SAFARI – DAY 5 (Moremi Game Reserve, Botswana; mobile tent camp)

Went to sleep listening to the hippos (my they can get vocal, who knew?)  Woke up every couple of hours because of the hippos, and chuckled every time. 

At 4:30 AM I can smell the fire being started in the kitchen area, then a staff member starts our campfire and uses that to light lanterns. At 5 AM the staff puts a lantern in front of each tent. At 6 AM a staff person stands in front of our tent saying “ko ko”, which is the African version of knock-knock. He fills two canvas basins outside our tent with warm water. So I stand outside the tent in the near dark washing my face and brushing my teeth (using bottled water). The hippos are honking away and the birds are quite vocal as the sun starts to rise. The sun is bright red because of all the dust and smoke in the air (there are several large bush fires in the distance and everyone cooks over open fires).

By 6:30 AM we are eating breakfast and watching six hippos poke their heads up and down in the water, honking.  It is an amazing sight and sound show!   By 7 AM we board the trucks and are off on a four-hour game drive.  

TRIVIA ANSWER:How much does the average elephant poop in a day?100 kilograms (about 220 pounds)

New animals sighted (I’m not going to name every animal on every game drive – just the new ones): impala, kudu, tsessere (another kind of antelope), a cheetah (well, just the head), one giraffe, warthogs, plus lots of birds – an amazing variety, including a hammerkop which is not classified in any bird group but is considered to be the closest living bird relative to dinosaurs.  It is not a large bird but builds enormous nests.

A game drive truck in front of us stumbled across a leopard on top of an impala, but the leopard was scared off by the truck and went to hide in the bushes.  Unfortunately, the leopard ran off to hide before it could completely kill the impala, so the impala, with a broken neck, was laying on the ground kicking its legs and struggling.  So we parked a bit away and sat there in silence, hoping the leopard would come back.  I must say that it was not easy to watch the poor animal struggle, but then again, it did not have the same emotional impact as it would if I were watching this on a documentary at home.  Being there, in the environment where leopard kills are normal, made it easier to handle.

After a bit, a caravan of Germans in ten cars drove by and our guide said there wasn’t much chance of seeing the leopard at that point.  When we drove by three hours later, the impala was still there, alive.  Vultures were starting to gather in a tree, which alerts other predators.  This was a distressing sight but a classic African experience.

Learned a lot about termite mounds.  The really big ones can be as old as 80 years. 

For our daily entertainment, our guide got a distress call from another guide who was stuck in the mud with eight passengers.  We made our way over and all the people in the stuck truck had to climb out and wade ashore so our truck could pull out the stuck vehicle.  Great fun to watch.

Privacy is not easy to achieve in camp – the tents have mesh on all sides and if you close the flaps over the mesh it gets intolerably hot.  We both took camp showers (the staff fills the bucket of water hanging in our tent shower/toilet area, then get wet, turn water off, soap up, turn water on and rinse off quickly).  It works.  We can order hot water (which most people did) but I just asked for cold water because it felt so good in the heat.

Noon to 3 PM is the really hot time, but we had a good breeze most of the time which helped a lot.  We have some afternoon time to rest and relax – I’d love to take a nap but it is too hot in the tents so I just sit in a camp chair outside in the shade and wilt.  It got up to 96 degrees F this afternoon – very awful but at least by 5 PM it noticeably started to cool, and by 6:30 PM it was quite comfortable.

Went back to the impala in the late afternoon game drive – it was dead but still uneaten.  We’ll go back extra early tomorrow morning to see whether the leopard came back or the hyenas took over.

The food is quite good – we even have fresh salads.  Chicken curry and chocolate mousse for dinner – yum. 

New afternoon sightings:  elephant (finally!), red letchwe (a kind of impala on steroids because it has longer back legs and larger muscles in the back, which makes its back slope down a bit and when a predator comes, they run and jump into the water and hide, which is unusual for an antelope type), a giraffe family of three adults and two babies, and old bull giraffe (darker in color as they age), kudu, lots of amazing birds, distant zebra, and amazing hippo entertainment.  There are two hippo babies in our pond and they popped up and down all afternoon, occasionally walking onto the bank and then back in the water, and even gave us a couple of big yawns which aren’t really yawns but are shows of dominance.  It is something like watching boulders bobbing in the water.

When Lisa, our guide, was giving us an afternoon lecture on Botswana, four hippos surfaced near the camp, lined up facing us, and just watched us for quite a long time.  Best TV show ever.

ABOUT BOTSWANA:  It is perched on the edge of two tectonic plates that are smashing into each other. The Okavanga Delta is the largest alluvial fan delta in the world and is surrounded by large faults.  As the faults shift and change the land under the delta, the annual flood waters flood different areas.  Therefore, yes, Botswana has earthquakes but because the Kalahari sits on a bed of sand 30-100 kilometers deep, the sand absorbs the shocks.  44% of Botswana is managed land for wildlife (which is a very impressive number).  Poaching is not much of a problem because the government has a policy of shoot to kill first, ask questions later.  So it is just not worthwhile trying to poach here.  And they have a very active game park enforcement army.  Which means that Botswana is a fabulous place to come on safari!!!

At dusk, the staff puts out luminaries to mark the boundary of the camp and to guide our way to each tent.  We must be escorted by a staff member from the dining tent to our tent, even though it is less than 100 feet away.  (Good thing too, because there really are wild animals roaming around camp!!) 

9:30 PM and back in my tent looking out at the luminaries – it is lovely.  I am very tired.  Interestingly, when I first looked at the beds in the camp (they are remarkably comfortable) I scoffed at the comforter AND blanket provided.  Who could possibly need a comforter or a blanket in such hot weather.  But by 3AM, I find that I wake up and pull the comforter over me because it really does chill down a bit – which is quite delicious.

TRIVIA QUESTION:  Hippos roam around at night to forge for food.  How far do they typically travel in a night:  1 kilometer, 5 kilometers, 10 kilometers?  Answer in tomorrow’s post.