Cats

There was a spotting last night of leopard tracks on the western bank of the Khwai river not far from where the hyena den sits.  Definitely wasn’t a lion.  Lions tracks are larger and almost always travel in groups – there was only tracks from one animal here.  Wasn’t a cheetah either.  They usually show off an indentation from their sharp claws.  Same goes for hyenas and wild dogs.  If there are no claw prints, wasn’t them.  Thus, our mission if we choose to accept it is to track down the leopard. (Note: the only thing we’ll be shooting are photographs.)

First thing, the tracks are now stale, but luckily there was a light rain over night wiping clean our etch-a-sketch of earth.  The temperature is still cool at 5:45am in the morning, and as we close in on the location of the tracks, we find fresh ones pointing due east in the direction of the rising sun.

We cut the engine and listen and wait and listen some more.  Birds are just waking up, the wind rustles through the leaves, the hippo laughs at a corny joke just beside the river.  Then we hear it, an alarm call.  Many of the birds sound an alarm upon spotting a predator, but one that we’ve become attuned to is that of the Starling.  We scan the branches looking for the culprit of the sound.  We find the bird and strain our eyes to see where it’s looking.

We test the boundaries of the vehicle hoping not to get stuck and drive around looking in branches and under trees for the amazingly camouflaged feline.  Although the truck sounds like thunder, we keep our voices to a whisper.  Our heartbeats are louder than our words as we scan.  We circle the patch of bushes once, twice, three times, and cut the engine again to listen.  The alarm is gone and so is our leopard.

The magic of safari and the adrenaline that follows is that it’s not a zoo.  There are no guarantees what we’ll see, when we’ll see, how we’ll see.  The only certainty of the day is its uncertainty.  And so we continue, and as we go, we rest to enjoy the hippos, impala, giraffes, zebras and elephants. And every so often, we hear what might be an alarm call, stop the car, listen, hunt, and repeat.  And every time we do, I’ve got my camera locked and loaded waiting for the perfect moment.

After feeling so close for most of the morning, we finally catch our break.  The alarming Starling looks deep into the brush, and we try to see what it’s seeing.  I’d love to take credit, but our guide eyes a spotted tail.  We drive around to see if we can get a better look, and eventually we do!  There’s a blue-eyed leopard carefully watching us through the cloak of leaves all around.

And then, when we’re already satisfied, the leopard starts to move.  It has spotted a baby impala not too far.  It’s steps are so slow, so methodical, so quiet.  We wait and don’t even whisper to each other not wanting to disrupt the moment.  After much maneuvering by both parties, the impala comes within striking distance of the leopard.  The leopard, also being too young, misses its opportunity, wagging its tail in disappointment.  But what a moment.  We’d have loved to see more action, but the suspense and beauty of the slow motion chase is still a thrill.

Whenever Lindsey or I sneeze, we’d also hint that our cat allergies were giving us another clue, but that one was much less reliable than the tracks and the birds.  But whenever a real clue would show itself, we’d become detectives and enjoy every moment of the hunt.  Each exotic find equally exciting.  We got to see lions and cubs up close, we came across several leopards, and were even lucky to stumble upon the elusive serval cat.

The herds of Linyanti

Linyanti is as different to Khwai as Khwai is to the Kalahari. We arrive by plane, but instead of our typical 10-minute drive to camp, we drive an hour deep into the bush. There are only two camps here, each with six tents, and the nearest village is over 2-hours away. We’re on the edge of the Botswana border; You can see Namibia in the distance. The land is a mix of deep brush and wetlands, and subsequently the first place where we encounter real bugs.

This place makes Moremi feel like a zoo. Here, the animals act as they would in nature, scurrying away as soon they’re seen. The hippos had a field day when we set up for our sun downers outside their water hole, snorting at us, showing us their teeth, yelling to say that we best be advised not to come any closer. Joe, our guide in this last safari camp, assures Andrew that they’re territorial only about the water, so brings Andrew around for a better view of sunset. Hippos are the second most dangerous animal in Africa, behind malaria spreading mosquitos, and they continue to show us why as their eyes follow, mouths open, giant bodies emerging.

The elephants here appear not in groups of three, but groups of thirty. When it’s dry, they walk past the truck in droves, slowly marching their way to the marshland. The baboons travel in groups even larger, and hysterically think that if they can’t see you, you can’t see them. They’ll run away from the truck by hiding behind a tree, body in plain sight, slowly peeking glances back at you. Giraffes are surprisingly difficult to spot, considering their size, but when you do they look straight at you, a contrast to the baboons.

We are in the middle of nowhere, no wifi, eaten by bugs and surrounded by wild animals, and yet we’ve never felt safer. The bush, we decide, is our paradise – a feeling as much as a place.

Safari Life

5:00am – Wake up (This consists of a guide saying your name outside your tent until you wake up.)

5:30am – Breakfast

5:45am – Game drive (The animals stop moving mid-day, preferring the comfort of the shade.)

11:00am – Lunch

12:00pm – Siesta (It’s too hot to do anything. We recommend repeatedly soaking your shirt in water and standing in front of a fan until it’s dry.)

3:30pm- High tea (Botswsna was clearly colonized by the British.)

4:00pm – Game drive with a sundowner

8:00pm – Dinner

10:00pm – Bed (You must be walked back to your tent by a guide, because, wild animals.)

Khwai

Khwai was off to an adventurous start. Little did we know that our trip here would both begin and end with elephants. But first, the time in-between.

Banda was our fearless guide, leading game drives and always conscious to give Andrew the best lighting. He’s a photographer too, and had captured some unbelievable moments in the bush. When he got wind of a rare animal nearby on the walky talky, he’d speed down the bumpy sand roads so fast it felt like we were riding a bull. We made a game of ducking before the branches whipped our faces.

One afternoon we forewent the game drive to take a relaxing trip down the delta on a mokoro. We sank deep into the water on our boat as our guide stood behind, pushing us forward. It was a welcome respite from the adrenaline-inducing game drives. When a light rain started to fall, we put our cameras into plastic bags. Within 30-seconds, the sky opened and we were drenched, struggling to see through the rain. We were laughing hysterically as our guide tried to continue the ride as thunder roared overhead. As we were rushing back, Banda was shooing hippos away from heading directly toward us with an extra mokoro boat. Our guide nearly jumped out of the boat when a final bolt of lightning came down within a mile of us, hitting a nearby car. The rain stopped just long enough for us to have sunset drinks in the park before opening the sky again.

On our last night, the staff set the most special lantern lit dinner right outside our camp. We’d made friends with the other adventurers and spent the night laughing and sharing photos. Andrew and I had successfully convinced them we’d seen a leopard kill a monkey using an old video from Banda when we heard something in the bush. We shined a light into the distance to find one giant elephant about 100 yards from us, munching on a tree. He headed toward us, then another one, and later a hippo. There we were, dining under the stars, sharing the space peacefully with massive animals also trying to get their fill.

In our tent that night, you could see the elephant passing by before we went to sleep.

Charge

The flight from camp Kalahari to camp Khwai reveals a completely different scene. The Kalahari is a desert; the landscape below stark and vast. Everything is a shade of brown.  It’s a difficult place for most animals to survive. Zebras and wildebeest appear in droves in the wet season, having migrated for greener grass to eat as their more permanent residence regrows. Any other animal is more of a mission to seek out. Guides in the Kalahari have to be even more knowledgeable, treating every sound, every dropping, every track, and every plant as a clue.

Khwai, on the other hand, gets plenty of rain. The land is rich with plant life. Here, our guide tells us, branches are the most dangerous thing. Before we even hit the Moremi park, our destination for the first drive, we see a dozen hippos cooling off in the water. A moment into the park and we see a baboon scurrying up a tree, it’s baby wrapped with all fours around its stomach.  Impalas, antelopes, giraffes, buffalo, waterbuck, zebras, wildebeest, and warthogs are next, many with their young. Driving along a burnt patch, we see wild dogs. We know this is a great spot when our guide whips out his camera and starts shooting. There are only 3,000 left in the world, he tells us, and they’re very rare to see.

As we’re leaving, we come across elephants. They’re so massive and enchanting; gentle giants at the watering hole. Two male elephants start to play, or so it seems. They lock tusks and start rearing each other, yelling, throwing their trunks. It’s an act of dominance, and they push back behind the brush. Testosterone is flowing when one elephant reemerges, spotting our truck. He’s not going to let any animal, alive or diesel-fueled, get in his way. Our driver revs the engine to warn the other elephants to stop moving. If this elephant starts to charge, they’d be directly in our path of escape and we’d be trapped.  The elephant roars and mock charges the truck. We stand our ground, it turns, and we drive away unscathed. Branches are not the most dangerous thing in Khwai.

An unexpected guest

Camp Kalahari is situated along the Makgadikgadi salt pans. It’s oppressively hot in the afternoons and even though we’ve come during the wet season, its seen no water for some time. In years past, the watering holes had run dry. This had forced the animals to travel further to survive. They’d come upon cattle, anger farmers by snacking, and get shot. Wanting to protect the wildlife, Botswana enacted a strict 6-yr ban on killing any wild animal. Farmers were at a loss, as government compensation for each cow eaten was not enough to cover the cost of a new cow. Man-made watering holes were the semi-successful solution to keeping the animals close.

Our camp has a small swimming pool, understandably mistaken for a watering hole by thirsty passerbys. We were told that animals would often wander in, but the combination of lions, overeager tourists, and the ban on firearms proved to be too much. An electric fence was installed around the camp a few years ago. Only the elephants have been smart enough to realize a little shock won’t actually kill. (In the defense of other animals, elephants are huge and for all we know, may barely feel the deterrent.)

The fence though, does not stop smaller animals from wandering in. On our last night in camp Kalahari, after our guide had safely walked us to our tent and we’d fallen asleep, I woke up to the sounds of an animal trying to get into our tent. Reasonably, I woke Andrew who just as reasonably told me to go back to sleep. He got up to use the bathroom, putting on his headlamp to navigate the zippers between our sleeping tent and the bathroom tent. “Oh, that’s unfortunate,” he says and comes back to me. “It’s actually in the tent.” I’m a bit panicked. “What? Is it a mouse?” “No, it’s a little bit bigger than a mouse.” The tent had been zipped and the hole between the ground and the end of the zipper couldn’t have been more than an inch or two of clearance. “So, like a squirrel?” I ask. “Yeah, maybe, if a squirrel was a little bit bigger.” For the rest of the night we hear this poor thing trying to escape, not sure how it got in, thrashing against the side of the tent.  We’d been given a box containing insect repellent and a bull horn to cry for help, but Andrew assured me it wasn’t necessary, so I instead used the box to barricade the opening to our tent.  I heard his little body slam against that too. Just before dawn, it found it’s way out. At breakfast Andrew described the critter to our guide. “Totally harmless,” he says. “It was a genet cat.” He pulls up a picture he had saved on his phone. Next time, we’re using the bullhorn.

Botswana trip prep

Every trip requires preparation, but the level of prep can vary greatly. For our upcoming trip to Botswana, there were many more checkboxes on our pre-trip to-do lists than typical.

One example was that at the top of the packing list, it reads “pack lightly, max 15 kg”. However, kind of like when a parent tells you to do something, it doesn’t really hit home until you hear it from another source. In this case, my second opinion comes from Peter Allison in his book “Whatever you do, don’t run: true tales of a Botswana safari guide”:

Any travel agent stresses to a client that they will be traveling in very small bits of motorized tin, and their luggage weight should reflect that. In fact, it is set at a strict twenty-five pounds. But looking at the camera bags and tripods being wrestled from the cargo area, I could tell that this guy had gone well over that.

Then, in mid-flight, he started taking photos, which was no problem, but when I pointed out some hippos, he leaned over the top of me and shoved me into the controls. Not one of them screamed when we went into a dive. What sort of people are they?

I like to think we’re not those sorts of people. I’m not too worried about interfering with pilots as I’m typically good at following most common sense rules, but the weight restrictions hit home. Just one of my several camera lenses I plan to bring weighs almost 4 lbs, or ~10% of my total limit. And this doesn’t include the monopod, computer, external HD, and other camera necessities. Uh oh. But luckily, I learn one of the perks of marriage: when Lindsey asks how much luggage we can bring, without hesitating, I turn and tell her 12 kg. I find myself an extra 3kg!

Allison, however, didn’t only scare me about how to prep, he also excited me about the things we might get to witness while there. And although most of his book detailed hilarious stories of tourists rather than inspiring tales of animals, this one stuck with me:

A great trumpet came from the elephants, as if in celebration, echoed by us on the vehicle, many of whom were in tears (and that unashamedly includes me). The baby sat looking bewildered at its ejection after twenty-two months in a comfortable womb, then started comical attempts to get up. Its ears were still plastered to the sides of its head, making it look like a squat sea lion, and it moved in the same humping legless manner.

After half an hour the baby stood, to more cheering from our vehicle. And it seemed to spawn a celebration from the elephants as well, as they started picking up dust and spraying themselves with it. This coats their skin and helps protect them from parasites, but each blast knocked the little baby down, and she (by now I had seen that it was a girl) struggled valiantly back to her feet and watched the enormous battleship-gray cruisers that were in a paroxysm of excitement around her.

Being in Africa will undoubtedly be humbling. We will almost always be the slowest and sometime even the smallest animal around. And yet in the end, some of our most primitive emotions will unite us all — excitement over a newborn, caring for one another, protecting one another, competing for resources and food, communicating and working together.

We’re prepared and excited to gain an appreciation for all animal species. A couple numbers to put ourselves in perspective: the human population nears 8 billion while the total wild lion population is estimated under 40 thousand, leopards under 15 thousand, cheetahs under 8 thousand. As Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Kolbert writes about in “The Sixth Extinction”, there have been five mass extinctions over the last half billion years, and today, we’re currently seeing our 6th, which may be as devastating as when the asteroid impact ended the reign of the dinosaurs. I’m hopeful that the world can rebound again, but it may require its latest invasive species, homo sapiens, taking more of a backseat.