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| African Hoopoe |
I can barely see the faint shadow of what I know is a large hyena skulking in the darkness as we set up the telescope for an evening of star gazing at Moremi Game Reserve. We’ve seen it walking up the dirt path for camp earlier as we were eating dinner. In our rush to get out to of Maun we have forgotten our large torch (flashlight) and the illumination from my headlamp only gives me about five feet of visibility (too close for comfort for a hyena sighting). As my eyes adjust to the light of the full moon, I’m able to see better only to notice another, larger, hyena coming from the other direction. I feel like we’re surrounded but I know I’m just a little panicky as I re-adjust to my life, or the part of my life, where I have to worry about things that can…eat me!
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| Leopard Tortoise |
As always the journey between my lives is a long and slow process that gives me a bit of time to adjust to the change. Complicated by back pain, the eighteen hour flight seems longer than usual and I am very glad to be on solid ground and able to soak in a luxurious tub that looks like half an egg at our friends’ luxury hotel in Johannesburg (http://www.africanrockhotels.com/). We spend two nights in Joburg, making a mistake of going to Sandton mall a week before Christmas (Western materialism is alive and well in Sandton!) and the rest of the time I basically take back medicine, relax and sleep for two days.
On Sunday we start the fourteen hour drive back stopping halfway at Kalahari Rest Camp for the night. Continuing on Monday, we arrive in Maun about lunch time. I am a bad traveling companion as I sleep most of the time and certainly can’t be trusted to drive in the condition I’m in. A sighting of ostrich on the side of the road could be mistaken for pain reliever delirium.
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| Impala Babies |
After a day at home we head off to Moremi to do a star show for friends (actually the ones that own African Rock Hotel in Johannesburg). It is nice to be back in the bush seeing giraffe, impala, kudo, zebra, and water buck (with their tell tale white ring around their butt that looks like a toilet seat ring). Oh Africa, how I’ve missed you so. Many impala babies have been born and they are so tiny and fragile it is amazing that they make it to adulthood. We also come across a leopard tortoise and I get the opportunity to try out my new camera.
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| Water bucks |
One of our most interesting sightings is two starlings (iridescent black birds a bit smaller than crows) frantically harassing something we initially can’t see. They are flying and diving and squawking over the grassy ground when we see a thin black snake lift up about three feet off the ground striking at the birds as they dive bomb it. Whatever type of snake it is, it moves fast as we watch the birds “chase” it thirty feet off into the trees in a matter of seconds.
Other adjustments to life in Botswana are required by the scorpion I spotted in our house yesterday. He was kind of flat so I assumed he was squished and perhaps dead, and if he wasn’t, since I don’t know how to properly remove a scorpion from the house (yet) I go to get Paul and when I return…it’s gone. Now I worry about him being somewhere in our house waiting to sting me from some dark corner. Ugh!
The other adjustment problem is a lack of petrol (unleaded gas) in Maun. We drove around to all the petrol stations yesterday before finding one with petrol left to refuel our Subaru but when we went to refuel the Pajero after dinner, the only station that had fuel had a line of about twenty cars deep and we didn’t feel like waiting in it at 11:30 PM at night. So now we are trying to decide if it is worth going back into town to see if any petrol was delivered over night or if we should simply take one of the safari vehicles to the tented camp for our Christmas adventure. Never a dull moment in Botswana! Hope you have a fabulous Christmas! I’ll send our annual Christmas letter when we return.
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