them from getting wet.
This made for fairly poor wildlife viewing, as expected. The sandy soil has very poor drainage, and temporary water holes popped up all over, allowing the wildlife to remain scattered. During the rains there were still herbivores as before, but nothing much was happening. We had to keep the windows of the vehicle closed, or open them when out of the wind to defog the windows. It was also a serious problem for the roads, which are all packed sand and thus don't drain well. Driving was very difficult, and we did get stuck once in the mud for an hour.
Things did improve gradually as the trip went on, but I suspect that we saw a fair bit less than what might be expected for June. What can you do? Enjoy things as best you can.
Despite the issues with the rain, the experience was still quite amazing, as my photos will testify (as soon as I can get them up). There will be a lot of them, but to be fair it was a 2 week stay. If I were to try to make a chronological list of the things I did, I suspect that my few readers would dwindle significantly, so instead I'll just present some basics of the trip, highlights, and observations. After the first few, I'll put the rest behind another cut.
The basic nature of most days was as follows:
6:15AM wake up and simple breakfast
7:00AM begin a drive to see the critters
12:00PM get back, have lunch, and rest during the heat of the day
3:00PM have some tea or what not
3:30PM get back out and drive some more until after sunset
6:45PM return to camp
7:30PM dinner, campfire, then sleep
Every other day, when we moved camps, we would have to drive throughout the day with no break, just a lunch out in the parks somewhere. This schedule will probably surprise a lot of people. Ethan, awake at 6:15AM? Ethan, spending 8-10 hours driving each day? Yes to both. And amazingly, despite the jarring roads made worse by rain, I was never sick in the vehicle. Amazing. The short flights on the tiny planes were another matter entirely, however. I only had a few of those in Botswana, but I'll have quite a number of them in Namibia which is making me at least a bit nervous.
The drives looking for animals are a strange beast themselves. Most of the time you're just driving, and very little is happening. I would sometimes be listening to audiobooks to help pass the time. You quickly lose interest in yet another impala sighting. But when something big happens, everything changes in an instant.
Eight of my ten days was on a mobile tented camping safari. (The other two days were at a remote fly-in or boat-in lodge on the Okavango Delta) I must admit that, in the rain, I did not adapt quickly, but after things dried out I fell into the routine and became used to it. My tent was about eight feet by eight feet, with a roof a few inches taller than my head in the middle. In the back was a sectioned off area with a drop toilet and a bucket shower. The main tent had just the bed, a cot bed, and some flimsy shelves that folded out from the tent itself.
It was pretty sparse. There were 2 LED lights which put out enough light, but no more than enough, and not quite enough to unpack bags without pointing the light straight into the bag. The main problem was the bed, which gave me some unpleasant back problems. It was a metal cot, with metal handles at the head and foot that blocked my feet, and a middling size pad of some material. It was a difficult sleep either on the bed or moved onto the floor.
But to the positive were the five people who were running the safari, and there were just three of us on safari. We had a guide (Stanley), chef (Ikateng), waiter (Malaki), and two camp stewards (Bester and Barnes). Our chef, using standard ingredients and an outdoor coal-fired oven, managed to cook us some amazing meals given the circumstances. We always had a table with drinks, a table to eat our lunch and dinner, and at night a fire to sit around.
The stewards would always have paraffin lanterns all around camp to light our home, and one in front and one behind (in the bathroom) each of our tents to last the night. One strict rule: after we enter our tent for the night, there is no coming out again until the next morning when they wake us, excepting for the protected back bathroom. We definitely heard lions roaring nearby on a few nights, along with the distant sound of hippos, and at our last location the elephants arrived to snack on the trees each morning.
The stewards made sure that we had fresh water in a basin in front of each of our tents, hot water for a shower whenever I asked, did our laundry every other day, gave us a hot water bottle each night, recharged the battery for our LED lights, not to mention moving the whole camp every other day. I was very impressed with the amount of work they all put in, and with the awareness of how much more effort and less time with the animals we would have had without them.
Of course, there's the guide. He had an amazing eye. At one point he noticed a spot in a distant tree, and we came around to find the remnants of an impala carcass hanging from a crook in the tree, presumably put there by a leopard several days prior. He also spoke far and away the best English of anyone I've yet met for whom English was a second language. For him it's one of eight languages, and he taught language at a school in Zimbabwe before becoming a guide. At first I thought he was quiet and not overly friendly, but with time he opened up and we had good conversations every day.
About the animals? Oh yes.
I saw, at one point or another, just about every animal we might have seen. Some of the glimpses were fleeting, such as the cheetah and hyena. The various "antelope" species, along with giraffe and elephant, were so numerous and frequent that we actually became somewhat blase towards them, unless they were doing something unusual like elephant wading through a wide river. Lions and other cats always got our strong interest. The lions mostly ignored us and went on with their lives, but the cheetah and leopard were wary. There is a deep-seated instinctual fear when you hear a lion roar in the distance. The wild dogs were a big find, though, and wonderful fun to watch. Hippos are so enormous and burdensome that it's amazing how they can survive.
Plenty of crocs all over the place here. The Okavango Delta felt a bit like the Nile, with papyrus-lined channels and crocodiles hiding everywhere. The Okavango is an amazing thing -- a river that pours into the desert and never leaves, either evaporating or soaking down.
I never saw any dinosaurs, though. I am highly disappointed.
* I did not hear "the wild dogs cry out in the night". Nor did I see Kilimanjaro, being that it was probably two thousand miles away. But I did see the african painted wild dog. A pack of around a dozen. They had recently had a kill, but it was hidden within bushes to protect it from competitors, so I never saw the carcass. I did catch some fleeting glimpses of a lone hyena trying to get to what was left, but he was fought off by the dogs. One of the dogs had a red muzzle from the kill, yet still they were all adorable as they basked by a pond to digest. The dogs were clearly tightly bonded as a pack, and it was fun to watch them play.
* There are tons of herbivores. More varieties of antelope (c.f. deer, elk, except those aren't in Africa) and many of them. Especially the impala. The kudu have adorably ridiculously colored ears. For the most part they were all always relaxed and eating grass and/or leaves continuously. They're much more likely to die of age or disease than a predator, and their lives seem much easier than those of the predators, who have to work hard and usually fail. There were also zebra and giraffe in goodly number.
* The biggest herbivore is of course the elephant. There are many, many elephant. In fact there are too many. They are extremely destructive to the environment, killing many trees either by removing the bark or by knocking them down to get at the highest leaves. They're also very destructive to human infrastructure, as they can only be stopped with continuously electrified fence, and will happily knock down utility poles and anything else they fancy. Other countries have been culling the monstrous herds, but if you don't cull an entire herd then the remainders become pathologically aggressive towards humans. Botswana has so far not started down this path, but there is significant conflict between the tourism industry and the local people living their lives.
* Most of Botswana has more than one thousand feet of continuous sand beneath your feet. There is no hope of bedrock. Despite this, and the semi-arid rainfall levels, much of the country is either grassland or savannah rather than bare desert, but there isn't any forest. The trees are lucky to survive, what with horrible nutritional levels in the soil and the elephants and the constant "browsers" eating the leaves. Only a tiny part of Botswana in arable land. Most people raise livestock in small villages, or else live in a town. Almost all produce is imported from South Africa.
* I played "Who's on first" with our guide when he told me that the house-cat-sized leopard-skin cats we were looking at were "serval cats". I kept hearing "several cats". Stanley spotted several savute serval cats.
* I saw lions on several occasions. A family with three cheetah who were very anxious and wanted us to go away. And a leopard out on the hunt. I had not thought that cats were capable of this, but the interaction between a male and female lion was distinctly romantic. He was licking her, and she was absolutely basking in it, but what was astounding was when he gave her a scalp massage, putting his huge paw on her head and pulling back. She was ecstatic. Quite a sight. As to the leopard, she was spotted by an impala, i.e. prey. Instead of running, the impala maintained a healthy distance, following the leopard as she left, and constantly the impala snorted angrily to let the world know of the threat. The various prey species, including birds, collude to raise the alarm and protect each other.
* 50% of Botswana is 15 years old or younger. Many small tribal villages have homes for orphans. These are statistics you'd expect from a war-torn country, but Botswana has been at peace for many decades. AIDS is killing its people, infecting more than half the adult population according to most estimates. The government provides free antiretrovirals, but still people die.
I'm certain I've left out a ton, but what else to do? If you actually care, and aren't bored of this post yet, just ask me and I'll happily talk in more detail.