loathing the "Big Five" and back to work

I’ve always wanted to see Kruger Park. It is one of those national parks that everyone has heard of. My general conclusion is that... going to Kruger to see wildlife is like reading the cliff notes version of a great novel. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by Botswana where the wildlife is “wild” and the camping areas are unfenced.

Kruger is a well manicured park with tarmac (paved) roads throughout and luxurious lodges. The “off road” loops are perfectly even gravel and dirt roads (the road we take to drive home every day is more challenging). It seems odd to drive on lovely paved roads and see animals. The wildlife is abundant and we see elephants and Cape buffalo…two of the “Big Five” (which I hate, by the way). All over Southern Africa you see tourist marketed kitsch with the “Big Five” – elephant, buffalo, leopard, lion and rhino. Shot glasses, coffee mugs, t-shirts. I loathe the “Big Five.” Who decided on these 5? Why not cheetahs? Giraffe? And as someone marginally involved with tourism, I cringe when clients come with their check off list aiming to see all of the “Big Five.” Ugh! Africa cannot be summarized into a check list, one should enjoy what they see and be thankful for it.

We spend the night in one of the lodges and start heading for Botswana on Tuesday morning. We drive through beautiful lush green mountainous areas of South Africa. We have one flat tire (#9) prior to crossing the border at Martin’s Drift and spend a bit more time at one of these ramshackle tire repair places on the side of the road.

We spend our final night camping at Kwa No Keng (as we drive in we get flat tire #10). It is a bit of a coincidence that we end up here in that it has been almost three years to the day that Paul asked me if he could have “ten minutes” to talk to me alone at the end of our Botswana leg of the 2007 Furman trip. It was a ten minute conversation that changed the course of the rest of our lives and it’s hard to believe it’s only been three years. It seems like we’ve done so much together in what is a relatively short amount of time. It’s hard to imagine my life without Paul in it.

It rains like mad the last night of the trip. The first rain of any note that we’ve had over the entire trip. Thunder. Lightening. A real downpour. Keeps me up most of the night but, fortunately, Paul sleeps through most of it. Tuesday we make the eight hour drive back to Maun. We are greeted by the familiar sights of Botswana – animals (donkeys, goats and cows) that roam freely in the roads, veterinary control fences futilely attempting to stop the spread of disease, a hippo in the decorative watering hole at the fuel station (what?). We get flat # 11 about 5 miles from home. Ugh!

Back to reality. Back to work. Off to Johannesburg in less than a week to meet my group of twenty students from Furman who I will travel with for the next two months. Feeling very fortunate we had a chance to get away, at least for a bit.

Is this safe? Fording the Limpopo

We leave Vilankulos on Sunday morning and decide to take a different route back to the Parfui border crossing between Mozambique and South Africa (in the northern part of Kruger Park). We quickly leave the tarmac (paved roads) and don’t see it for two days. While we have a GPS, there are no maps of these roads and we use it primarily to make sure we are basically headed in the right direction (we are aiming for a corner that sticks out in the map between the two countries).

This leg of the trip is a little hard to explain. We face many forks in the dirt road and simply “guess” which one it might be. We try to confirm that we’re on the right path at several small villages but without Portuguese language skills we don’t get far.

We usually ask the name of the town on the map we think we might be near often with the response of a very confused look and then revert to saying, “Parfui?” which is the name of the border crossing which most people seem to know. Several gesture in the direction we’re going in and say, “Eee, straighty” which of course doesn’t really which option to take at the next fork in the road (where the choices are left or right).

We go through areas with radically different feels to them. In some places people look very suspicious at us. We wave and get dirty looks in reply. In other areas, the people we see wave first and are all smiles. It is not until two days later, when we get closer to the border that small children come running up to the vehicle with their hands out begging. When we don’t stop to give them something, they give us dirty looks.

Driving these back roads is no part-time job. Two hands on the wheel at all time and picking the best spot to avoid the biggest holes or bumps. We go through one area where cement dips have been made (for water drainage?) with cement cylinders on all four corners of it. They present quite a hazard and seem almost invisible until you are up on them. If you hit them going too fast, you get launched. My job is to keep an eye out for them and yell, “Dip!” if I see it coming.

We bush camp on Sunday night and at 3 AM I hear something scratching around our tent with no idea what it is. I wake Paul (who sleeps through everything) and he dismisses my concern stating it is a bug (a bug the size of a raccoon maybe…). It doesn’t help that I’ve been reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy a post disaster odyssey of a father and son forging where they are constantly on the lookout for “bad guys” who might steal their limited possessions, rape and/or eat them -- makes my imagination run wild when we’re in the middle of nowhere in the bush. Fortunately, since Paul drives, I can sleep in the car the next day. In the morning we are harassed by bees. It is super dry and hot and our coffee and dish water (and perhaps arm pit sweat) are the only liquid they’ve seen in a while. We don’t hang around long.

Back on the move, we quickly come up to the water crossing we know we were going to face. We’ve been told by people back in Maun that the Limpopo is “crossable,” but when we get there, on first glance it seems impossible. It is no small river to cross…probably 200 yards long.

We watch as a truck full of travelers prepares to be pulled across by four oxen. They strip to their underwear (so as not to get their clothes wet) and prepare to push as the oxen pull. Paul decides he needs to walk the route to see how deep it is and if our vehicle will make it. We have a snorkel on the vehicle (a way to keep the water from coming into the engine air intake) but the current is swift and if the water goes up over the bonnet (hood) we could lose traction and it could sweep the vehicle downstream (in the crocodile filled Limpopo).

We watch the vehicle in front of us make it. Ask around and confirm that there is no other option (unless we drive all the way down to Maputo which would put us way off course by a couple days of driving) and decide we’ve got to do it. I foolishly ask, “Is this safe?” (I have a tendency to do this sometimes, even though I don’t really want to know the answer). I videotaped the whole thing (Paul is bragging about his Land Cruiser in this one).

We make it through and continue on to the border crossing which takes another few hours. Beyond the border crossing we are in Kruger National Park in South Africa. We decide to spend the night here.

now…this feels like vacation

We spend the rest of Thursday swimming in the Indian Ocean which is as warm as bathwater and as peaceful. On Friday we decided to hire a boat to take us out snorkeling around Bazaruta one of the five islands off the coast of Vilankulos.



I try to suspend any fear I might have about being in a tiny rubber power boat out in the sea and enjoy the amazing beauty around us. The power boat is at least the better of the options.

Our other choice is a “dhow” – small sail boat whose travel time to the islands can vary from 25 minutes to two days depending on the wind! No thanks.


We see dolphins playing and twice Paul jumps in the water to be with them but they swim off. We climb a huge sand dune and have great views of most of the other islands (but not Paradise Island where the latest episode of Survivor was filmed, it is too far away). We spend the afternoon snorkeling and Paul goes for a dive (I haven’t been scuba diving in 25 years so I didn’t feel confident doing it without a refresher course).

The snorkeling is amazing. The best I’ve ever seen and I feel like I’m in my friend Doug’s aquarium. We hold hands and swim through this amazing paradise. The coral reef is stunning with brain coral and green finger like coral and patches of purple. We see clown fish, a giant grouper, angel fish, electric blue damsels, zebra fish, box fish, trumpet fish, sea cucumbers, purple and green star fish, and many fish I can’t even identify.

My favorite is the parrot fish. He is quite large (~18 inches long) and the most amazing combination of purple and green. If you stop breathing as he approaches the coral you can hear his pink lip-sticked beak like mouth take a crunch out of a piece of coral. Very cool!

While Paul is diving, our guide Paulino and I have an interesting conversation about HIV/AIDS and common beliefs about it in Mozambique.

He asks where the disease came from and explains that he heard it was the result of sailors being on boats for a long time and having sex with female dogs (what?). If not that, he is fairly convinced it came from God. He tells a story of an aid truck delivering condoms that were “contaminated” and how everyone who used these condoms got AIDS so now people are resistant to using condoms at all (because they believe condoms can actually give you AIDS). Sadly, this is a common “urban myth” I’ve heard before. I’m not sure how one dispels it but I’m sure it is a huge problem in terms of getting people to practice safe sex.

In any case, it was quite a fascinating conversation. When Paul finished his dive we went back in snorkeling for a second time. Unfortunately, given my fair skin, even SPF 45 couldn’t protect me on the water all day and I got totally fried on all the parts facing up while swimming and exposed to the sun (ouch!).

We spend Saturday relaxing and reading and generally staying out of the sun. We leave only to go out and eat prawns for lunch (and dinner!) and to visit the local market where we pathetically try to negotiate (in Portuguese) for a few things.

While we could stay and eat prawns (large shrimp) forever, we decide we’d better start heading back on Sunday.

OK, this isn't funny any more

Writing today from the porch of our A-frame “hut” overlooking the Indian Ocean in beautiful Vilankulos, Mozambique. We have finally arrived at our “final destination” six days into our journey (so much for the two-day trip we were told it would be – although some of our delays were intentional, others were not). We lost half a day in Masvingo trying to get the two spare tires repaired (again) and refueling with armed security circling around with a massive Rottweiler on a chain (in case his gun wasn’t threatening enough??). Petrol stations are a high crime area because it is a cash only business and lots of men approach your car (not sure exactly why, money exchange seems to be a big business) and are persistent until chased away by the threatening dog (I stayed in the locked car).

We spend all day driving. We busy ourselves with my reading from travel books on the history and culture of the country we are in (or going to) and information on things to see at the places we’ll be stopping. I also bought Paul a little scratch off trivial pursuit game. Between the two of us, we are pretty good at most categories (except for “Sports and Entertainment” when I’m our best bet and that is pretty sad).

We cross the border into Mozambique at Mutare (with some difficulty finding it, although we found a lovely inn where we asked for directions but somehow Paul lost one of his sandals along the way…I’ve always seen an occasional shoe in the road and wondered “how does someone loose one shoe?” Now Paul has done it and I still wonder.)

We drive and drive and as evening approaches we have not seen a place to camp and there does not seem to be any towns coming up anytime soon. At some point during the day we have flat tire number five but we don’t recall much about it after the fact (they’re starting to become mundane). There are lots of people walking on the road…carrying water containers on their heads or large sacks of coal on the back of a bicycle. At this point it is getting dark and we start looking for a clearing that allows us to get off the main road (where there are many 18 wheelers traveling at high rates of speed) and camp but not in someone’s field or homestead.

There are almost no roads off the main road only foot paths for walking. Finally we spot one and end up camping right near a watering hole that becomes active at 5 AM. I worry a bit about landmines from the war that ended in 1992 and we don’t stray too far from the vehicle or the tent. We are woken by the sound of people talking as they pass our tent and most likely wonder what the heck we are doing there. Things would go more smoothly if we knew Portuguese but my Spanish is the closest thing we have.

Sadly, less than 15 miles out from our makeshift camp site we have our 6^th flat and are perched on a steep angle causing the jack to slip and clip Paul in the arm and the vehicle to list over so far, I fear we are going to roll over. Despite the blood and angle he manages to change the tire again and we are on our way.

You have to understand that changing a tire on this safari vehicle is no easy task. We’ve decided that due to my lack of strength I really couldn’t do it even if I had to (scary thought). The jack is positioned up over the driver’s side window and it is too heavy for me to get down. One spare is on top of the vehicle (which requires a climb up the back of the vehicle and throwing the tire off (hoping it doesn’t roll away) because it is too heavy for me to lower down). The other spare is secured under the vehicle by a chain that has to be cranked to be lowered but usually gets stuck which means Paul gets on his back under the vehicle to try to pull it loose. Add to this the fact that when a tire blows it is usually super hot and so it is difficult to touch and get back up to the roof or under the vehicle.

In any case, we get flats 5 and 6 repaired in some place that starts with Mux (I don’t recall the name). Again, this is Africa so the repairs are done in makeshift tire repair places by what looks like teenage boys (part of the reason why they keep blowing). While we wait for the tire repair we buy some cashews from a young boy and refuel. While refueling we watch a whole string of bicycles tied together come careering off the top of a bus almost taking out the people walking on the street below.

I find it interesting how when you travel through areas in Africa, each has a couple of things for sale. In this town it is cashews and pineapples (yum). Up the road a bit it was mangos and tomatoes. Another sacks of coal and firewood. They all have an abundance of a couple of things but not a variety of things. Not great for the people living there who cannot travel the long distances between these locations to get what they need.

Finally, arriving in Vilankulos we eat lunch at a place called Varanda on an outside porch overlooking the most beautiful sea I have ever seen. It is hot but there is a nice breeze and we enjoy a crab salad appetizer and prawn dish for the main course. After lunch we….wait for it…have our 7^th flat and Paul gets clocked in the head with the spare tire as he tries to hoist it up to the roof. It falls back and cracks him square in the forehead, blood streaming down his face and a large bruise forming instantly. Fortunately, I’ve got Bandaids and Neosporin. I fix him up quickly and we try to find a place to get the tire repaired.

We roll into one of these ramshackle huts with tires outside it just as the 8^th tire is going flat (OK, this isn’t funny anymore). I perch myself under a tree on a stump in the shade and start reading my book to pass the time until I literally get ants in my pants and some small boys walk by me and say, “White.” Actually more like “pink,” I think, given the sun I’ve gotten but who cares. We settle in our A-frame hut and decide not to go anywhere for a couple of days just so we can have a break from tire changing.

African Overland Trips are NOT for the Faint of Heart

Day 5 of our trip and Paul is changing our 4^th flat tire. We are perched up on the side of a hill overlooking the Great Zimbabwean Ruins in our $40 per night two bedroom lodge and vervet monkeys are running around like an overpopulation of squirrels. Travel in Africa is not for the faint of heart. It is a world of contrasts fraught with beauty and difficulty.


We finally left Friday afternoon finding it prohibitively difficult to leave town before then. Paul is involved in several activities including lobbying on behalf of the mobile operators (people who offer mobile tented safaris like his company) with the Minister of tourism so that he doesn’t “regulate them out of business” (which he has threatened to do). This has resulted in our developing a survey of operators to gather some baseline data on their economic and environmental impact as well as many hours of Paul’s contacting interested parties to try to get people aware and motivated to stop this from happening. Another project is helping to monitor the proliferation of farms out in the Boro area that we live in. Over the last couple of months we’ve seen more and more cows and goats and small bomas (housing complexes with several outbuilding and fences, etc.) popping up and the neighbors are worried they are “illegal.” They asked Paul to map all the new homesteads, which meant flying around (in a tiny plane) with his GPS and using the data to make a map to then present to the Land Board to file a complaint.

Anyway, we headed off on Friday afternoon toward Francistown on the eastern border between Botswana and Zimbabwe. We stopped along the way to look at Nata Lodge (recently rebuilt because it was completely burned down by a bush fire last year) and Nata Bird Sanctuary which recently had a chemical truck explode in front of its reception building and burnt it to the ground! We stayed that night in Marung (meaning “clouds”) where we sat by the pool and listened to the music at a dinner party and I sang all the lyrics to the 1980s and 1990s tunes. Unfortunately that night a party across the dry river bed went on and on until 2:30 AM when there were a couple of hours of peace until the baby in the tent next to us started to cry at 4 AM and men started arguing with each other around 6 AM. I didn’t get much sleep that night (Paul slept through it all).

Saturday we headed off to Plumtree to cross the border into Zimbabwe with no incidence. We were harassed a bit when purchasing third party insurance (you have to buy insurance for your vehicle) but went to the little camper set up as an office that didn’t bug us. Continuing on our way we got our first flat tire outside of Bulawayo and our second one at the tire repair shop where the spare popped (loudly) as air was added to it. $146 later and we were on our way with two “new” refurbished tires. Two flat tires in two days.

We headed down toward Motobos (used to be “Motopos” not sure why one would change one letter in a name?) a national park. Zimbabwe is a beautiful country with luscious green mountains and beautiful flowering trees. It is such a tragedy how much of it has been destroyed by one man’s leadership (or corruption). You see evidence of the struggle everywhere you go. First, there is very little traffic. You occasionally see people walking on foot and it’s hard to imagine how far they have come or how far they are going as there is often no homestead or villages in sight. Women walk with babies strapped to their backs and large bundles on their heads. You seem men sometimes on rickety bicycles often in what looks to be their “best” outfits – long sleeve button shirts and long pants (and it is hot outside!).

Motopos National Park is riddled with large granite rock formations and you can imagine leopards that might make these their home but we never saw any. On the way to our campsite we stop at a curio shop and trade a large bag of clothes the Paul has weaned from his closet for several handcrafted baskets and wood carvings. The crafters are thrilled to have the clothes and we are happy to have their goods.

We camp at Maleme dam and our campsite overlooks stunning views of the reservoir created by the dam (although this area of the country has been in a drought and the water is quite low). Unlike the night before, this night is peaceful and we can only hear the sound of cicada bugs humming and the occasional bird flying by.

Sunday morning gets off to a rough start when I am innocently taking a morning pee when I am unexpected stung by an evil red wasp who has come out of nowhere and zapped me on my upper bicep. I let out a blood curdling scream and run out of the bathroom with my shorts and underwear down, toilet paper wad and roll in one hand (in retrospect I think it’s pretty funny that I managed to grab our toilet paper roll as I ran for my life…toilet paper is a precious resource in Africa). Paul drops the chairs he’s setting up and rushes toward me (thinking I’m being murdered) and I burst into tears.

Let’s be clear…I don’t like bees or wasps. As I child I was covered from head to toe on a couple of occasions (I had a knack for stepping on nests in the ground) so even the buzzing of them makes me a little nervous. But this sting is the worst thing I’ve ever felt. The bite instantly swells as I search for the Benadryl to try to reduce the reaction. Red wasps are known for being aggressive particularly around their nests but I had been into that bathroom the night before with no problem and I only caught a glance of this one out of the corner of my eye before he attacked. It happened so fast I wasn’t even sure what happened until the pain registered in my brain. Damn that hurt!

Unfortunately, Paul, not heeding my advice never to go near the building again as the spawn of Satan might get him too, goes in for dish washing water and on the way back, on the outside of the building, he gets zapped too…on the lip and suffers a much worse reaction than me. The entire side of his lip, jaw and face swell and he looks like the elephant man (I keep saying, “I am not an animal!” but he hasn’t seen the movie so he misses the humor completely). I told him not to go near there…he never listens.

My disfigured husband and I head off to the game park in Motobos for a morning game by but sadly, due to poaching, there are very few game in the game park. We see four giraffe, a couple of kudu, two turtles and a klipspringer and that’s about it. There are supposedly rhino here and we do see spoor (foot prints) and middens (latrines of rhino) but don’t see any. Unfortunately, the poaching is another sign of the desperate times as the poachers have simply been looking for food. We decide to head off to the Great Zimbabwean ruins, our next destination.

These ruins are believed to have been built in the 13^th century and occupied until the mid-16^th century. They are the largest African built ruins in the sub-Sahara and their name, meaning “house of stone,” became the name of the country after independence (it was Rhodesia before named for Cecil John Rhodes diamond miner and capitalist entrepreneur). The ruins are made with tons of granite blocks fitted without mortar. The remaining structures include the Great Enclosure and the impressive Hill Complex (believed to be the place where the chief lived).

After replacing the third flat tire on the way into the ruins and going on a wild goose chase to try to find an air pressure machine to fill up the replacement tire (note to self…never travel without an air pump), we spend the afternoon exploring the ruins. The steep climb up the 300 foot ascent to reach the hill complex is well worth it. Much of the outer wall still remains as well as the walls built right into the boulders that sit precariously perched on the top of the hill. The views from on top are also stunning providing a bird’s eye view of the Great Enclosure as well as a large lake.

After the hike we enjoy our sundowners watching the cheeky vervet monkeys which exemplify why they call it “monkey-ing around.” They are climbing through trees and eating mangos and palm nuts and having a blast. Lots of babies ride attached to their mother’s bellies and a couple of them move on to our porch when we move inside.

The lodge is lovely but unfinished and while I first think it must just be that our unit is unfinished, it actually turns out that ours is the closest one to being functional (note: and we have no hot water). Tourism in Zimbabwe has really suffered with the political situation and it dawns on me that we might be the first people who have stayed here in a really long time.

we got stuck...in paradise

We’ve been planning on taking a trip to Mozambique since we returned from Tanzania last January but our plans keep changing and our departure date pushed back. We were waiting for the South Africans to clear out from their holiday travels, re-orienting our route to avoid the mud of the rainy season in northern Mozambique and trying to get all our work done before we head off (not easy to do when everyone we need to coordinate with is on holiday between Christmas and New Years).

We’ve been delayed yet one more time by an invitation we couldn’t turn down. Paul was invited up to the Selinda Reserve (www.selindareserve.com) in exchange for his mapping skills and a star show. Unfortunately, we could not fit the 100 pound telescope into the tiny plane we flew up in on Saturday afternoon. The six-seater just simply couldn’t accommodate the telescope and tripod (unless we displaced two of the others headed up to facilitate the staff training taking place). As it turns out, the weather didn’t cooperate so it wouldn’t have been possible to have a star show anyway.

Botswana is riddled with high end lodges all throughout the Okavango Delta region. Over thirty airstrips pop up out of nowhere serving as the gateway to these exclusive lodges. This particular location is owned by Dereck and Beverly Joubert, names you probably don’t know but whose work you’ve probably seen if you ever watch National Geographic channel (www.wildlifeconservationfilms.com). In preparation for our meeting, the night before we left I watched one of their films “Ultimate Enemies: Elephants and Lions.” Tragically, I was sobbing hysterically as the pride of lions, which had learned to hunt cooperatively, ate the tail of a dying elephant as he still struggled for his last breathes through his pathetically moving trunk. I couldn’t even watch. All weekend I hoped they didn’t ask me if I had seen any of their films (for fear I would burst in tears again). I know this is simply the laws of nature but I don’t know if I need to “see” it. I’m not sure I’m tough enough.

Despite the tragic nature of the reality of the wild, their skill at capturing this make Beverly and Dereck award winning wild life documentary film makers and it was a real privilege to get to meet them and spend some time with them. There’s a nice write up about their careers at the National Geographic website (http://events.nationalgeographic.com/events/speakers-bureau/speaker/beverly-dereck-joubert/). As National Geographic “Explorers-in-Residence” (there are only 11 in the world) they are described as photographers, filmmakers, and naturalists. Quite fascinating people .

From the rather bumpy landing at the small airstrip (a storm was picking up) we were whisked by safari vehicle to a boat ramp where we loaded onto a small power boat. A sort ten minute ride through hippos infested waters brings us to the main camp.

In boarding the boat Paul realizes that he doesn’t have his black bag (which includes all his documentation – passport, work and residency permit, house and car keys, cell phone, etc.). We eat a quick lunch and get back on the boat just as a storm hits to go to headquarters to make a phone call to see if he’s left it on the plane or in the airport. Just as we board the boat the black skies open up and it starts to pour. We are given wool lined ponchos that do little to keep us dry. We are flying across the water, pelted by rain water that is hitting so hard it feels like someone is throwing rocks at your face. We bank the corners at high speeds and I try not to think about all the hippos I saw earlier in these waters (when my eyes were open!).

We scramble to the open safari vehicle where the rain continues to batter us for the forty minute drive to headquarters. By the time we make the call to Eddy, Paul’s business partner, to have him check for the bag, make our way back through the rapidly deepening muddle puddles to the boat for our return ride to Selinda, we are drenched! I mean like wet rats! Soaked to the bone. Sopping wet! I laugh thinking how I bothered to iron my clothes that morning since we were going to such an exclusive place!

Even though we are not staying at this camp tonight (we are staying at Zarafa…the more exclusive of the two camps), someone lets us use their bathroom to shower and change into some dry clothes. It was the best shower I ever had! It felt so good to be warm and then dry again.

We were suppose to have a “bush dinner” the first night, meaning it would be set at an outdoors location with candle light and campfires but, unfortunately, the rain has made that impossible. Our meal “in”, however, was fascinating as Dereck and Paul share stories of the good old days in Botswana when Paul and he fought to prevent the “culling” of elephants (planned killings to keep their numbers down). Dereck credits Paul by stating, “Paul’s efforts single handedly prevented culling of elephants from becoming standard practice in Botswana.”

Dereck also spoke about the early days when he and Beverly lived in the bush and filmed for months on end. There’s a great book I perused from one of the coffee tables called “African Diaries” that describes these early days when they literally lived out of their vehicle for months. Dereck said that Paul was responsible for breaking their 270 day streak of solitude in the bush without seeing another person. He explained that even when they had their supplies dropped off they would wait until the bush pilot dropped the supplies and took off again before they would scurry to the landing strip to pick up the goods. But Paul just showed up one day out of the blue and broke their isolation. Dereck recounted how pissed off he was when he first saw Paul but then, after spending the night talking, he was really happy to have had the company. He recalls writing in his journal, “Sometimes on the worse roads you find the nicest people.”

The conversation, storytelling and wine went well on into the night with us not realizing that the camp we were staying at was a two hour mud filled ride away (they don’t run the boat at night – guess it is OK to risk the hippo waters in the rain but not in the dark?). By the time we reached Zarafa it was well after midnight and we were exhausted. So much so that we didn’t realize how beautiful it was until the next day.


OK, where do I begin? The luxury tent we stayed in for two nights was larger than our house in Botswana. Zarafa has only 4 tents for guests. Prices range from $1025 to $1445 per person per night depending on the time of year. The décor is 1920s safari -- lots of wood, leather and brass. It’s the kind of stuff you might see in a furniture magazine and say, “hmmm, I really like that” until you see the price. Our tent faces the water with breath taking views at sunset (see first picture above). We had our own private “plunge pool” on the deck and an outdoor shower made of copper tubing the blasted you from head to toe with jets of water. Inside there is a big bath tub built for two. Unbelievable.

Inside the king size bed is surrounded by mosquito netting given it an ambience of mystery. The netting, however, was not even needed as somehow, despite the fact that this was a “tent” in the middle of the “bush” there wasn’t a bug in the place (although there was some sort of critter outside of the tent trying to gnaw or scratch its way in).

Our next two days are spent mapping the road system in this concession. We see amazing bird life, two female lions just walking down the sand track, lots of impala and kudu, several giraffe, a pack of wild dogs seeking shade under a bush, a pack of hyena making their way to a turned up dead hippo in the water for a snack and a funny looking Roan with long rabbit like ears. Each night we are treated to a tasty dinner. We eat our meals with the other staff at camp there for the weekend for training.

We had assumed we were leaving on Monday but they don’t seem to have access to a flight to get us back to Maun (they are simply putting us on a charter flight that happens to be coming in with open seats when it departs). Our final night we spend at Selinda Reserve itself which is also amazingly beautiful but seems “small” by comparison to Zarafa but we “roughed it.”

On our days spent mapping (see photo below of Paul with his GPS in hand and a giraffe in back) and we get drenched again with down pouring rain. On the third day when it starts to rain again I simply whip off my shorts, put them in the glove compartment and wear my bathing suit bottoms. We’ve gotten so much rain that my rain coat appears to be disintegrating into a sticky mess rendering it useless. And I’ve found that using an umbrella while wearing the wool lined poncho is the best approach in the open safari vehicle. At one point the rain is driving so hard we can’t even see.

I have no idea how Paul is continuing to drive as my face is buried in the hood of the poncho. When I do look up we’ve come up to a road that looks like a river. It rounds a corner and we can’t see how long it carries on under water. We back track and find a “pontoon” bridge across the water that looks too narrow for our vehicle but Paul thinks he can make it. We get the front wheels on but the weight of it cause the pontoon to sink a bit and the metal ramp we’ve just driven across pops up and hits our back wheels preventing us from getting the rest of the vehicle onto the bridge. We back off it and choose the "river road" as the only other options. I hold on tight to the handle on the dash board hoping we don’t flip over into the hippo water wondering how my life has turned into a potential episode of “I shouldn’t be alive” or “I Survived” (I think they are both on National Geographic and recount people’s terrifying near death experiences). Obviously we made it but not without some white knuckle moments!

There’s so much rain this weekend people start calling us “Rra and Ma Pula” (Mr. and Mrs. Rain). Remember, in this desert climate rain is seen as a good thing so this is a real compliment. On Tuesday there’s a flight we can catch out around noon just as the sky is turning black for another thunder storm. Mid-flight the weather takes a turn for the worse and we are diverted to another airstrip to wait out the storm. That’s enough little tiny flights for me for a while.


We head off to Mozambique via Zimbabwe tomorrow for an abbreviated vacation.
Hoping for sun!
The blogger formerly known as “Ma Pula”

PS: As I’m writing this back at the house an African wild cat just walked across the yard and down the drive way. They look like a grey tabby cat only 3 to 4 times the size. The legs are very long and bodies quite big. We’d seen one on the ostrich farm before but not recently and not in the day light (usually at dusk). Hope the baby ostriches are safe!

PPS: failed to mention that the black bag with all Paul's important documents and keys was found and delivered up to Selinda! What a relief.

“modern talk” about belly rubbing cures

One of the things I enjoy the most about my time in Maun is the strange things that you read along the way whether on a sign, menu or in the local paper. While English and Setswana are the official languages of Botswana, the use of English often comes across as peculiar or odd from an American perspective. A street sign we pass daily, for example, reads “Modern Talk – Refrigeration, Welding and Landscaping.” What do you think they mean by “modern talk”?? As opposed to what…“olden day” talk? I just don’t get it (not to mention wondering how one business can offer these three diverse services!).

At a restaurant for lunch the other day I opened the menu to read “Remember when sex was safe and flying was dangerous.” This popular eating establishment, the Bon Arrivee, is situated across the street from the airport and has an “flying” theme to it. Pictures of planes riddle the walls and plastic models of planes hang from the ceiling. In my attempt to eat a sufficient amount of fruits and vegetables (quite a task in this beef loving society) we sometimes go there for their roasted vegetable sandwich (which is quite good if you have a couple of hours to take for lunch as they operate on “African time” which is much slower than “American time”). I suppose this quote is intended to be humorous (or nostalgic?) but it isn’t particularly funny given that Botswana has the second highest percent of adults infected with HIV in the world (with approximately 23.9% of their population infected). Also, the monopoly Air Botswana has on flights to and from Botswana result in very high ticket prices ($200 US one way) but not necessarily on time service. Hopefully not “dangerous” flying but certainly not reliable. The entire fleet of Air Botswana has only five planes!

Of course, my all time favorite venue for quotable quotes is The Ngami Times (www.ngamitimes.com) the local weekly paper that prides itself on being “The last newspaper established in the 20^th century” (is that something to be proud of?). In the December 18 issue the lead story headlines, “A Miracle of Christmas as Baby Saved.” The story describes a situation up in Shakawe where a mokoro (dug out canoe) carrying three women transporting reeds across the main stream capsized. A small baby was “swept downstream and sucked under water on a river notorious for its crocodiles and hippos.” The mother couldn’t swim but a couple of guys on the opposite shore saw what happened and rushed over in their motorboat to help. One of the guys “saw something pink under the water” and dove in to save the “seemingly lifeless infant from the deep green Okavango” (are you drawn in by the dramatic flair of the writing?).

OK… so far this seems like a nice rescue story but then it takes a turn toward the strange. The paper reports, “Guessing that the child might still be young enough that the special valve that protects infants from swallowing water could still be functioning, he rubbed the baby’s stomach against his own with a slowly, rolling motion, and suddenly more water streamed from the baby’s lungs.” (italics added for emphasis). Apparently this stomach rubbing technique worked as the child started to cough and cry. The paper then goes on to report that “It later was found the baby was much older than initially thought, but still [sic] this miracle handling did the trick” (credit goes directly to the slowly rolling motion of the belly rubbing). The article concludes with the rescuer stating, “When you want to live in the bush you better know what to do in an emergency.” Lesson for the day…belly rubbing saves lives.