Wednesday, June 1, 2016

The Discreet Charm of Kruger National Park

Note:  I first wrote this post back in Mozambique but was never able to upload it on the dodgy data networks there, so I'm posting it now, with a postscript about our second (brief) visit to Kruger a few days ago.

Pomene, May 20, 2016

It’s 9 pm and a nearly full moon is shining through the gaps in the clouds scudding past at speed, blown by a south-easterly wind that has been scouring the shore of Mozambique for four days now.  It’s a beautiful spot here in Pomene Nature Reserve and a good chance to reflect on the first two weeks of our trip around Southern Africa in Stanley (Henry Morton Stanley to give him his full name), our camper.  We spent almost all of this time in Kruger National Park, and so a blog post about Kruger seems like a good way to start recording Stanley’s Travels; you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Southern Ground Hornbill
Saturday, April 30th was a long day, the first of our new life on the open road.  It started at 5 am in our AirBnB place in funky, gritty Woodstock, a newly-gentrifying inner-city suburb of Cape Town.  It was the third separate time that Terri and I had stayed with Leonie and Shanaaz, and we were starting to feel like family.  We heard about the family intrigues and crises in Muslim Cape Coloured families living along Essex Road that made The Bold and The Beautiful look tame in comparison.  I spent a couple of days waiting for Terri’s arrival while trying to sort out car insurance for Stanley.  It shouldn’t have been complicated, but it was, and we have only just now received confirmation that our bank transfer to pay the bill has gone through so that we can get our insurance certificate that we will need as we drive into new countries in Africa.  I got back to Cape Town from a flying visit to family and friends in Switzerland on Tuesday, April 26th, but Terri didn’t arrive until 3 days later from her trip to New Zealand.  We had a delicious Cape Malay curry that Shanaaz cooked for us to celebrate Terri’s return, then packed and re-packed until late before a 5 am alarm woke us up.  A taxi carried us off to the airport, where we managed to get our excessively heavy hand luggage past the watchful people at Mango Air without having to pay excess baggage fees.

Glossy starling
We got to Johannesburg Airport by 9:00, but with one thing and another, we didn’t get out of the airport until 10.  We had a deadline to meet of noon to pick up Stanley from the garage as it was a Saturday and they were only open in the morning.  A Gautrain and an expensive taxi ride got us back to the suburb of Linden where Stanley had been undergoing a few repairs (new leaf springs on the rear axle, a change of filters and oil and a few tweaks of the electrical system) during our two weeks away.  We paid our bill, picked up the car registration papers and loaded our luggage into the back.  We walked a block down the street to Linden Cycles where our Giant Express folding bicycles had arrived (they had been out of stock two weeks earlier and had had to order them in specially for us), folded them up and threw them in the camper.  An hour of stocking up on groceries and basic supplies in the local mall and by 3 pm we were headed west out of Linden, crossing the huge sprawl of suburbia that is greater Johannesburg.  Our new GPS had some personality quirks that we had not yet mastered and it took us much longer than it should have to get onto the big toll road heading east across the Highveld, the open plateau that makes up much of South Africa.  We made decent time until it got dark and a dense, cold fog rose up to envelop the road, reducing visibility to twenty metres and progress to a crawl.  Road construction compounded our woes, as did a GPS that missed our campground by twenty kilometres.  We didn’t roll into Elangeni Tourist Lodge until 10 pm, whereupon we had barely enough energy to pop up the roof, have a celebratory beer and fall asleep after 320 hard-won kilometres.

A grey lourie (aka the go-away bird)
The next morning we awoke at 7:40 and spent the next six hours sorting through all our gear and food, trying to figure out where it should be stored.  We had arrived with the camper an indiscriminate jumble of equipment and groceries, but Terri’s organizational gifts came to the fore and we managed to put almost everything away in the places that they occupy to this day.  Our 55 litre refrigerator/freezer was crammed to the gills with meat, cheese, milk, lettuce, beer and wine, while our many hanging zipper pouches held our clothing and dry foodstuffs.  The area under the foot of the bed was crammed with plastic storage boxes that we sorted through methodically, trying to keep the items needed every day near the side for easy access from outside the camper.  Finally by 2 o’clock we were ready to roll again, with the camper interior now an immaculately organized space.  We had a very short day, only 145 km of driving, to Hazyview, on the south-eastern edge of Kruger.  We dropped down off the Highveld into lower, warmer, more heavily populated areas dotted with big commercial citrus and avocado orchards, interspersed with poor-looking black towns.  We stopped at a roadside stand and spent 8 dollars on avocados, tomatoes, macadamia nuts, oranges and pecans; they lasted us almost a week, so they were a great investment.  As we turned off the highway onto secondary roads heading north, the landscape was transformed into a continuous series of settlements along the road, townships that hugged the crests of the hilltops.  It was hard to believe that 15 km east of here was one of the great wilderness areas of Africa.  We camped that night in a small tourist joint that had had its campground close down recently; we parked Stanley under a tree and popped the roof up, ready to camp, but the owner felt guilty about not having a proper campground and let us stay indoors for no extra charge in one of his cottages.  We reveled in the luxury and slept well.

Lilac-breasted roller
On Monday, May 2nd, we were ready to enter Kruger National Park.  It had been hard getting campground reservations, and we had rescheduled our trip around the availability of camping at Lower Sabie and Satara campgounds.  This was why we hurried past Blyde River Canyon and the Drakensberg as we made a beeline for Kruger and its scarce camping spots.  We drove into the park fairly early in the morning at Numbi Gate and immediately ran into elephants, kudu, impala and giraffes.  The woods and undergrowth looked parched and dry thanks to the El Nino-powered drought afflicting the eastern side of Africa this year.  We drove towards Pretoriuskop and ran into a young male elephant running amok beside the road, charging cars, flapping his ears, trumpeting loudly and generally raising a little hell.  He had dissuaded vehicles in both directions from passing him, and we eventually found ourselves nearest to him as other cars rapidly backed up to escape.  Terri was at the wheel and very nervous, but eventually she nosed past the annoyed pachyderm and off down the road, heart thumping in her chest. 
Yellow billed stork at Sunset Dam
Following the advice of our guidebook, we took a back road to our campsite at Lower Sabie, along the old Voortrekker Road.  The bush was parched and dusty and almost devoid of animals.  Twice we were told by oncoming traffic of rhinoceri beside the road ahead of us, and twice we struck out.  We eventually popped out onto the tarmac at the picnic site of Afsaal, glad for the chance to stretch our legs.  We drove up an equally barren stretch of road to the Sabie River and finally found a strip of green amidst the brown desolation, as the river was still flowing, supporting a riverine strip of trees.  Just outside Lower Sabie, the Sunset Dam provided a plethora of hippos and crocodiles along with birds, including the large, beautiful African spoonbills whose nests filled one of the trees in the pond.

African spoonbill and its huge nest
The campsite at Lower Sabie proved to be the best wildlife viewing spot of the day, located beside a dam on the river.  We just missed seeing a leopard from the café terrace, but a pair of white rhinos came down to drink at the river, while openbill storks, black-winged stilts, egrets, herons and Egyptian geese teemed beside the life-giving water. It was a lovely spot, and we found a great campsite to cook up lamb chops and pumpkin soup.

Elephants at Ntandanyathi
Having spent hours at the wheel the previous day, we did very little driving on May 3rd, as we were sleeping back at Lower Sabie again.  We got up early and went out to watch animals at dawn beside the river.  When the restaurant staff set to work noisily cleaning and opening up for the morning, we retreated further along the electrified boundary fence, hunting in vain for noisy birds inside thickets of thorny vegetation.  We cooked up flapjacks for breakfast and went back to Sunset Dam to admire the crocs, hippos and spoonbills.  We then drove a few kilometres to the Ntandanyathi bird hide, another chance to get out of the car and admire wildlife, including big elephants, hippos and very pretty yellow-billed storks, wooly-necked storks and a big tawny eagle.  We drove back to camp via a bridge across the Sabie which gave us views of more elephants, buffalo, tortoises and birds.  We took the afternoon off from wildlife and stretched, skipped and did pilates, before returning to the riverside café terrace to watch kudu and waterbuck while sipping sundown beers.  It was an idyllic setting.

Giraffe drinking at Sunset Dam
On the 4th, we got up early and headed out without eating, trying to catch the early-morning game.  We headed north towards Satara Camp, described in our book as lying in the richest game concentrations in Kruger.  We passed by Sunset Dam one more time (it was quiet this time) and then north to a lovely hilltop lookout and picnic spot at Mlondozi.
Stanley atop Mlondozi Hill
Kruger is full of great picnic spots where you can get out of your car (which sometimes feels like a prison on wheels as you aren’t allowed, for safety reasons, to get out of the vehicle except at specially designated spots), and Mlondozi was a wonderfully scenic place to eat our cereal and toast, looking down on a waterhole that was almost devoid of animals, despite the surroundings of dessicated dust that should have driven thirsty animals to the waterhole by the hundreds.  All the way to Tshokwane there was almost no game except for a few pairs of the large, endangered and very striking southern ground hornbills, impressive with their red facial markings and their sheer size.  At Tshokwane, another picnic spot, we bought a couple of meat pies and some cookies and sat down to enjoy them under the shade of some big trees.  The trees are infested by bands of thieving vervet monkeys, and Terri had a serious tug of war with a bold monkey that jumped right onto her lap to try to grab a bag of cookies.  Terri won, but was amazed by how unafraid the vervets are of humans.  We had great views of a huge male elephant and a tiny duiker, one of the dozen or so species of small antelope that skulk around the park in small groups.  Driving north from Tshokwane to Satara we did see more animals than previously, with a big herd of buffalo, several groups of zebras and brindled wildebeest, plenty of impalas and three impressive brown snake-eagles.  A couple of red-necked spurfowl completed the species seen; compared to parks like Chobe and Serengeti and Ngorongoro crater, this section of Kruger had very few big animals to be seen, although our excellent Kruger guidebook (Exploring Kruger, by Brett Hilton-Barber and Lee Berger) claimed that the area around Satara boasts the densest concentration of game animals in the entire park.

Young zebra
Satara is the largest camp in Kruger and is, sadly, not on a river or dam, so lacks the impressive views of a place like Lower Sabie.  It’s a big enclosed area on a plain, and the most desireable camping spots, along the perimeter electric fence, were already occupied by campers who looked as though they had settled in for a couple of weeks.  In fact Kruger is full of retired South African couples who spend weeks or months at a time camped in the park; there seems to be no restriction on how long you can stay, and so since it’s relatively inexpensive, secure and surrounded by lovely scenery and animals, it’s a good place to be retired.  Unfortunately, although South African campers are generally very considerate by world standards (very little noise, very neat in the common areas like the bathrooms and dishwashing spots), the one area that they do fall short of their high standards is in staking out larger spaces than they really should, using cars, fences and furniture to spread over more than their allotted campsite, and sometimes taking more than one electrical outlet to run their multiple fridges and freezers, their TVs and their air conditioners.  We eventually found the last available electrical outlet and set up camp in the interior.  At dusk, however, we wandered out to the western perimeter fence to watch the sunset and spotted a young hyena who patrols the fence all night, hoping for handouts from campers; sadly, not all campers were obeying the signs not to feed animals, and were tossing food scraps over the fence to him, making him into a problem animal. 
One happy, very pink hippo near Satara
The next day we were lazy; we were staying two nights in Satara and given the lack of big animals around, we took the morning off from driving and did some exercise.  One of the downsides to doing a safari in Kruger is that you end up spending almost all your time imprisoned inside your vehicle and you end up craving physical exertion.  We have a few exercise options in Stanley:  yoga mats, skipping ropes, running shoes, elastic resistance bands and our Giant Express folding bicycles.  Cycling is forbidden in the Kruger campgrounds, and it wasn’t a brilliant place to run, so yoga, skipping, pilates, pushups and arm exercises with the resistance bands had to do.  I also carry my travel guitar (the Martin Backpacker that I have been carrying around for 15 years already) and a set of 5 juggling balls, so I had some other more intellectual diversions.  Finally at 11:30, after a big eggs, toast, avocado and tomato brunch, we put down Stanley’s roof, left our table and chairs in place and power cord plugged in to claim our spot and set out for a game drive.

Two waterbuck
We headed due east to Nwanetsi, a picnic point in the Lebombo hills that mark the Mozambique border.  There was almost no game to be seen in the parched plains:  a few zebra and waterbuck, some kudu and impala.  The picnic site was occupied by a group from Kids in Parks, a program that brings children from the townships of Johannesburg out into Kruger.  It is a great program, trying to bridge the cultural divide that sees 95% of the South African tourists to Kruger being white; there are very few black, Coloured or Indian faces in the vehicles driving around the park.  However, they were a fairly noisy group of 50, so we climbed up to a higher birdwatching point that looks down on the river, which was actually quite full of water.  A hippo and a croc lounged in the water, and a few egrets and herons stood stock-still in the water ready to spear lunch, but there was little game coming down to drink.  It was very pretty, though, with red rock cliffs topped by yellow-leaved trees, and I scanned the horizon, more in hope than in expectation, looking in vain for leopards.  On the drive back to Satara, we saw spurfowl and sandgrouse and stopped to watch them.  After the sandgrouse, Stanley’s engine wouldn’t start and we were forced to ask for help from a passing ranger, who gave us a tow to get us started.  It made us realize that we hadn’t been letting the diesel ignition warm up for a few seconds before turning the key, and that we had to be more conscientious about it.  We had another gorgeous sunset along the fence with gins and tonics and another appearance by the hyena, while Terri was able to spot the silhouette of a distant owl atop a tree from a distance of 100 metres, an impressive piece of spotting.
You lookin' at me?
A dusty herd of buffalo near Letaba
May 6th, our fifth day in the park, saw us head north to Letaba Camp.  We managed to get rolling by 6:50, fortified by tea and coffee, headed first west and then north along the dirt Timbavati Road.  The grass was tinder-dry and there was little game to be seen, although we did spot quite a few impala, some spurfowl and a big korhaan (a type of bustard, a tall ground bird that kills snakes with its powerful legs and big talons), along with a pair of cute little steenboks, small antelopes with tiny toy-like horns.  We breakfasted on toast, avocado and tomato at Timbavati picnic spot, watching three tiny bushbucks with their delicate, striking leg markings, then continued north through more dry desolation.  We eventually spilled out onto the main north-south asphalt road and continued through a patch of unexpected greenery, full of giraffe, zebra, buffalo, impala and kudu, to the crossing of the Olifants River.  This is the dividing line between the south and the north, and we had been told that north of the Olifants there had been a bit of rain and hence there was more game, but that it was harder to spot.  We stopped on the bridge to look at waterbirds, and then turned off to see the Balule bridge, which was full of birdlife.  Balule is one of the “rustic” campsites (no electricity, no shop, a small number of campers) which book up quickly with Kruger aficionados; we later tried to book in at a couple of them and found them booked solid for weeks.  We turned back to the main road and drove up to lovely Letaba, our favourite campsite yet, situated on the banks of the broad Letaba River.  On the way into the camp, we saw a secretary bird, a very tall, slightly comical-looking ground bird, loping along the ground, half-heartedly trying to fly to get away from cars.  I love secretary birds and was glad to see one; we read later that their numbers in Kruger are in steep decline.
Pretty little bushbuck
We got a perfect spot to camp, at the very end of the campground, against the perimeter fence.  We found time for some late afternoon yoga, and then strolled along the riverfront looking for birds and game.  That night we grilled some steaks on the braai, chatted to our neighbours and watched a huge adult hyena pacing the perimeter fence; his size and power were fearsome to behold at such close range.  We also used our spotlight to pick out distant animal eyeballs in the dark, and spotted some bushbabies (tiny nocturnal arboreal animals that are impossibly cute) in the trees above us. 

Steenbok
We were sad that we had only one night in Letaba, but we were excited to head further north the next morning on the long drive to Shingwedzi.  We set off a bit later than usual (7:15; no rest for the wicked on this safari!).  We stopped for brunch in pretty Mooiplaas (it lived up to its Afrikaans name of Pretty Place).  The drive led through scorched grasslands bereft of greenery and game, although we also spotted some more steenboks and some klipspringers, another species of small antelope, in the rocky hills that the road passed over. The scenery around Red Rocks, a lookout point off the main road just before Shingwedzi, was pleasant enough and the rocks were home to dozens of colourful white-fronted bee-eaters who sallied forth constantly on brief insect-hunting missions before returning to their perches.  I love bee-eaters, and was pleased to see them in such profusion.  In Shingwedzi, we found another prime location along the electric fence and settled in for a late lunch, some exercise and then a wonderful sunset over the river.
Klipspringer
As we were cooking up dinner, we used the spotlight to pick out a genet, a small cat-like nocturnal creature that came for two visits, giving us a great view of him.  There were also a couple of tiny duikers, yet another pint-sized antelope, prowling around in the night.  I was glad to have a guidebook to African mammals (by Chris and TildeStuart) to help identify the various more obscure animals we encountered along the way.  We also saw a Mozambican nightjar, a nocturnal bird that is usually hard to spot, sitting in the picnic area beside the river, and were able to see its pretty feather patterns and watch it doing short insect-hunting runs.


Terri with a Shingwedzi sunset afterglow
Sunday, May 8th was originally supposed to be our last day in the park, but we had heard good things about the far north of the park (like the fact that there were more animals to see, and lots of bird species) so we booked a couple of extra nights in Punda Maria camp, the most northerly campsite in the park and the only one that always seems to have space available; it’s just too far from Johannesburg for it to be popular with many campers.  We drove along the road through endless flat stretches of mopane forest, almost a monoculture of trees that are beloved by elephants and by tiny caterpillars (mopane worms) as a food source.  Mopane forest is fairly dense, and it’s hard to see anything through the branches, so we didn’t see much game that wasn’t actually on the road.  There were elephant droppings everywhere, and every once in a while we would come across a lone elephant or a small herd crossing the road; by now we knew to give them a very wide berth!  It was by far the most elephants that we had seen since entering the park, and our guidebook said that the majority of the park’s 11,000 elephants live in the north.  Along the road we were lucky to come across a black-backed jackal and followed him for hundreds of metres, waiting for him to get off the road to one side or the other, but he kept trotting along the asphalt; we felt bad for stressing him out and making him run, and were relieved when he finally disappeared into the mopane forest.

Black-backed jackal north of Shingwedzi
We stopped for a big cooked brunch at Babalala picnic areas.  Kruger does a great job with its facilities, and the picnic grounds always have gas barbecues available to rent for 20 rand (just over 1 US dollar).  We had been tormented for days by the smell of cooking bacon when we stopped for our breakfasts, so that morning we cooked up bacon and eggs to go with our avocados (we were still eating the avocados we had bought 8 days earlier, and they were absolutely delicious) and toast.  We turned off the road to drive up Dzundzwini Hill for a lookout over the flat mopane veld, and then drove into Punda Maria through large flocks of birds, mostly turtle doves but also weavers and quelea, with more Natal spurfowl scurrying across the road at regular intervals.

Elephant
Punda Maria camp is significantly smaller than the camps to the south, and was barely half full.  We found a pleasant shaded spot to park Stanley, then walked down to the wildlife hide overlooking a waterhole (bereft of animals) and up along a short birdwatching trail in the forest above the camp, where we caught tantalising glimpses of birds that were too quick and too fond of dense thickets to really identify.  We also saw lots of nyala, another species of large antelope that we hadn’t seen before, with very impressive shaggy males with long horns that look very unlike the females of the species.

Juvenile leopard near Punda Maria
We decided to treat ourselves to a twilight game drive late that afternoon, since that’s the only way to be out in the park after dark, and also gives the best chance of spotting the elusive leopard.  We set off at 4:30 and had a great time.  Our guide, Velly, styles himself the Leopard King, and within minutes of setting off we had spotted a leopard; Velly had seen it on his dawn drive and it was still in the same tree 10 hours later.  We got great views of the leopard, although he was tough to photograph because of the shadows (although Photoshop Lightroom did a great job of improving the exposure later!).

Nyala ram
It turned out he was a 7-month-old cub whose mother was probably out hunting.  After spending quite a lot of time with the leopard, we headed off as the sun set to see what else we could spot with the aid of the three powerful spotlights on board.  We spotted several chameleons (I was amazed at Velly’s ability to spot them in a tree while driving past) and lots of springhares, strange bounding nocturnal animals nicknamed “Africa’s kangaroo”.  We also saw a few Sharpe’s grysbok, the smallest antelope species we had yet seen, and (as a special treat since it was Mother’s Day) we had a pit stop under the stunning southern skies to sip South African red sparkling wine and nibble on biltong and other snacks.  On the way back to Punda Maria, we passed more springhares, chameleons and grysbok and returned to camp very satisfied with the money we had spent (R 350, or about US$ 24) to see so many new animals in the wild.

Chameleon
Monday, May 9th was spent in camp.  We were both feeling a bit tired of sitting in the car for long stretches, so we took the day off, taking care of bureaucracy over the (very slow) internet, uploading photos, doing laundry, exercising and birdwatching.  Kruger’s campsites are actually pretty good places just to hang out:  they’re reasonably priced (R 250, or US$ 17, a night for 2 people), have pretty decent grocery stores at reasonable prices and have great laundry facilities at very cheap prices indeed.  It’s easy to see why retired South Africans sometimes set up camp here for weeks at a time.

On Tuesday, May 10th we drove to the northeast extremity of the park, Crooks’ Corner, named for the fact that lawbreakers 100 years ago could escape justice in any of the three countries that meet at the corner (Portuguese, Mozambique, British Rhodesia and independent South Africa) just by crossing over to one of the other countries.

Buffalo near Punda Maria
We left very early (well before 7) and drove first around the Mahonie Loop, a very pretty 30 km loop through dense montane forest that had lots of yellow autumnal leaves that showed up picturesquely against the blue sky.  We hoped to see leopards again, but luck was not on our side, although we met one leopard-obsessed couple who were sitting waiting for a mating couple to emerge from the bushes; they had been there for an hour already, and there was no sign of the leopards, so we pushed on, spotting a few elephants and a few more steenboks.  We returned to camp to cook up another bacon and avocado on toast feast before driving north.  Lots of dusty elephants were to be seen beside the road, along with new bird species.  We turned off the tarmac onto a magical strip of riverine forest, full of big trees and overlooking a river absolutely teeming with crocodiles, hippos and lots of new species of birds.  We saw a juvenile martial eagle in flight, many bee-eaters, a saddle-billed stork, white-backed vultures, lots of nyala and (Terri’s personal favourites for the day) long-tailed paradise whydahs, whose males sport immensely long tail feathers out of all proportion to the rest of the bird.  At Crook’s Corner the mighty Limpopo River was a tiny trickle thanks to the failed rainy season, leaving a wide expanse of sand stretching to the Mozambique border.  We could have crossed the border to Mozambique here, but the road was reputed to be terrible on the Mozambique side, so we had decided to cross further south, at Giriyondo.  The drive back to Punda Maria gave us sightings of huge herds of buffalo and zebra and a wonderful encounter with 4 elephants bathing, playing, mating and fighting in a waterhole; we had to leave in a hurry when one of the male elephants got very aggressive and chased us away.
Helmeted guineafowl
Back in camp, we had to fight off a troop of invading vervet monkeys intent on raiding our food supplies, and saw a new bird species, the crested guineafowl, a colourful alternative to the flocks of helmeted guineafowl we had been seeing for days.  That evening after dinner Terri managed to pick out more bushbabies with the spotlight.  We went to bed highly satisfied with the day’s game viewing.

Wednesday, May 11th was a travel day.  After withstanding another monkey attack (they made off with the dried mandarin slices that Terri was about to put into our cereal, and then spent a few minutes jumping on a neighbouring popup tent as though it was a trampoline), we drove south for several hours along the main road towards Letaba, where we had managed to secure a last-minute reservation.  We wanted to be close to the Mozambican border crossing at Giriyondo, and our first choice, the “rustic” camp at Tsendze, was booked out.  We had enjoyed Letaba the first time, so it was a reasonable second choice.  We had a good drive in terms of wildlife, with lots of vultures, zebras, elephants and impalas, along with our first three ostriches so far in Kruger.  We got to Letaba by 2:30, getting another nice perimeter fence site, and did some paperwork for the next day’s border crossing as well as visiting the small but excellent elephant museum featuring the life stories and tusks of some of the huge bull elephants of the Letaba area, including the so-called Magnificent Sevan.  That night as we sat eating our steaks, three thick-tailed galagos, a larger relative of the bushbaby, came down out of the tree and walked right under my camp chair.  I wasn’t fast enough on the draw with my camera, but managed to get some shots as they disappeared back into the trees.  It was a wonderful send-off from Kruger!

Thick-tailed galago (larger version of the bushbaby), Letaba
Thursday, May 12th was D-day, and the hour and a half drive to the border post went smoothly, past a few zebras, impalas, elephants and francolins.  By 8:10 we were crossing the border and (we thought) saying goodbye to Kruger forever.

However, two weeks later, after we turned back from heading to Malawi through the conflict-torn centre of Mozambique, we found ourselves making an unexpected flying visit to the southwest corner of Kruger, the one part of the park we had neglected in our 10-day stay.  We stayed the night of Saturday, May 28th just south of Kruger in a strange residential development called Marloth Park, where South Africans buy property and build houses inside a fenced game park full of impala, babboons, wildebeest, steenbok and all sorts of game except for elephants, lions and leopards.  We camped in the excellent Marlothi Park campground and saw all sorts of bird species that were new to us.  Since it’s not inside Kruger, we were free to cycle around on our folding bicycles down to the Crocodile River (the southern boundary of Kruger) to peer across the fence at crocodiles, hippos, waterbucks and rich birdlife.  It was nice to be able to move around more freely than inside the park.

Mother and child white rhinos
The next morning we cut across the park, from Malelane Gate to Berg en Dal campground, then onto the main north-south road and finally west to Numbi Gate, where our Kruger journey had started almost 4 weeks earlier.  We had been disappointed that we hadn’t seen more rhinoceri on our first visit to the park, and everyone who had been to Berg en Dal recommended that area for white rhinos.  It did not disappoint!  We drove to Matjulu waterhole, just north of Berg en Dal, and there we saw no fewer than 4 white rhinos at quite close range, including a baby who was still nursing.  We sat for a while mesmerized, trying to take decent photos, and then drove off quite satisfied.  We stopped for hamburgers at Afsaal picnic area, and soon afterwards, right beside the main road, five more white rhinos were grazing.  More photos, more oohing and aahing.  I reflected that the nine white rhinos we saw probably represent close to one percent of this critically endangered species, under such intense poaching pressure.  A couple of days before, a National Parks helicopter had come under fire from heavily armedrhino poachers, and the future of this beautiful, huge animal hangs very much in the balance.  We drove out of Numbi Gate relieved to have seen so many rhinos at last.
Baby white rhino near Berg en Dal

Overall, Kruger National Park was not nearly as impressive as I had hoped, but it was still pretty good.  The huge herds of elephants and diversity of birdlife that we saw acouple of months ago in Chobe just wasn’t there.  Neither did the game viewing compare with what I saw in the Serengeti and Ngorongoro years ago:  no vast herds of wildebeest, zebra and Thompson’s gazelle.  

Kruger has a more discreet charm that rewards a longer stay, a slow exploration of the landscape and (most importantly) having your own wheels and camping gear.  It’s brilliantly set up for self-driving trips (as long as you manage to get reservations in the main campgrounds in the south) and the variety of landscape as we headed north compensated a bit for the lack of adrenaline-pumping “wow” moments.  In the end we did very well on the wildlife-spotting front, with cheetahs, black rhinos, wild dogs and some of the smaller antelope species the only things on our to-see list that we didn’t get to tick off.  Birdlife was excellent, and we loved the campgrounds.  The only real downer to a long Kruger trip is the lack of opportunity to walk (or cycle) around freely; you do spend too long cooped up inside your vehicle, although we learned to take advantage of wildlife hides, picnic spots and other get-out-of-your-car spots.  As the flagship of South Africa’s national parks, SANParks does a great job of maintaining the park.  Perhaps if we had visited in another season, or in another year that wasn’t a drought, it would have been a more impressive place, but it still richly rewarded our visits.
Tawny eagle

One practical thing that is an important tip for visitors is to invest in a Wild Card.  For R3000 (US$ 200) for a foreign couple, we get unlimited day access to the parks (campgrounds are paid for separately).  With day use fees of about R280 per day, within 6 days we had paid off the card entirely just on this one Kruger visit.  Since we want to visit other parks as well over the next year, it’s going to be a great savings.  The SANParks website doesn’t play nicely with non-South-African applications for the Wild Card, but if you perservere through frustrations, it will be worth it in the end.
Baboons at prayer drinking water

The other key thing to do is to get your campsite reservations done early on the SANParks website, or in person at the SANParks headquarters in Pretoria, where you can also get your Wild Card done in person, or pick it up if you ordered it online.

Thanks for wading through this post all the way to the end; hope you enjoyed it and the photos.  Next time:  Mozambique!!



Southern red-billed hornbill
White-fronted bee-eater




Friday, April 29, 2016

By the Numbers--Up to Date

Here's a newly updated list of the countries I've visited over the course of my life, arranged by the date of my first visit to the country.  I don't count my home country, Canada.   Of course, exactly what constitutes a country is a bit slippery.  My well-travelled friend Natalya Marquand holds that the only objective list is the 193 permanent members of the UN.  Others hold that these countries, plus the non-UN-member Vatican City, make up the 194 canonical countries of the world.  I think the reality is a bit slippier.  When I visited Nagorno-Karabakh and Abkhazia, despite the fact that these countries aren’t universally recognized, I had to get a visa to visit them and cross at a border post manned by people in uniform who stamped my passport.  Somaliland not only has its own consulates and border guards, it even has its own currency.  And, to take an extreme example, anyone who claims that Taiwan isn’t effectively an independent country isn’t really recognizing what’s been de facto the case since 1949.

So my list of independent countries is a bit bigger than 194.  It’s about 204 countries; the number may fluctuate a bit, and it doesn’t include three countries (Western Sahara, Palestine and Tibet) with pretty legitimate cases but without their own border guards. One of the many lists of countries on Wikipedia lists 206 entries that either are recognized by at least one other state as being independent, or effectively control a permanently populated territory, but they include Western Sahara and Palestine which are at the moment illusory pipe dreams, to the distress of the people who inhabit them.  If I'm not counting Canada, that would make 193 or 203 possible destinations.

Anyway, without further preamble, here’s my list of the countries I have visited, arranged according to the date I first visited them.  The non-UN/Vatican members of the list are coloured red; there are eight of them, so if you’re counting by the UN+Vatican list, it’s 117 (out of 193).  I would make it 125 out of 203.  Whichever way you count it, I’m now well over half-way to my goal of visiting them all, and my to-visit list is now down into double digits.   

1969
1. US

1977
2.  France
3.  Switzerland
4.  Liechtenstein
5.  Germany
6.  Netherlands

1981
7.  Tanzania

1982
8.  Norway
9.  Italy

1988
10.  UK
11. Vatican
12.  Greece
13.  Hungary
14.  Austria
15.  Czech Republic (Prague, then part of the now-defunct Czechoslovakia)

1990
16.  Belgium
17.  Monaco
18.  Poland

1991
19.  Australia
20.  New Zealand
21.   Fiji
22.  Cook Islands

1994
23.  Egypt
24.  Turkey

1995
25.  Spain
26.  Kenya
27.  Uganda
28.  Democratic Republic of Congo
29.  Japan
30.  Singapore
31.  Indonesia

1996
32.  Philippines
33.  Malaysia
34.  Thailand
35.  Cambodia
36.  Nepal

1997
37.  India
38.  Sri Lanka
39.  Pakistan
40.  Luxembourg
41.  San Marino
42.  Andorra

1998
43.  China
44.  Portugal
45.  Morocco
46.  Tunisia
47.  Jordan

1999
48.  Israel
49.  Syria
50.  Lebanon
51.  Chile
52.  Argentina
53.  Peru

2000
54.  Bolivia
55.  South Korea

2001
56.  Mexico
57.  Brunei
58.  Laos
59.  Taiwan

2004
60.  Kazakhstan
61.  Kyrgyzstan
62.  Tajikistan
63.  Uzbekistan
64.  Turkmenistan
65.  Iran
66.  Bahrain

2006
67.  Vietnam
68.  Burma

2007
69.  Mongolia
70.  Palau
71.  Bangladesh

2008
72.  Bhutan
73.  Cyprus
74.  Northern Cyprus

2009
75.  Kuwait
76.  Azerbaijan
77.  Georgia
78.  Armenia
79.  Nagorno-Karabakh
80.  Iraq
81.  Bulgaria
82.  Serbia
83.  Kosovo
84.  Macedonia
85.  Albania
86.  Montenegro
87.  Bosnia-Hercegovina
88.  Croatia
89.  Libya
90.  Malta

2010
91.  Ethiopia
92.  Somaliland
93.  Djibouti

2011
94.  Denmark
95.  Abkhazia
96.  Russia
97.  Ukraine
98.  Trans-Dniestria
99.  Moldova
100. Romania
101.  Slovakia
102.  Belarus
103.  Lithuania
104.  Latvia
105.  Estonia
106.  United Arab Emirates
107.  Oman
108.  Qatar

2012
109.  Slovenia
110.  Togo
111.  Benin

2013 
112.  Maldives
113,  Iceland
114.  Ireland

2014
115. East Timor
116. Solomon Islands
117. Papua New Guinea

2015
118. Finland
119. Sweden

2016
120. Paraguay
121. Brazil
122. Uruguay
123. Zambia
124. Botswana
125. South Africa

Over the rest of 2016 I should add another 7 African countries or so (mostly from southern Africa) and then a few more in early 2017 from eastern and western Africa.  So many countries, so little time!

Thursday, April 28, 2016

Upcoming Plans: Kruger, Mozambique and points north!

April 28, Cape Town

This is just a quick post to let you, my gentle readers, know what our plans are, and what we've been up to since leaving Livingstone 4 weeks ago.
Looking pleased and relieved to have bought Stanley
Terri and I flew down from Livingstone to Cape Town on Wednesday, March 30th, determined to buy an overlanding vehicle for our upcoming Africa adventure.  We stayed in a rather ratty little backpackers located on the loudest intersection in the city for the first 4 nights, but our search for vehicles was frustrating.  We couldn't find anyone selling a complete setup like we wanted (a pickup truck, or "bakkie" as it's called here, with a camper insert in the back).  Trying to buy the truck and the camper separately looked expensive, with Alu-Cab offering us a new, well-engineered but cramped camper (Terri called it a man-cave for its dark, low interior) for 190.000 rand (about US$ 12.500) without a vehicle underneath it.  We had a line on 2012 HiLux pickup trucks for about the same price.  Then we would need to buy lots of extra kit to make the camper liveable and fully functional.  It all seemed more expensive than we wanted, and more hassle.

We took a bit of time to look around Cape Town on a sunny Saturday afternoon, enjoying the pretty Waterfront with its markets and good food, and climbed Table Mountain on Sunday, but we mostly kept our noses to the grindstone, going to government offices futilely looking for a Traffic Registry Number (they weren't willing to give one to non-resident foreigners), visiting dozens of car dealers, spending time on the internet, and all in vain.  By the evening of Monday, April 4th, we were discouraged, and at a low ebb in our enthusiasm.  The only bright spot was that we had moved into a much nicer and cheaper place to stay, an AirBnB house in funky gentrifying Woodstock.  At that exact moment, my former colleague Charlene sent me a link to the Africa 4x4 Cafe website and on there we saw the perfect vehicle for us, a 2002 Mitsubishi Colt club cab pickup truck with a Blinkgat camper in the back, freshly returned from a big trip as far north as Tanzania under the ownership of another Canadian.  The ad dated from early February, and we were worried that the vehicle would have been sold long ago.  Without much hope, we sent off an e-mail and Terri went to bed.  Before turning in myself, I checked my e-mail one more time and found an e-mail from Etienne, the owner.  The vehicle was still for sale and he was very keen to get it off his hands, as he had had to return to Canada without having sold it.  There were a couple of people interested in it but they weren't going to look at the vehicle for another week or so.
Living out of Stanley
In the morning I told Terri that the car was available but was in Johannesburg, stored in a garage.  Within an hour, we had bought air tickets to Johannesburg for the next day, found a place to stay, rented a car and were upbeat and nervous.  On Wednesday, April 6th we were on a cheap flight to Johannesburg and, after a long delay at the car rental desk, took off in our US$20 a day rental car, listening to our GPS and getting lost.  We headed straight to the garage and looked at the vehicle.  It seemed like what we wanted, and after a day of nervous thought and trans-Atlantic WhatsApp negotiation with Etienne we settled on a price (a bit under US$10,000) and started the process of bank transfers to pay for it.  By Friday night we had paid the purchase price, started the process of getting our Traffic Registry Numbers (via an "agent" who presumably greased a few palms at the government office), gone through the huge quantity of camping, cooking, cleaning, repair and electrical equipment that came with the camper and settled on a plan.  We would borrow the car for a few days to drive it around and test out how we liked living out of the camper so that we would know what (if anything) we needed to buy.  Then we would return the vehicle to Johannesburg so that the paperwork of changing ownership, along with a few repairs (oil change, oil and air filter change and a new leaf spring for the back axle) could get done while Terri and I went to NZ and Switzerland respectively for brief business-oriented trips.  Then, when we returned, we would pick up our newly optimized vehicle and head for Kruger National Park to start exploring the continent.  Unfortunately, our tickets to NZ and Europe, already bought, were leaving from Cape Town and we were now in Johannesburg, requiring another cheap-o return air ticket to Cape Town on the delightfully named Mango Air.
Meeting Erin Conway-Smith in Johannesburg
Once we had our plan, everything happened relatively quickly.  We spent the weekend enjoying our laid-back backpacker joint (The Birches, in Linden) and visiting an old friend of mine (Angelo) from long-ago grad school days, along with a fellow Thunder Bay-ite, Erin Conway Smith, who is now a correspondent for the Economist based in Johannesburg.  We had interesting discussions about the ongoing political scandals in South Africa and some of the other countries of the continent that Erin knows.  In the afternoons we went running and cycling in the Johannesburg Botanical Gardens and shopped for groceries.

From Monday afternoon to Thursday morning of that week we took our new vehicle, freshly renamed Stanley (short for Henry Morton Stanley ; Etienne had called the vehicle Zulu) for a three-night camping trip.  We drove northwest to the Magaliesberg, to Sleepy River Caravan Park, where we spent two idyllic nights watching birds, testing out our gear, eating well and enjoying the star-spangled sky.  The only problem we found was that our gas burners weren't working well, presumably getting gunked up by dust; either we need a new stove or a pressurized air source to blow out the gas pipes.  The bed was comfortable, the working space inside the camper was ample, and the electrical system, with a fridge/freezer, storage batteries and a solar panel, worked idyllically.  The only downer was the horrible traffic we encountered in Pretoria when we went to pick up our Wild Card, the amazingly good deal on South African National Parks where for US$100 each we get unlimited access to all the parks in South Africa (although we still have to pay for accommodation).  
Stanley at Magalies Sleepy River
On Wednesday we spent a wonderful day exploring the Cradle of Humankind, a UNESCO-listed site commemorating the amazing paleontological discoveries in the caves northwest of Jo'burg.  
Robert Broom and our tour guide at Sterkfontein
Sterkfontein Cave was memorable, as much for the cave itself as for the early specimens of Australopithecus  discovered there.  That evening we camped in Krugersdorp Game Reserve and watched tons of birds and mammals, including ostriches, wildebeests, hartebeests, giraffes and bushbucks.  
Krugersdorp Game Reserve
It was again an idyllic spot to camp, and whetted our appetites for further adventures.  Thursday morning we drove back into Johannesburg, left the vehicle at the garage, got a lift to the airport and flew back to Cape Town.  Our AirBnB hosts, the irrepressible duo of Leonie and Shanaaz, surprised us by picking us up at the airport.  The next day Terri flew off to Auckland, while I stayed one more day before flying to Switzerland.
My mom, sisters and I gaping at the wonders of the universe 
Pub quiz with my friend Avery
Hugh playing quizmaster
My ten-day jaunt to my old haunts in Switzerland was fun, with lots of mountain biking, skiing, socializing, wine, abortive ski tours, indoor climbing, reunions with old friends and colleagues and even a Leysin Pub Quiz.  
My sister Audie mountain biking above Sierre
My court hearing (I'm in a dispute with my former employers) went well, but there was no immediate verdict, leaving me in suspense for a few more months.  And then, suddenly, I was back here in Cape Town, trying (so far unsuccessfully) to arrange vehicle insurance and buying a fancy GPS and map set for our journey.  Terri arrives tomorrow and we fly to Johannesburg on Saturday to pick up Stanley, buy some groceries and hit the road to Kruger National Park for a 6-day trip.
Me riding the El Dorado trail near Sierre
Saakje
Skiing terrible snow in the fog
Taking our skis for a walk
Me showing my poor climbing skills
And then?  Well, the plan until today was to drive from Kruger straight into Mozambique, drive north along the coast as far north as the Quirimbas Archipelago, then double south and west into Malawi. From Malawi we plan to do a huge sweep through the outer reaches of Zambia, down into Zimbabwe and then a big north-then-south wave through Botswana and Namibia before finally returning to South Africa by mid-October, in time for another side trip to Europe to do some tour guiding.  After returning from this in late October, we might head to Madagascar for a couple of months before picking up Stanley from a secure parking spot and heading north.  We'd like to get as far north as Sudan before cutting across Chad into West Africa; this is the toughest part of the trip, as it's mostly regarded as being impossible to cross the Sudan-Chad border given current conditions in Darfur.  However with South Sudan suddenly reverting to peace, maybe a new route possibility will open up from South Sudan into Chad.  If we get into Chad, then we can drive west through the Sahel to Mauretania and then double back east along the coast before making a run through the horrible roads, expensive countries and unpleasant border crossings from Nigeria south to Angola.  The last leg would be driving back south from Angola through Namibia back into South Africa where we would try to sell the camper again.  

On the other hand, with political and security problems suddenly boiling over in Mozambique this week, we might have to curtail or eliminate our Mozambique leg.  Who knows?  Travelling in Africa you have to do your homework, but that doesn't mean the situation won't change radically while you're on the road.

We've created Instagram, Twitter and Facebook accounts for this trip, along with a Google Map, so I hope that at least one of these channels of digital communication helps you follow our progress over the coming months.  We're pretty excited, and I hope we manage to convey that excitement to you, gentle readers.  Stay tuned!!!!

Ostrich at Krugersdorp

Monday, April 25, 2016

24 Magical Hours in Chobe

Martigny, April 25th

I have been on a number of memorable African wildlife-spotting safaris in the past.  When my family lived in Tanzania in 1981-82 we took a trip through the Serengeti Plains, Ngorongoro Crater and Lake Manyara that will be forever seared in my memory.  We visited our local park, Mikumi, several times.  I went back to Tanzania in 1995 when my sister Audie was working as a lion researcher in the Serengeti and got to experience the wildebeest migration there in all its vast glory.  I visited mountain gorillas in Zaire on the same trip, as well as wild, unhabituated chimpanzees in Uganda.  I thought that I had seen the best that Africa had to offer in terms of wildlife, and so I was not necessarily expecting a mind-blowing encounter with Africa when I accompanied Terri, Angela and the 15 students from Kumon Leysin Academy in Switzerland to Chobe National Park in Botswana.  I had barely heard of the name of Chobe, and assumed that it was an average, run of the mill sort of national park.
African darter in mid-flight

How very, very wrong I was.  The 24 hours we spent in Chobe were an astonishing feast for the senses and for the mind, and provide a rare glimmer of hope in the often gloomy world of African wildlife conservation.  I was absolutely overwhelmed by the diversity and number of big animals and birds that we saw, and now I wonder if we will ever top this experience as we travel, over the next few months, around the continent of Africa.
Pied kingfisher

We started with an hour-long bus ride on Saturday, March 26th from Livingstone to the strange border crossing at Kazungula, where the four countries of Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Botswana meet at a single point (OK, in the middle of the Zambezi River, but still at a point).  The drive took us through Mosi Oa Tunya (the local name for Victoria Falls) National Park and past a string of expensive lodges, many of them specializing in fishing, strung out along the river.  We passed a few giraffe and impala and baboons, but there were no great herds to be seen from the highway.  On either side of the park we passed villages that looked even more poverty-stricken than Ngwenya, where we had just spent a week working on our humanitarian project.  The houses looked more picturesque than in Livingstone as they were made of adobe and wood, but the surrounding fields looked parched by the drought that has blighted this year’s corn crop in Zambia and the rest of southern Africa. 
Hippopotami
As we approached the border crossing, a huge lineup of trucks appeared on the side of the road, stretching several kilometres to the ferry.  The main ferry had capsized in strong currents a few days before, and now a tiny pontoon capable of carrying one or two trucks at a time was trying futilely to keep up with demand.  Most of the trucks were carrying copper south towards South African ports, although to my surprise almost none of the copper was from the Zambian mines in the Copperbelt.  Almost all of these mines have closed temporarily due to the low world price for copper, dealing a hammer blow to the Zambian economy.  Instead this copper came from across the border in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC); have you ever noticed that any country that feels impelled to call itself a Democratic Republic almost never is (North Korea, East Germany and DRC spring to mind)?  In fact even Republic may be a misnomer for the failed state that is DRC.  Their transport system and governance are so miserable that the copper mines choose to truck their product through four countries and across three international borders rather than to move it through DRC itself to the Atlantic Ocean.
Carefree elephants in the water


We were unaffected by the ferry woes as we had a private motorboat picking us up.  We said goodbye for 24 hours to Mr. Sakala and his trusty bus and clambered aboard the launch.  In a few minutes we had been processed into Botswana (my 124th country) and were in the back of two Toyota Land Cruisers that had been turned into open-top safari vehicles, headed to the nearby town of Kasane.  The differences with Zambia that were visible on this ten-minute drive were stark.  Houses were much more solidly built, with many private cars parked in driveways.  The roads were in immaculate condition, and prosperous-looking shops lined the main street.  People were well-dressed and were moving purposefully through the streets, with little of the enforced idleness that is so evident on Zambian streets.  We pulled up at the headquarters of Kalahari Tours, had a brief breakfast and then headed out on a boat cruise along the Chobe River.
Hey big ears!

The boat cruise was magnificent.  Late March is high water on the Zambezi and Chobe Rivers.   Despite the continuing drought, the rivers were running very high since they are fed by rains in the uplands of western Zambia and Angola.  We floated along reed-filled marshes that were full of colourful birds like rollers, bee-eaters and kingfishers, as well as bigger species like herons, egrets, cormorants and African fish eagles.  We had a great time spotting birds for the first hour or so before the big game showed up slightly upstream.
Family outing

Malachite kingfisher

Botswana is one of the few great success stories in African conservation.  Elephants in particular are doing better here than in any other countries.  Roughly speaking there are 600,000 African elephants left in the wild, with their numbers constantly dwindling due to the depredations of illegal ivory poachers.  Botswana can boast 250,000 of those, or nearly half of all the continent’s elephants, and Chobe alone has 130,000, or something like 22 percent of the total.  Much of this success is due to the vigorous anti-poaching efforts of the army and the park authorities.  As we entered the park, we passed a large anti-poaching camp run by the army.  With the huge money to be made in the wildlife trade, only a full-bodied armed presence seems to be enough to deter poachers. 
Never smile at a crocodile

Angela, despite growing up in South Africa, had somehow never seen an elephant in the wild, and was worried that she would jinx the rest of us.  Instead, we had an absolutely elephant-filled day, as we passed herds of twenty, thirty or even fifty elephants.  They were mostly feeding and walking beside the river, but many of them were in the river, swimming and bathing and generally having a great time.  As Terri pointed out, the herd did a good job of keeping the numerous young elephants safe in the midst of the group, constantly reassuring them with touches of the trunk.  It was an awe-inspiring sight to see so many elephants in one place; I had seen elephants numerous times before, but never in such quantities.
Babboon babies look cuter than the adults!
Even in the 1980s the ivory poachers were carving bloody swathes through wild populations and numbers were dwindling in Tanzania.  Here in Chobe, I felt as though I was in the land of the elephants, and it was intoxicating.  I particularly liked watching the elephants emerge from the river, glistening in the sunshine, trunks flopping about as they trotted up the bank.
There was more to see than just elephants, majestic though they were.  Pods of hippos, ten or fifteen strong, lolled in the river or were occasionally seen grazing on the shore.  There were scatterings of big buffalo and the occasional Nile crocodile.  Meanwhile the birdlife continued to astound.  It was hard to tear ourselves away to return to shore for a huge buffet lunch.
I've got my eye set on you...

That afternoon we went out on a game drive in our two Land Cruisers.  Our route led largely along the river and we saw a lot of the same elephants from a different perspective, but we were also lucky with other species.  I was ecstatic to run into a pack of African wild dogs, a little-studied species that has been driven to near-extinction in much of the continent by canine distemper.
Wild dog
We passed large numbers of impala as well as their larger cousins the puku (a new species for me).  Giraffe were everywhere, and we ran into banded mongooses.  The undeniable highlight, however, was watching a pride of 8 lions, mostly juveniles, hunting for kudu.  The hunt was unsuccessful, but watching the big cats stalking under the watchful gaze of an older female was unforgettable.

Spot the giraffe
Hornbill
We drove out along the river towards our evening’s campsite.  The sun was sinking, and we paused once to watch a magnificent sunset over the Chobe River with flocks of Egyptian geese darkening the sky.  We got to the campsite, already set up by the tour company, and tucked into a delicious meal around a crackling fire.  The night was perfectly clear, and I took the Kumon students out of the light of the campfire to look at the magnificent southern skies on a moonless night and to try to blow their minds with some of the huge numbers, sizes and distances of the universe.  That night we fell asleep in our tents to the muffled sounds of nearby animals, including hyenas and elephants, and woke up once in the night when a passing animal of some sort brushed against the canvas of our tents.
Young lion on the hunt

A reflecting elephant
Sunset

Morning began early, with breakfast at 5:30 and a departure by 5:50.  We set off in the pre-dawn chill and stopped after half an hour or so to watch a sunset that was equal in splendour to the previous evening’s sunset.  Our big species sightings that day were two bands of hyenas hunting (one pack had the remnants of an impala) and a few silverback jackals hanging around the hyenas in hopes of a few scraps.
Sunrise
We also saw more mongooses, both banded and brown-tailed (???), and a magnificently muddy buffalo wallowing beside the road.  And then, suddenly and too soon, we were back at the park gate by 7:50 and back at the border crossing a few minutes later, crossing back into Zambia.  Although we were glad to see Mr. Sakala waiting for us, the contrast between the order and prosperity in Botswana and the more shambolic poverty of Zambia was striking.  Mr. Sakala’s bus had a slight smell of gasoline in it from having transported back a supply of smuggled Botswanan fuel for his taxi and his son’s car; the fuel shortages in Zambia seemed not to be abating.
Banded Mongooses

I think that the three factors that combined to make our safari so perfect were the sheer number of elephants; the amazing bird life (we saw three times the number of species in Chobe in 24 hours than we had seen in Livingstone in the previous 16 days) and the wonderful light reflecting on the river, making the pictures much more vivid.  It left me hungry for more amazing safaris, this time with our own wheels on our upcoming trip through Southern Africa. 

Silverbacked Jackals


I’m also glad to see that Botswana is getting it right in important ways.  Rather than succumbing to the dreaded “resource curse” that has done for Nigeria, DRC, Angola, Equatorial Guinea and other countries, Botswana has used its big diamond mines to develop the entire country and encourage widespread prosperity, good health care and education and a well-functioning government.  As well, it has done better than almost any other African country at maintaining its natural heritage and wildlife.  There are a lot of other countries that could learn a lot from Botswana!

One happy buffalo!
My next post will be about the plans for our upcoming overland driving trip.  Stay tuned!!