Travels with Kathryn

Well, this is something new. In full disclosure, I am writing this on my sofa in my flat catching up on Strictly Come Dancing. However, I made notes and have many, many photos so let us all pretend that I wrote this in real time.

So, I managed to survive my first night in a tent – which sounds less than impressive as it was as there had been a huge thunderstorm overnight and it would be fair to say that I was questioning my decision to do a mobile safari. However, I lived to tell the tale. You start the day with a 5.30am (you know me, I love a morning) wake-up call and provision of a jug of warm water. This was much needed as I threw on my clothes at high speed as it was cold. However, I foolishly believed that as I was in southern Africa in dry season, it was sure to warm-up so I put my shorts on in hopefulness. This was silly, as I shall explain later. First safari breakfast was porridge, I can say this now, I got very, very, very sick of porridge but on this first day I enjoyed it for its warming qualities.

At 6am ish, we were off on our first full day of the safari. When I say “ish” this is an important qualifyer. All timings in Botswana are loose, and one certainly does not rush – for our group of British and Swiss people, we had to embrace the looseness. I think we left more like 6.15am and as we were staying in the concession and because it was cool (read this as cold) the animals will out and about.

I shall be providing lists of animals, but I shall say two things to start:

• Impalas – Everyday we saw impalas. Impalas were EVERYWHERE, they are the common pigeon of the safari experience. It got to the point I stopped listing them, stopped photographing them and merely waving as we sped past them. The reason for their abundance will be explained shortly.
• Birds – people tell you that you will get “into” birds on safari. Now some are nice, and I have listed and will include photos of my favourites. But generally, I would simply mouth “bird” and move on without listing or photographing. I apologise to the ornathologists amongst you.

Off we went:

• Wilderbeast – these are considered one of the “ugly” 5, but I have a certain fondness for wilderbeast. You often find a lone male hanging out with a herd of zebras, this male is considered the “loser” when he failed to hang on to his hareem of ladies and was kicked out by a bigger/stronger male.
• Impalas – they are making the list so I can tell you the reasons for so many impalas. You see two types of groups, one is a group of females with one male, and other groups of bachelor/ loser males. The one male with his group of ladies works hard for them – during mating season, he spends his entire time “servicing” the females and fighting off other males. This takes up so much of his time that he fails to eat properly or groom himself, to the point where he is then easy prey for the carnivores and often gets picked off. Effectively, he sexes himself to death. Commitment, but also utter stupidity. 
• Lilac breasted roller – this is my second favourite bird of Botswana (its not like I am bird hater or anything). They are very pretty and you will eventually get to see a photo with it posed nicely.
• Elephants – not quite as many as yesterday, but every sighting counts.
• Ostritch – now other people saw some earlier than I did (I saw unidentifiable black blobs) however I did see them later, a male doing his dance (very Las Vegas showgirl) and an impressed female. They seemed unbothered by having an audience!
• Zebras.
• Giraffes.

I also had my first “bush wee” experience. In the rain. Wearing a poncho. If you are having a bush wee, when you stop Issac will check behind an appropriate bush (and this first one was not really Kathryn size as commented by my mother) and you head off with your toilet paper which is then brought back and carefully saved in a paper bag to be safely disposed of. If you need more than a wee, you head off behind the bush armed with the toilet paper and a spade. You dig a hole. Use your hole. Refill the hole and off you go. For this first experience, I headed off behind the bush armed with both spade and toilet roll… I felt I did so with an air of elegance. Mum says no.

Around 9am we stopped for a drink stop, this included a much needed hot drink (I clutched a cup of hot water in an attempt to defrost) and a rusk biscuit (oh so dry). But we were joined by a friendly hornbill. Hornbills became my favourite bird, they have a personality (much like Zazu from Lion King) and are excellent at posing for photos. Hornbills come in two flavours – yellow billed (flying bananas) and red billed (flying chillis). They are generally spotted in twos, this is because when a male mates with a female she is sealed into the nest to incubate the eggs. She will be locked inside for 2-4 months and loses all her flight feathers, so is completely reliant on the male to feed her and the chicks when hatched. Once the chicks are ready, the female will finally break out of the nest. A lot of trust there!

We also had an elephant walk right past us, but in my excitement and to be honest at this stage, fear he might get upset I failed to take a photo – but I promse it happened!

Having mentioned The Lion King, an interlude about the Circle of Life. There are three “keystones” of Botswana: termites, elephants and hippopotamus. After being abandoned by the terminats, termite mounds create fertile soil for new growth. Elephants clear trees to open up space for smaller grazing/browsing animals such as giraffes, and to allow sunlight to reach smaller plansts. They also poop around 150kg (that is not a typo!) a day which is useful manure. Similar to elephants job onland, hippos push water out from rivers and create waterways. Circle of life innit?

Back in the jeep and:

• Steenbok – these are very cute mini antelope-y things (they get an individual mentino, impalas do not).
• Zebras and giraffe – often seen together, one is a browser and the other is a grazer so they are not competing for the same food source.
• Black backed jackal – until this trip, my main reference point for jackals was CJ Cregg from The West Wing doing “The Jackal” (if you know you know), however, jackals quickly became one of my favourites, mainly because they have a really good trot-like walk.
• Lions – all jeeps have a radio, and the overland safaris share sightings as they use the same frequency. A message would come in and then Issac would say something like, “lions have been spotted, we are going to push” – push means an increase of speed and no stopping for anything else (certainly not impalas!). It was following one of these messages we got our first lion sighting – a lioness with two 8/9 month old cubs.
• Yellow mongoose – I also developed a real fondness for mongeese/mongooses (?), this was our second variety of mongoose – posing nicely bless it.

It was now back to camp for lunch (an excellent chicken pie) and the “quiet time”. Today, it was chucking down with rain so I shall not refer to it as a siesta, there was no need to get out of the heat of the day/protect ourselves from the power of the sun. Instead this was an opportunity to dry out/warm up. I referred in my last post to a wet toilet experience – the tent’s ensuite bathrooms (this is the only way I am prepard to camp) are open to the elements, this means that one’s toilet is also exposed to the element. It is a long drop toilet with a seat, one just had to sit on a very wet toilet seat whilst being rained on. I know I should be grateful for a toilet rather than going behind a bush, but I was very grateful when it stopped raining…

At 4pm it was time to be fed again (ginger cake and fruit) before our afternoon safari. Now I know people like photos of food, genuinely today it was too wet and cold so I failed to take photos – other days it was too dark (breakfast and dinner were often in the dark), but genuinely I was really surprised by what the chef managed to create over an open fire. Cakes for a start!

This afternoon (as it was rainy) most animals were doing the sensible thing and hiding, however, we did see a good selection of elephants and another jackal. We stopped for a sundowner – I had a juice, the old people had gin and tonic, watching the zebras and giraffes. But as we started to hear thunder and lightening it was time to pack up and head back to camp.

By the time we arrived back at camp, it was properly raining – I had a shower (lovely and warm) but in the pouring rain. I genuinely cannot remember what we had for dinner and all my notes say at the end of today were “ooooh the rain and cold”. It was tonight when I think is fair to say the three of us were really questioning what we were doing here. Mum had a complete cold meltdown when her side of the tent flooded (from the rain and shower), Keith developed a cough and I was developing a cold. It was this night I started to formulate a plan to ring the emergency number to just get us out of there. We did not have the right clothes (no coats, no waterproofs) and had it not been for the fleece lined ponchos provided I suspect we may have died… Spoiler alert: we did not need to be airlifted out, but that is a story for tomorrow.