I am currently writing this after having survived my first day back at work, it is hard to try and recall that just last week I was in the heat of Botswana, with regular elephant sightings. Turns out this is not my actual life, and to be clear, I do actually like my job, but I would just like there to be more animals, food on tap and sunny skies.
Anyway, back to what I am meant to be writing about – day 2 in Savuti dawned very hot, but as I had a “great” night’s sleep, yet another bowl of porridge, I was ready to set off.
I have written about how excellent Isaac was at tracking, and we had barely set off when he found us two lions in the road. These are the same pride we saw yesterday with the same male. You can tell from the photos that they had had another exhausting night poor things. We also saw:
- Roan antelope.
- Jackal
- Impalas (there are always lots of impala).
- Ostritch – two males in the distance i.e. black blobs.
The call then came in that a leopard had been spotted so there was a “push”. Off we speed, and we did manage to find her and then she promptly crawled into a log and hid, I thought there we go but then, bless her, she decided that she would pose nicely (regally one might say) for the cameras.
After posing she wandered off and we left her to it, and off we went:
- Wilderbeast
- Purple-breasted roller – I looked through all my photos and could not find a good one (birds have a tendency to fly away, other than guinea fowl but more on them later) and I am also unsure whether this is a different roller to the lilac-breasted roller, but it was in the notes that it is proper purple in flight as opposed to blue so it is going on my list.
- Warthogs and buffalo at the “rhino” watering hole. No rhinos mind you.
After the morning’s excitement we stopped at the “rhino” stretching point (still no rhinos) for a tea break and it was here that we nearly lost Mum in the bush. She went to the wee tree and the must have turned around and walked off in a completely different direction from where we were (her lack of sense of directon is legendary). Apparently she was shouting for us, possibly into the wrong direction, hence no one heard her. She did eventually make it out of the bush.
Back into the jeep, and I have noted here how hot it was. Remember when it was cold and rainy and I was contemplating how to get us air lifted out of there? Well, by today it was into the high 30s and although a bit on the hot side, much more like I was expecting. The mornings are cool it is indeed the best time to go out and see the animals (who are also up and about), but after about 10am most animals had the good sense to hide. On the way back to camp the only animals we saw was an ostritch (which I actually could see this time) and a steenbok.
Back to camp for a lunch of chilli, bean salad, cous cous and pitta followed by a hot, sweaty nap and then date cake. We then headed out again at about 4pm, straight to watering hole and:
- Giraffes.
- Elephant (whoop!).
- Buffalo.
- Roan antelope.
- Kori bustard (ridiculous bird).
- More giraffes.
- Black backed jackal – we followed this back from the waterhole into the long grass where we then saw its mate, and a very quick glimpse of a puppy. I do like jackals.
- Ostritch.
- Elephant.
- Wild cat – I actually saw it this time, and people even managed to photograph it. In my view, its a standard cat. Not worth getting interested about.
I also started today making a list of safari companies I would not want to travel with. Obviously, the horrible jeep from yesterday went on the list (Kawavi), but then we also need to add Kalahai safaris which use some kind of prison van jeep (best avoided), and safari addicts (one man with a huge camera). This is a nice segway to my views on people with cameras. I completely understand that a safari is a magical, potentially once in a lifetime experience and of course people want to capture it on camera. However, do people (often men, but not exclusively) really need an 1/2 metre long and 20cm wide zoom lens as the only thing they look through the entire time? They quickly became known as “penis extensions” for a reason. I was much relieved not to be travelling with anyone who had one, although I did very much appreciate Killian having a camera with a built in zoom which took far better photos than my (good though it is) phone camera.
Anyway, back to camp for dinner (no memory as to what we a had) and then straight to bed. Tomorrow we would be moving day, so this meant a 5am wake-up call so every extra bit of sleep would be needed.
