Botswana and Beyond!
Phakawe
Safaris: Through Chobe to Kasani
July
12 - July 16
DAY NINE
On our way to Chobe, we stopped off at the Savuti Marsh. It was
a long day of driving on questionable roads. Okay, the roads
weren't questionable, they just weren't paved and they were pretty
bumpy. Laura swears that when she gets back to the States, she'll
say, "Don't worry, it's only about a hundred miles, but
the roads are paved THE WHOLE WAY!!!" I quipped that someone
should find an invention that would take care of washboard on
dirt roads. Mark answered that someone already had thought of
that, it's called asphalt! On our way to our campsite, at around
3, we were driving on one of the view tarred sections of road,
when we saw a car parked by the side of the road, and in safari
terms, that means that they most likely saw something cool. Well,
by the side of the road, there was a pride of lions, eating a
giraffe. We stopped and watched for an hour and a half as the
lions licked at the ribs and gnawed on intestines, chasing off
vultures, and lazily napping in the shade. It lasted an hour
and a half, but it felt like ten minutes. We were so close. At
one point, the female got up and eyed us in our car, making sure
we weren't going to try and run off with any of the three day
old kill. It smelled good, all that rotting meat, and we were
tempted, but we decided against it. We did sing, "I want
my baby-back, baby-back, baby-back, baby-back ribs." The
campground wasn't all that great, and we had to make sure our
food was locked away because the hyenas were pretty bad there.
I missed the bush shower and bush toilet, it was better than
what they had. We did chat with a South African family, and we
knew they were South African because they had the coolest camping
equipment possible.
DAY
TEN
We got into Chobe, set up camp, and went for a game drive. Now,
Chobe is known for their elephants, they have something like
80,000 and they were culling them for a while, but have stopped
because of pressure from environmental groups. It's quite a debate,
but during our stay in Chobe, we saw like two. That evening game
drive, we didn't see much, but when we got back to camp, there
were two Cape Buffalo in our camp. Alson consulted his guide
manual, and we did some false charges in our truck, to scare
them away. The buffalo were not impressed, but soon left for
less noisy accommodations. Alson then told of a night, when he
camped on the edge of the Chobe river, in our exact spot, he
had woken up in the morning in the middle of a buffalo herd,
drinking from the river. He shouted to his clients to stay in
their tents and be quiet. The sea of buffalo soon passed on.
One more thing I had to think about! Mark and April were very
patient with Laura and I. That game drive, we lost interest in
all the animals ands started chatting about changing our last
name to Hauer, my maternal grandmother's maiden name. We talked
about names for our unborn children, and just got silly. They
were very patient and didn't tell us to shut up, and that was
nice of them!
DAY
ELEVEN
We packed up camp and started toward Kasane, and it started out
as another quiet morning, but then we saw a warthog dash across
the road. The only other time we saw an animal run like that
was…the impala being chased by the wild dog! Laura knew
it was being chased. We scanned the waterside of the river, and
then we saw the lions. We knew we shouldn't drive off road, but
I don't think Alson could stop himself. We turned off the road,
drove a short way, and there were five lions eating a warthog.
When we pulled up, I'll never forget one of the lions lifted
its pink muzzle and glared at us, daring us to mess with their
meat. The lion who had killed the warthog still had it's teeth
dug into the throat of the poor beast. As we drove up, we heard
the final death squeals of the warthog. It was amazing. We stayed
only for a short time, then went back to the road and on to Kasane.
We stayed in our tent, in last night, at the Chobe Game Lodge. April & Mark upgraded to a chalet and we toured it, it was wonderful. It was right by a river and there were signs inside their room and out warning to watch for crocodiles before just walking in and out of the room! I spent the afternoon chilling, reading Danielle Steel's Family Album. Now, I've not read any Danielle Steel, but I needed a break after my apartheid-chilling accounts of South Africa in The Country of my Skull. The Danielle Steel book was bad, incredibly bad, unforgivably bad. I'm hoping that it was just a bad book, and that she is capable of better, but Laura is unconvinced. I think it will be the worst book I have ever read. It seemed to me that it was just juvenile fiction with adult themes but all handled with an inane childishness that completely destroyed the story the author was trying to tell. Sincerely, I hope it was just an off book for Danielle Steel, and I'd like to read another one, just to see if I could read a worse book. I must say, after I worked on my own novel after that, I gave myself a break. There are worse books out there than my own rather bloated trilogy.
That
night we ate at the Braii, and I had mpapani worms, which tasted
like vegetables (the mpanani leaves the mpapani worms ate) and
the best beef in the world! Botswana is doing really well, and
it's nice to see. Alson did let us know that in his 20 years
as a tour guide he's never seen all the wonderful kills and animals
we've seen all packed into one tour. We were REALLY lucky. We
had to say goodbye to Alson and Kaga and then it was off to Victoria
Falls.
Aaron at our campsite along the Chobe
river, its Namibia on the other side of the river. The small
narrow part of Namibia that sticks out over Botswana.
A fresh kill of a warthog by lions for her cubs, another stroke of luck! Note the red faces.
