Travel Adventures over Christmas and New Years

Heads pop up from a series of holes in the ground as we wait patiently, sitting on the opposite side of the dirt track, for the meerkats to get comfortable with our presence and reappear. We’ve spotted them on our drive through a section of the Transfrontier Park which spans the south western corner of Botswana into South Africa. The longer we stay with them, the more they resume their normal patrol activities. There are a dozen or so curious little critters that stand on the side of lumps of earth, high on their toes to get a better vantage point, arms hang lifeless by their side, eyes darting to scan the area. Others scurry around from one hole to the next, sticking close to their comrades for security in numbers as they sneak a peek at us across the way. One even rests back on his butt while he takes his shift as “look out”. It’s like our own little “meerkat manor”. Just one of the many adventures we’ve had over our two weeks of holiday travel around Christmas 2012 and New Year’s 2013. 

 

Paul and the "Kalahari Christmas Tree"

 It is these small encounters that we enjoy the most when traveling in the bush. On another day in the Western Kalahari we settle down to watch and photograph a flock of masked weavers build their nests. The tree they’ve settled in looks like a “Kalahari Christmas tree” with the many nests resembling ornaments on a Christmas tree. Multiple males build their nests while one female looks on as if she’s supervising the construction. Perhaps she’s selecting her mate as well as her new home? The task of weaving is impressive as the birds grasp separate twigs with each foot and weave the single blade of grass they’ve arrived with joining the branches into a circular loop. A full nest must take them days to complete. These are certainly “nests built to impress.” Males hang from their feet upside down inspecting their handiwork. The chirping sound of the multiple birds busy at work only adds to the magic of the experience.

Paul photographing storm right before he got zapped!

The weather varies between what I like to call “hot as Hades” (reaching well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit on a daily basis) to electrifying, as massive storms brew in the sky unleashing the most spectacular lightning displays. With no mountains to break the sound, you can hear these weather events rumble in from afar. During one such storm at the edge of the Makgadikgadi Pans near the Nata Bird Sanctuary, Paul jumps out of the safety of our vehicle to get a better shot. One deafening crack of thunder sends him fleeing back to the Pajero, eyes as big as saucers, as he experiences a slight zap from a blade of grass that touches his leg conducting the electricity from a bolt of lightning that has hit the ground. We watch the rest of the storm from inside the vehicle as the wind sweeps the sands of the pan up to the sky in what looks like the reversal of rain, as the earth rises to the sky as opposed to the skies pouring down to earth. After the storm, our campsite at the edge of the pan transforms into water front property as our view looks more like a glance at the setting sun over the ocean than a dry clay flat area with a slight rise at the edge (hence the name “pan”). 

Storms a brewin'

Pan sand swept up in storm.

Sunset over the pan, after the storm

Zebra Migration Makgadikgadi Pans

The heat of the day is filled with magazine and Kindle reading, checking out birds we’ve seen in the bird book - like the marvelous woodland kingfishers we saw in abundance at Molema camp in the Tuli Block that were, unfortunately, too quick to capture on film, their shock of turquoise wings flying between the tall nyala berry trees so untypical of the rest of Botswana – and basically trying to stay as cool as possible in the sweltering mid-day sun. If we’re lucky we can find two trees from which to hang our double hammock and seek some shade. On Christmas Eve Paul is serenaded with the lyrics of all the Christmas songs I can think of in hopes of, at least mentally, transporting us to a winter wonder land. The difficult to describe braying of zebras only serves as the backup chorus from the migration of zillions of zebra to Makgadikgadi Pans. One can see zebras as far as the eye can see and this only adds to the beauty of our isolation in the pans where we only see one other vehicle in two days. It is simply us, the zebras and an occasional flock of flamingos wading in a pan trying to stay cool.

Campsite at Tree Island

Flamingos in pan

 Our adventure is not without excitement. I learned a couple of important things on our most recent travels. First, I learned why puff adders are called “puff” adders. As we’re packing up our camp at Tree Island I hear a distinct “huff” as I carry some boxes to load into the Pajero. I look down and straight ahead of me I see a sand colored twelve inch snake recoil and rear up and let out his “puff”. It certainly got my attention as I ran to the other side of the vehicle to tell Paul, “Snake!” He laughed after the fact, when recounting that I then immediately ran back to the snake to take a better look at him (and keep an eye on him to make sure he didn’t slither into any of the things we were packing into the vehicle). Unfortunately, in our fascination with watching him make his way to the base of a tree where he used his multi-color pattern to blend in with the bark and continued to huff and puff for several minutes quite agitated, we failed to get a picture of him. While he was just a young adder (they can grow quite long) this was actually NOT good news as the juveniles don’t have complete control of their venom distribution and tend to dump all the venom they have into their victim. As one of the deadliest snakes in Africa, it is a good thing he has an early warning system (and that I jump and run fast).

Mom and baby rhino at Khama Rhino Sanctuary

We also saw scorpions galore on this trip. The first was a rather large (six inch) yellow fellow who crawled out of our ground cloth as we packed up our tent after a night of camping at Khama Rhino Sanctuary. Raising his pinchers like lobster claws he curled up this stinging tail and made a quick exit in the morning light. Sends chills up my spine just thinking about it! We saw even more when we joined a group of campers in the Western Kalahari for a night of strategizing on how best to assist local communities that once benefited from hunting in their areas, once hunting officially ends in 2014. These communities used to be paid a fee by the hunting sector for each of the animals they were allowed to hunt in their area. The communities could then use those funds for community needs. With hunting ending in 2014 (on a mandate from the President), these communities now face the challenge of what to do  to generate income in their area.

Our scorpion viewing was facilitated one night by a “black light” torch (flashlight) that a friend had. The special light causes the potential hazards to luminesce all over the ground like neon signs. Sometimes I think you’re better off not knowing what’s out there in the dark that you can’t see. With my new awareness of all the stingers out there, I didn’t sleep much that night. This was especially true after noticing a rather large fellow about a foot away from where I had just peed! Yikes! Needless to say, I did not leave the tent that night. To make things worse, I found another scorpion on the bottom of my exercise mat inside the house last week. If this is starting to become a trend, I’d like it to finish soon…

Finally, I had my first encounter with a “blister beetle.” As you can guess, this nasty little insect gets his name from the acid he admits from his legs that causes skin to blister and burn like hell. On Christmas Eve I started to develop a little burning in the corner of my left eye. When I woke up Christmas morning the eye was starting to swell and the entire lid was burning (as if on fire!). By Boxing Day (the day after Christmas) I could hardly see out of the eye, due to the swelling, and it was almost purple with inflammation. Unfortunately, even though we were transiting through Francistown that day, a relatively large town in Botswana, I couldn’t seek medical attention (even though I desperately wanted to) because nothing was open on “Boxing Day” (who knew?). My best course of action was a wet wash cloth and a frozen bag of peas I picked up at a grocery store. Paul also bought me an orange/mango Popsicle at a petrol station which improved my mood and sent me in to rounds of song like, “All we can say, is give “peas” a chance” and a variety of other songs with the word “peace” substituted with “peas.” I may have been delirious with pain at that point…

While we’re not really sure if a blister beetle was the cause of the eye trauma (we never actually saw the perpetrator), we suspect it was because, at about the same time as the eye issue I developed a large set of blisters on the back of my right knee. Since the redness in the back of my knee and peeling of my eye lid continued for two weeks after, we’re pretty sure a blister beetle was to blame. Note to self: don’t touch your eye after swiping something off the back of your knee.

Given the long distances in Botswana, our trip from Makgadikgadi Pans to Nata Bird Sanctuary to far eastern edge of the country in the Tuli Block on the Limpopo River to Khama Rhino Sanctuary and then back to Maun one week, followed up with our trip to the south western part of the country through Ghanzi to Transfronteir Park with a night of bush camping in between (where you literally pull off the side of the dirt road you are on and camp in the bush) and then a couple of nights out in the Western Kalahari included many long drives on roads that look like this:

Road in Mkgadikgadi Pan

…and unique vistas of rolling sand dunes, open pans with hartebeest, eland and springbok and many, many steenbok (or what are called "phuduhudu" – which is more fun to say). Phuduhudu are some of the smallest antelopes in the area. They mate for life and are often seen within a short distance from their mate. They are hardy souls and can be found in the most barren areas of Botswana. They run like lightening, sprinting out of view, only to stop and turn to have a look at you as you drive by.

Me checking out the view at the Limpopo River

Full moon over the Limpopo

View of Pan in Western Kalahari

In short, we had a nice escape from the office for almost two week over the holidays. Hope you've enjoyed reading this and had a little escape as well!

The End