Ten days we spent, exploring the sand trails and mud pits of Chobe and Moremi. The rainy season has made a dramatically early entrance in Botswana. A lightning storm at sunset over the Okavango Delta is a sight to behold!
Almost every traveler we spoke to had been bogged in mud or sunk in sand. But not us, in our trusty, beastly Land Rover Defender! She plows ever forward through sand and mud, over rocks and bush, and swims in the rivers like a mad bull frog. An unbelievable machine .... now that she has been healed with a new fuel pump, that is. (and, ever cautious, we just avoided the major bog-hole roads. Who wants to travel in a vehicle that smells like a sewer?)
Nighttime in the unfenced wilds of Chobe and Moremi provided more adventure than slumber. Elephants rumbling and munching all around our tent-top Land Rover, hippos grunting and squealing, frogs that chirp like tiny bamboo wind chimes, hyenas skulking for random scavenging opportunities (they will eat anything - cameras, cooking pots, plastic bottles) baboons roosting in the trees, enjoying their morning constitutional from overhead at 4:00 am ..... (Have you ever smelled baboon poop? Ugh!) Lions roaring and roaring just close, their silent tracks in our campsite the next morning....
One day, when we returned to our camp, there was a young bull elephant feeding on the trees in our campsite. We parked a respectful distance away, watching him. He ignored us. After about an hour, we tired of waiting and drove carefully into our spot. It's quite an experience, making coffee whilst keeping a watchful eye on an elephant! He moved a little ways off, and a group of cheeky baboons moved in. Perry and I became distracted by our baboon wars - (The active engagement of throwing rocks and hot water at the critters that move in for a quick steal of bread or sugar or anything they might identify as food) As I was chasing one big baboon fella, there was our elephant friend, flapping his ears in warning that all of our frenetic activity was interrupting his feast! Whew - both the baboon and I changed directions at lightning speed!
And this. It is springtime in the African bush, and every day brought more babies out of hiding. Impala fawns, Bambi-eyed and lovely.... warthoglets, all punked out and jumpy, zebra colts, wildebeest calves, giant giraffe youngsters and tiny plover chicks. Sublime!
Botswana proves to be fascinating, frustrating, tedious and sometimes frightening. Poverty, apathy, friendliness, endless rubbish, half-finished but long abandoned construction projects... the "independent" backpackers trying too look .... independent... as they ride around in safari trucks on pre-set itineraries, ablution blocks filled with spiders, the African sunsets that ignite the last fumes of sky, women's enormous butts, men's skinny waists, our dirty laundry, the massive fires set to tame the forests, Germans, Germans, Dutchies, more Germans, those mysterious cat prints in the soft sand, the Land Rover's engine warming up against the cool morning of possibility in a new land.
So now, we rest in lonely and dusty outpost of humanity called Maun. Gearing up for the next exploration into the realm of the San Bushmen of the Tsodilo Hills.....
