Camping in Botswana

We experienced three very different levels of camping, from high end to basic.  Our first two nights, we were treated like royalty.  Our "outfitter" was Chobe under Canvas, and camping with them is far from roughing it.  

When we arrived at camp (inside Chobe National Park), each couple was shown to a large two roomed tent.  The main room of each tent had a queen-sized regular bed, bedside tables with lamps, a wardrobe, and chest.  The second room held our bathroom with a flush toilet!   Every day after our safaris, we came home to water they had heated and put in a shower-tank container, so we even had hot showers!   Luxurious.

Can you see the elephants out foraging
by our tent at night?

We were required to be back at camp by dark, which was usually around 6 p.m.  Chobe National Park is good at assuring the nocturnal animals a free reign.  We'd sit around the campfire - "African TV" -  and tell stories of our day.  We were served many-course dinners on china, and had access to a full bar.  There were only three tents in use in the camp - John and Cheryl, Jim and I, and another couple from London.  We were babied.

We usually went to bed early.  The only way you knew you were "tenting it" was the sounds of the night.  You'd lay in bed and listen to animals padding by.  Once, elephants pulled up and ate a small tree right behind our tent.  (I took this poor picture of them from between the tent's flaps.)  Another time, a honey badger got into the kitchen tent and threw the pots and pans around.   Off in the distance, we heard a family of baboons scream.

You fill the bucket with water, haul it up high,
and the water pressure that results gives
a semi-decent shower.

The view from our Oddballs bathroom

When we reached the Okavango Delta, we camped at a more basic base camp.  Oddballs Camp was spartan and beautiful.   The bathroom was fully functional, with a "bush shower" consisting of a pail that is lifted high using a pulley system.

We also went out for two nights of regular tent camping, and daily walking safaris.  Camping in Okavango was akin to camping in the Boundary Waters.  You heard no manmade noise, except for your own voices.  There were no cars, no motors, not a refrigerator hum nor cell phone ring.

Someone's lunch : Water buffalo

It was beautiful - and dangerous.

On our walking safaris, John, Cheryl, Jim and I were most concerned about lions, as we saw the remains of the various animals they had killed.  Our two guides - who had grown up in the area - seemed most concerned about elephants.  (I was surprised by that.)  They taught us what to do if approached by various animals.





If approached by a/an:
  • Leopard - Do not look it in the eye; bend over and protect your stomach.
  • Lion - Do look it in the eye.  Stand tight together, if in a group.  Stand tall.

Being on foot, we saw more tranquil scenes-
Beautiful!

  • Water Buffalo - Get high.  Find a climbable tree or termite mound.
  • Elephant - Go to sturdiest protection (tree); stand behind it.
  • Hippo - Get out of his path to water.  If there is something to lie behind, get down.  They can't jump.  They'll go around.

We never had to put our teachings into practice, thank goodness!  I figured I'd still be thinking about what I was to do, when "GULP", I'd be gone.

Birds of Botswana

My favorite was this
Lilac-Breasted Roller. 

You could hear the fish eagles call to each
other all night.  They mate for life.

We saw both yellow and red-billed hornbills -
 the bird that Zazu is patterned after in Lion King.

The ever present vulture

I kept a list of all the birds that we saw in Botswana.  We ended up seeing 49 new (to us) kinds of birds, out of over 400 birds in the delta alone.



















Our guide Meier in Chobe National Park was phenomenal, because not only could he identify every bird we saw by name, he could quote the page number, and position on the page, where we could find it in his bird book.  For instance, "That's a red-eyed bulbul, page 134, position 5".  He was correct every time!

We saw vultures, bee catchers, a Meyer's parrot, various storks, black-winged stilts, grey louries, Burchell's starlings, black crakes that walk on lily pads, yellow-breasted apalis, etc., etc.

Little facts I found interesting:

Yellow-billed stork

* Hornbills.  The bill of a hornbill is so hard it can crack open the shell of a turtle. It needs that hard beak in part because when baby hornbills are hatched, the male hornbill seals the mother and babies into a hole in the tree to keep them safe.  He then feeds all of them night and day through a tiny hole until the babies are big enough to survive on their own.  Then, he breaks them out.  (If anything were to happen to the male hornbill, the female would use her bill to break out.)

Burchell starling

•  African snipe.  I don't have a picture, but I found them interesting.  When we were camping out in the Okavango, the African snipe would "dive-bomb" our area.  Marking their territory, they sounded exactly like a miniature jet plane each time they would pass.

Maribou Stork

Mamas and Babies

I liked catching pictures of mama animals and their young.   Here are four of my favorite shots:

Sedate baboon family,
with nursing baby.

Baby elephant nursing

Baby and mama hippo

The Scoop on Poop

There are pluses and minuses to a walking safari.  The main disadvantage is that you don't see that many animals.  And, when you do spot one or more, you must stay a healthy distance away.  Therefore, your sightings are less frequent and are not up close and personal.

The main advantage of a walking safari is the information you learn from your guides about spotting animal signs and what they represent.  One of the best carriers of information is animal scat (i.e. poop, droppings) -- especially good at communicating how recently the animal has been in the vicinity.

I found this knowledge fascinating, and became somewhat of an expert on poop.  Here is what I learned:

Lion Scat

•  Lion versus Leopard Scat.  While a lion's scat will have bones and hair in it, a leopard's scat will not.  That is because a leopard basically skins its prey, and eats the meat off around the bones.  A lion just eats it all.  In the accompanying lion scat picture, I hope you can see the bones and teeth fragments.  In person, you could also see hair.

•  Elephant Scat.  Elephants are herbivores, and eat large quantities of grass.  But, unlike cows or buffalo, they don't have multiple stomachs.  Therefore, they only absorb about 40% of what they eat, and their scat contains a ton (literally) of grass.  It comes out looking like bales of shredded wheat. Then, two different species come and eat it:  both baboons and Francolin birds scatter the poop and enjoy the half-digested grasses.   Thus, if the elephant poop you see is still shaped as a bale and in a pile, it is quite recent.  The baboons haven't been by yet.

Pre-Baboon Elephant Scat

•  Giraffe versus Kudu Scat.  Giraffe and impala scat looks alike in color and size.  Both are pebble-like in appearance.  The only way you can tell them apart is how the scat lays on the ground.  Giraffe poop is scattered all over; kudu poop is in a neat pile.  Can you guess why?   That's right.  It's because of the much greater distance that giraffe poop must fall.

•  Hyena Scat.  The poop I found most interesting was the hyena's.  Their piles are made up of pure, solid white poop.  That is because they digest everything they eat except bone.  In what is another sign of "the grand scheme" of things, there is a kind of turtle that is innately calcium-deficit.  So, that turtle searches for and eats the hyena's scat as their calcium pill!

I hope you found this at least half as interesting as I did.  I couldn't decide what title to use on this blog post.  The runner-up was "I know shit."

Okavango Delta, Botswana

We flew there in this airplane.
John had the co-pilot seat.

The Okavango Delta in Botswana is very different terrain than Chobe National Park's savannah.   The Delta is formed by the Okavango River as it flows from the mountains, but dries up before it reaches the ocean.  It is about 100 square miles of water one to five feet deep.  It has very clear water - with grasses growing everywhere.  In drier seasons, you can sometimes drive to the camp we were staying at.  At this time of year, the only mode of ground transportation in the delta is by water.   We flew a tiny 6-passenger airplane in.  

Our mokoros await

We  chose the camp we did because it was considered more traditional.  We stayed at Oddballs, one of the few base camps left that use all mokoros - dug-out canoes from tree trunks- as transport.  We used the mokoros to go to and from various unpopulated islands where we camped and did daily walking safaris.  

Our guides stood in the back of the mokoro (like a gondolier) and poled us through the grasses.  Sometimes they had to push us through - the reeds were so thick.  Sometimes we had to get out and walk - the water was so shallow.  When being poled, you sit on the floor of the dugout canoe basically at waterline -- with only a few inches of clearance on each side.  I thought they looked like floating beanpods - and they felt about that stable, too.

John and Cheryl went on ahead

Because the reeds and grasses are one to four feet tall, you actually can't see much when sitting in them except straight up or straight ahead.  We knew there could be hippos and crocs in the water, but we never saw them.  Our guides took wide berths around them - except for one day.  

Many times, we even lost sight of them

The skin of a hippo is very sensitive.  They can't handle sun, as they easily get sunburned.  Therefore, hippos spend most of the daytime in the deepest water of the main channel.  At night, they become active and in our camp, you could hear them out chomping grasses nearby.  One day, Jim and I and our guide went on a day excursion to an island.  We started out in one direction, but the guide saw hippos in the channel we were taking, and turned around.  We couldn't go that way.  We went another way to the island where we spent about two hours walking and learning about different plants and animals there.  Then, we started back to camp.  

In the meantime, it had clouded over.  The hippos started getting active.  Because you are low in the mokoro, you can't see the hippos - and if you could, you'd be way too close!  But we could hear them.   They were grunting (like pigs) and moving through the grasses we were poling in,  but we couldn't tell if they were ten yards away or fifty.  For about 20 minutes, we poled through an area where they were active, and I think we held our breath the whole time.   (I don't easily get scared, but both Jim and I were very uneasy.)

That night, we asked our guide if he had ever had a guest hurt by a hippo.   He said he hadn't, but his uncle worked at a camp where an American couple had been out in a mokoro with a guide when a hippo suddenly emerged from the water, flipped the mokoro up, and snapped the woman in half as she came down - killing her.  I was glad that I heard this story after we got safely back to camp.

Blame it on the Full Moon

While in Chobe, we became intimately acquainted with a pride of lions there.  It was really interesting to watch just one pride - and see their habits for three days straight.  We saw them asleep, on the prowl, and playing with each other.

The matriarch

Jackal watching the lioness on the prowl

This pride was headed by a one-eyed matriarch.  Many years ago, she had lost the other eye in a fight with a water buffalo.  But, though one-eyed, she was a great hunter - still capable of bringing down big prey alone.  While we were there, the pride went hunting each day - she, along with her half-grown children.  But, each day they remained unfed.

On the last morning's safari, we saw her out hunting alone.  Meier said that she had stashed the kids, probably saying, "You've botched enough hunts.  I'm doing this alone."  Interestingly, following on her heels that day (and not visible the others), was a jackal and several vultures.  Apparently, they had great confidence in her hunting ability as well.

Jim had a personal encounter with her as well.  An earlier South African guide had said that the big cats view a land rover as a single entity.  He said that they can't distinguish us as individual people seated inside.  Jim would beg to differ.  One afternoon, we were sitting in the land rover, watching the cats get up from their afternoon nap and ready themselves to go hunting.  All the younger cats went walking past the land rover within  three feet of us.  Then, the one-eye matriarch came by, stopped, turned her head, and just stared into Jim's eyes.  (I can attest to this as I was sitting beside him.)  Jim stared back.  It was the eeriest feeling ever.  We knew she hadn't eaten for four days.  We also knew that she singled Jim out as a person on that rover.  Finally, she did turn and move on.

Later, Meier told us that in Kenya they no longer use the open-sided land rovers on safaris because big cats have learned that "There's lunch in there."  (Maybe it's time for Chobe to reconsider.)

The other "attraction" in this herd concerned the matriarch's four year daughter.  She had come into heat for the very first time on the day that we arrived in the park.  She and the dominant male lion took themselves off from the rest of the pride for mating.  We watched the pair of them for parts of each day.  In the process, I learned that lions mate for four days straight.  During this time, they do not eat.  They have no time to eat, because they mate 4 to 12 times an hour!  Each mating lasts about 20 seconds.  (Above is one of the more discreet photos.  I also have a video if anyone is interested...)  I am told that by the fourth day, the female has to really work to wake up the male.

I'm exhausted!

A picture from the few minutes when
they are both awake - and not mating.

I titled this posting "Blame it on the full moon" because we enjoyed a beautiful full moon while in Chobe.  Whether moon related or not, we also got the dubious "pleasure" of seeing kudu mate and worse yet, many vultures.  Ugh!

But, my favorite memory of the full moon is that both evenings - as we went driving along - we saw a solitary baboon sitting, looking at the moon.  I loved it!

Just enjoying the moon!

"This is Chobe!"

We were driven across land from Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe to Chobe National Park in Botswana.    The country of Botswana has an interesting approach to tourism.  Unlike Kenya, they have decided to limit the number of people who go on safari and charge them more.  While it is hard on your pocketbook, it makes for a phenomenal safari.  There are few other people, and the animals really have the land to themselves.

Meier: "This is Chobe!"

We were met by our guide Meier (his Dad named him after a friend).  Meier had a voice that was a cross between Dracula and James Earl Jones'.  Whenever we would ask if we would see a certain kind of animal, he would answer "This is Chobe."  

We were a small party - John, Cheryl, Jim, Meier, and me.  As we drove into Chobe National Park, we kept saying, "Stop.  I see a warthog over there.  Wait.  I see an elephant over there." Now, these animals were quite far in the distance.  Finally, Meier stopped and said, "This is what we call delete corner.  After you've been in Chobe, and see animals close up, you'll delete all these early pictures."  

Giraffe patterning varied a lot.
This one looked like leaves.

He was right.  Shortly after that comment, Meier was driving along the sand filled path road when suddenly, he braked and backed up.  "See the giraffe?" he asked.  "Where?" we all said.   "Right there."  And, there - right in front of us was a giraffe eating leaves!  We had been so intent on scanning the horizon, that we had missed a giraffe within 10 feet of the road.

Fast Food - See the M?

During our time in the park, we went on two morning safaris (6 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.) and three evening safaris (3:00 - 6:00 p.m.)   We saw hundreds and hundreds of animals.  The zebras were migrating, so we saw herds of them.   We followed a pride of lions for three days and got to know their habits - intimately.  (See posting: "Blame it on the moon".)

We saw hippos, elephants, water buffalo, elands, baboons, many birds, impalas...  Speaking of impalas, they have a brown marking on their buttocks that looks like the McDonald's M.  Meier said that that was because they are "fast food!" 

Treed impala

We'll get you next time!

I am thankful that we never saw a kill.  I know it happens, but I'd prefer not to watch.  We did see this impala 30 feet up in a tree.  Meier surmised that a leopard had killed it and dragged it up there, to eat later.  We also saw a pride of lions chasing three water buffalo.  The pride hadn't eaten for days, and they were serious, but the water buffalo made it to water (and safety!)

The elusive leopard

On our last day in camp, we went for our usual morning drive.  Mentioning that we hadn't seen a leopard yet, Meier just responded, "This is Chobe" - his version of keep the faith.  He circled back to the tree where the leopard had the impala stashed - and sure enough we all got a glimpse of the very elusive leopard.  (Solitary animals, they are very hard to spot on most safaris.)

I was thirsty!

Personally, I enjoyed the baboons the most.  I could easily imagine sitting and just watching them for hours.   Here are some of my favorite pictures of them, and the other animals.

Here's looking at you, kid!

I have a cute face, too. (Kudu)

A little to the left

I'm having such a bad hair day

No telephonic lens.  Saw many, many elephants this close.

Hippos on shore - Quite unusual to see during the day

Victoria Falls - the town

The town of Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, is small and walkable.  A lot of shopping is available in small stores and stands.  Many street vendors ply you with their crafts - almost to the point of annoyance.

Last seen walking down
 main street Vic Falls

"We're waiting for the 4:05 commuter train."

We walked much of the area around our hotel.  
Sometimes, you needed to step across the street to avoid the non-human pedestrians.    

Hippo taking a cool-off plunge

Late afternoon, we all boarded a sunset river cruise.  We went upstream (nowhere near the falls), and greatly enjoyed being on the water.   We felt like we were in a scene from The African Queen.  From the boat, we saw elephants, hippos and lots of birds.  

This croc was sunning himself on the bank.  He is using his open mouth to stay cool.  Our guide said that the inside of a croc's mouth is comprised of beautiful colors.  (I didn't get close enough to verify.)  Often, a croc will lie in the river - with its mouth wide open.  Attracted by the bright colors, fish will swim near or even right in!  

The setting sun was stunning.  Our time in Victoria Falls was for only one night, and I think that was about right.  We had seen the falls and we were ready to move on...