Loud leopard, mucky mud and a baby boomslang

The night is pitch black and the temperatures pretty darn cold (one morning the weather station we travel with announces 35 degrees!). I open my eyes and see absolutely nothing! I rotate under the weight of several blankets and snuggle up to Paul, who is my own personal heater (my inability to regulate my temperature due to a thyroid issue makes me not well suited for temperatures that swing 50 degrees in a day). Over the evening I hear several creatures just outside our tent. The snap of a branch as lone bull elephant has an evening snack nearby. The whooping dysmelodic call of a hyena, in its singsong way. The honk-wheeze of a hippo in a nearby lagoon, sounding like he’s laughing at an inside joke.  It’s hard to remember the first days of camping in Africa (back in 2007) when I didn’t know who made what noises.

 

For the first couple of nights at our campsite in Savute National Park we hear a leopard making the rounds near our tent. He’s close, but not too close. The call of a leopard is hard to describe. They travel solo and will make a call as they go, identifying their presence (and territory) which approximates rapidly sawing wood with a big handheld saw. It’s an in and out sound that seems to make noise on the inhale and exhale. On our final night, he comes in for a closer inspection. Stealthily he approaches the tent in utter silence. How he manages to get through the carpet of leaves and brush without a rustle of a leaf is beyond me. Just inches from our heads he shouts his call. We freeze! Not a move. All that is separating us is a layer of canvas. We. Don’t. Breathe. For what seems like several minutes. The silence is deafening. We know he is right next to our tent, but we hear nothing. In the morning we find spoor (footprints) practically on the corner stake of the tent. The next time we hear him call, he’s left our immediate vicinity as if he has evaporated and reappeared farther away.

 

Leopard Spoor

Leopard Spoor Right Near the Tent

One of the things Paul struggles most with in the States is the predictability. While some find this comforting, he finds it boring, unchallenging, unstimulating. Being in the bush, you never know what you might encounter on any given day. It might be large herds of giraffe browsing the leaves of tall trees. Or a family of elephants crossing the road – moms, aunts, and a range of young ones. It could be a pride of nine lions up under a shepherd’s tree taking a nap. Their stomachs look empty. They eye our smelly diesel vehicle with curiosity.

 

Some days are more challenging than others. Our task for the week out is to survey the campsites for mobile safaris of HATAB – the Hotel and Tourism Association of Botswana, to see what condition they are in after over a year of pandemic non-use and to check the driving conditions and road accessibility in light of the heavy rainy season. We confirm, for example, the conditions of the bridges in Moremi Game Reserve. First Bridge is passable, Second Bridge you must go around because it needs repair, Third Bridge is completely broken to pieces by rushing waters, and Fourth Bridge we make it across (twice) but some logs are in need of replacing. These bridges are critical to getting around the park. With Third Bridge out, for example, we must backtrack several hours on bumpy sand “roads” to get from one major part of the part to another.

 

Third Bridge

Third Bridge

Third Bridge

Fourth Bridge

Getting around Second Bridge proves particularly challenging (in both directions – we get stuck coming and going!). We make it across several water crossings fairly easily, wheel hubs locked, 4x4 engaged, we splash our way through arriving safely on the other side. But the diversion around Second Bridge is another story. Imagine driving up to a large expanse of mud and water. Several tracks of previous vehicles are evident but it is impossible to know which one to select. If we go to the right, we risk getting stuck in some rather deep mud. If we go left, things look a little better but there is one section of water with no way of determining how deep it goes or what lies beneath the black water. Sometimes Paul will get out of the vehicle and ‘walk the water' to see how high it is and if he sinks but this time there is too much mud  between us and the water to make that trek. So we choose blindly...and badly. We go left and head for the water hoping it’s a quick trip through. We’re grinding our way through the mud and into the water when the nose of the vehicle suddenly submerges and we slam to a stop. Paul is shifting gears, doing his best to see if we can back out of or go farther into and through the water but we are stuck. I mean properly stuck! Water starts to pour in at our feet. The slight tip of the vehicle means Paul’s side of the vehicle is sinking faster than mine. He’s now ankle deep and rising. We spring into action.

 

While I start lifting anything of value up to the dashboard - cell phones, camera, binoculars and grab the mechanism for the winch from the center metal box between us… Paul wiggles his way out from under the steering wheeling and out the window in to the ever-rising black water. I offer to grab his sandals and suggest he take off his pants and shoes so as not to destroy them but he’s out the window before I can get the sentence out. Winch control cable in hand, thigh deep in water, he connects the controls to the winch passes it back to me and grabs the cable from the winch at the front of the vehicle. My job is to push the OUT button while he pulls the cable to the closest small acacia scrub and ties it around. These acacia scrubs are tough. They’ve provided us with winching assistance before and while a betting man would likely put their money on our rather large safari vehicle guessing it would win in a battle of tug of war with an acacia scrub, they would be wrong. Cable secured around the scrub, Paul slogs his way back through mud and water, back through the vehicle window to try to proceed with winching. Equipped with a snorkel, the whole time the vehicle is running and sounding more and more like a submarine. Glug, glug, glug and it struggles to push air out of the exhaust instead of sucking air in, at which point we’d be in big trouble.

 

Successfully back behind the steering wheel, Paul begins to try to give her gas and steer us while I now press the IN button on the winch control and we are slowly dragged out of the muddy water filled hole we’ve been stuck in, by the sheer strength of the steel cable and a rather tenacious little acacia shrub. When we finally reach dry land and open the doors, water pours out the front cabin area. We let out a little laugh and a sigh of relief. We haven’t said more than two words to each other since we sunk short of, IN or OUT.

 

On the way back through the same area on the return trip, we obviously avoid the water filled pitfall but manage to get ourselves properly stuck in mud (no water) by slipping off one mud track sideways into another created by a larger vehicle. So large it left a hole deeper than our tires and we get stuck on the middle underneath the vehicle like a stranded turtle. Properly stuck. Our wheels spin with no success at movement backwards or forward. Paul leaps out again, this time, unfortunately, there’s no small acacia shrub to save us. Our best hope is to dig with the spade strapped to our roof rack for just such an occasion and jack the vehicle up and try to get logs under the wheels for some traction. Paul begins to jack and dig and I start looking for logs/branches. There’s one nearby (we are obviously not the first person stuck here!) and then I go looking for others. There’s a small tree off in the distance, maybe there’s some downed branches. I start walking. Some movement off in the distance catches my eye. I’ve forgotten my binoculars and call back to Paul who is closer to his to take a look. He grabs them, focuses, “A pack of wild dogs!”, he shouts. I am NOT going all the way out to that tree. Ultimately, we are rescued by a self-drive tourist in a rental vehicle that we attach our winch to and drag ourselves out of the mud using them as the anchor. We advise them which way to drive through, as we are now experts on what NOT to do.

Most our time in the bush is not so eventful. We inspect campsites. Check out road conditions. Find beautiful spots for sundowners. On our last afternoon, with all our “work” done, I set up a hammock between two trees since the heat of the day makes lying down in the tent too unbearably hot. After swinging in the breeze and listening to the birds for a while, I’m packing up the hammock when something catches my attention down near the base of the tree I've just detached my hammock from. I look again and don't see anything. Stepping a little closer, I look again and notice what looks like a moving stick but is actually a snake eating a chameleon. One red dot of blood is visible on the half-consumed body of the poor chameleon while the snake’s unhinged jaw struggles to get the rest of him down. When he’s finished he elegantly makes his way up into the tree. Despite the fact that we know he’s there, we loose sight of him several times because he is camouflaged so well to look like a branch. His cover is blown only by his large emerald green eye. 

We’re not sure what kind he is. When we lose him in the tree top, we consult the app on Paul’s phone but have no luck with identification until we get home and I start looking in our library of books. We conclude that he is a young boomslang. While normally bright green as adults, the juveniles are olive/grey with a bright green eye that changes to black as an adult. He’s hemotoxic and deadly. Really glad he didn’t join me in my hammock!

Giant Eagle Owl