Louis showed me where to go. ‘Head South, young man! Along the edge of the Namib via Karibib through the Naukluft to Solitaire,’ he said. He’s lived in Namibia for forty years so I did as he told me, despite him having led me astray the week before. You know what locals are like: Go Straight, You Can’t Miss It, they always say. Keep the Namib on your right and the rest of Africa on your left, you can’t go wrong! they say with their head thrown back, eyes half closed and a beer in hand. This time he was right. I only meandered off the beaten track once, but that was to see where a dotted line on OrganicMaps led to. And the roads were gravel, not sand.
(Plug: Don’t use google or waze (google bought waze). Use OrganicMaps. Good people).
Well, Louis was right! Solitaire is an oasis with ice cold beer and wifi hovering around invisibly under cool, shady thatch. It’s owned, I was told by an American in a wheelchair, by his Dad. He represented USA in wheelchair basketball at the paralympics. I think that’s what I was told by him and his wife in the spacious cool shady pub. I do know they dish up just the right kind of fuel, food, beer and wifi that you need on a road trip, so it’s a popular spot. Also, it’s a long way to the next places to chill, and those don’t do these essentials quite as well.
So I pulled into a lovely campsite for the night, which became three nights cos who wants to leave?
Views around, and a small flock of quelea flying past. Sociable Weavers in camp – here’s one of their communal nests some distance south of Solitaire, nearer Helmeringhausen.
– another Ford bakkie salutes mine as I leave Solitaire – mine’s the white one –
Notice the Morris Eight open-top 2-door tourer in the feature pic?
I grew up in Darkest Wildest Africa to the sound of a lion roaring in the evenings and the early mornings. Some of this is true. Just not the ‘Darkest Wildest’ part. I would lie in my bed at 95 Stuart Street in Harrismith, and if the wind was right, there’d be the clear, authentic sound of the ‘King of the Jungle’ roaring in the background. Except of course he didn’t live in a jungle and he didn’t really do what I’d call roar – he went uuuuunh uuuuunh uh uh uh uh like lions do. Here’s how that came about:
On 1st June 1955 I was exactly two months old and in other notable news, Mr CJ (Bossie) Boshoff was appointed as parkkurator of the now well-established President Brand Park by the Harrismith Municipality. It seems to have been a happy choice, as his entertaining letter about the history of the zoo attests. It was written in November 2005, fifty years after he’d established the zoo. He moved to Harrismith to take up his new post, and stayed in Soekie Helman’s Royal Hotel while his council house was being renovated.
As park curator, the thought came to Bossie that he could do more. Maybe, he thought, he could: ‘n kampie in die park aanlê waarin n paar wildsbokkies kon loop wat ‘n aantrekking vir die publiek sou wees.
make a fenced paddock and keep a few antelope in it to attract the public!
Once he was given the nod by the town council, he chose an area about one hectare in size just above the Victoria lake, and put a fence round it, then put a road round the fence so people would be able to see his planned wild animals from their cars. Much like in the Kruger Park’s two million hectares. First, though, he’d have to bekom some wildsbokkies.
obtain – somehow – some antelope
His first inmates were a mak ribbok ooi – a tame mountain reedbuck ewe (‘rooiribbok’), two fallow deer and a tame aap mannetjie – a male monkey, likely a vervet. A female baboon named Annemarie, a tipiese raasbek boerbok – a typical ‘loudmouth’ goat!, and a blesbok ram who he thought was behaving a bit oddly – nie lekker op sy pote nie. On enquiry he discovered it was onder sterk brandewyn kalmering.
Not steady on its feet – it had been given a strong dose of brandy to tranquilise it!
Next he was offered a lioness from one of the Retiefs from Bergville; the asking price was fifteen pounds Sterling, and as with all finances, he knew he would need council’s permission and a formal decision. He went instead to Soekie Helman, as he knew Soekie’s “voice was loud in the council at that time.” He’d got to know Soekie when he stayed in his hotel. Soekie’s decision was a confident: “Buy the thing and we’ll argue later.” They did. Bossie soon noticed this five month-old pet was gentle for a while and then would ‘suddenly get serious,’ so he realised a strong cage was needed fast. Two high brick walls were built at right angles with a roof on top; a semicircular front of strong iron bars made by town blacksmith Pye von During was installed from the end of one wall to the other. A big bloekomstomp was placed on the floor of the cage (you can see it in the feature pic above), and a brick shelter was built in the back corner. The roof of that inner shelter became the lions resting and outlook spot.
This was the concrete stage on which the poor male lion you see in the picture, the one I heard in my youthful bedroom, would soon be lying; and daily roaring his pent-up frustration over the hills of Harrismith.
bloekomstomp – gumtree stump about 3m long and maybe 700mm diameter I would guess
Next thing Henrie Retief (Thys se broer) phoned from Bloemfontein to say he had bought a male lion which he was donating to what was now undeniably a zoo (not just a wildskampie) on condition that if ‘something happened to the animal one day’ he would get the pelt! The lion-lioness introduction was – according to Bossie – ‘Love at First Sight!
The male lion grew up handsome, and his roars could be heard all over town, ‘to the top of 42nd Hill,’ says Bossie, and certainly at 95 Stuart Street where we lived. The lioness fell pregnant but died in labour. The male watched them closely as they removed her body. She was soon replaced by another from Bloemfontein, who was placed in a separate cage for two months so they could grow accustomed to one another, but – alas! says Bossie – when they introduced them, the male killed her with one bite! Later they got new lions: A male and two females. Bossie said they had to ‘wegmaak’ the original male – kill? sell? Did ou Henrie get his pelt? Wait – The Chronicle of December 1959 says there was talk that ‘a local farmer’ would take the lion in exchange for two blesboks which would be swopped for three lions from Bloem! So it seems Kerneels Retief got the first lion?
Bossie’s zoo later got two wild dogs and a warthog from South West Africa in 1959, swopped for two mahems – crested cranes. In 1965 the Natal Parks Board donated six impala and two warthogs. I wonder which of those three warthogs became ‘Justin’ the famous one the Methodist minister Justin Michell would feed and talk to on Sundays after his sermon? I’m guessing Justin the warthog probly listened to him a lot more attentively than your average Harrismith Methodist, as the reward he got was immediate and yum; not just the vague promise – but no guarantees, nê – of later eternal life.
In January 1964 three lion cubs were born. One was killed the same night, the others were removed and raised by Mrs JH Olivier. In 1966 the Chronicle told of two five month-old cubs for sale. These cubs had ‘been involved in a hectic incident’ a while before when two African attendants were tasked to remove them from their mother and she attacked them! Workman’s Compensation, anyone? And was the story suppressed when it happened?
How to Feed this Menagerie!?
Suddenly food was an issue! How to feed the growing menagerie? They started charging adults a sixpenny entrance fee. Kids were free but had to be accompanied by an adult. Most of the meat for the lions was supplied by generous farmers. He mentions oom Frikkie (Varkie?) Badenhorst whose dairy had no use for bull calves and donated these. Mostly it was on a ‘yours if you fetch it’ basis, so Bossie would have to travel all over the district to keep his lions in meat. Farmers would donate their horses once they got too old to ride. The fact that many of these had names, and that they were still ‘on the hoof’ and looking at him when Bossie arrived didn’t make matters any easier for him.
One such was Ou Klinker, a Clydesdale used in the town’s forestry department. Piet Rodgers, the forester, told Bossie he could fetch Ou Klinker – but only when Piet wasn’t there! Bossie says usually when the shot was fired the horse’s legs would just fold and they would drop on the spot, but not old Klinker! When the shot went off he rose ‘like a loaf of bread and fell as stiff as a pole,’ says Bossie. And then he says ‘dit was baie vleis!’
that Clydesdale was a lot of meat!
The local police also phoned whenever they came across road kill, and the health inspector Fritz Doman would tell him whenever he condemned a pig with measles at the abattoir. One guy even offered a dog on a chain. But surely Bossie didn’t . . Oh, yes he did! But the lions ‘het nie baie van die vleis gehou nie,’ says Bossie. They did like the pork, however.
didn’t much like the dog meat
So you see!? it’s True!
And so now you know I really did grow up listening to a lion roaring uuuuunh uuuuunh uh uh uh uh as I lay in my bed in Darkest Wildest Africa – except for the ‘Darkest Wildest’ part – back in the day.
~~oo0oo~~
Originally posted here as the story of Harrismith Zoo, where there’s more detail on the zoo itself, the many other animals, and the man who started it. I couldn’t resist modifying and personalising the story here!
Most of this source material comes from Harrismith’s Hoarding Historian Biebie de Vos. who asked me to write the zoo story. Thank you Biebie! Much would have been lost if Biebie hadn’t saved it.
Lucky me, Jess chose St Lucia village for a three night getaway with good friend Tarryn for her birthday this year. The beautiful isiMangaliso Wetland Park is nearby, and I thought, ‘Great!’
The word mangaliso means ‘miraculous’ or ‘wondrous’ or ‘amazing’ in isiZulu, and it lives up to its billing. The tiny section I explored this time is marked on the map of the greater park in squiggly yellow: from St Lucia estuary to 20km up the Eastern Shores. I’ve been to many corners of this amazing place since my first visit ca.1965.
Birds I was looking for were White-backed Duck and Southern Banded Snake-Eagle (my main targets, I hadn’t seen them in ages); Also Lesser Moorhen; Rufous-bellied Heron; Pygmy Goose; and I saw all of those. Plus, as a bonus, Half-collared Kingfisher and Green Coucal – now Green Malkoha. I stared at these last two thru my lovely Zeiss binocs and by the time I remembered the camera they’d moved off. I’m still mainly a binocular person, not a photographer! Gazing in awesome wonder rather than recording.
The Samsung phone feature pic is on the vlei loop road, looking west across Ngunuza Vlei towards the setting sun. I turned round where the road went underwater as I wasn’t sure of the depth of the water flowing across the road. Being 2WD, lazy to deflate my tyres, and on my own, I thought best let discretion be the better part of valour! And retracing your steps is a new road anyway – you never cross the same river twice*. On the map, the vlei is south of Mission Rocks. What a joy the frog calls are all over the park after good rains.
I’ll upload pics when I get home – (done) – left my Canon to laptop cable behind! My mighty Canon is a SX620 HS. Lovely pocket camera, tragically ‘discontinued!’
Meanwhile, Gen Z was taking pics of their food. This in Mtunzini, well south of St Lucia.
For more organised and more frequent trips into Southern Africa’s wild places, see Dewetswild. Dries De Wet recently went to isiMangaliso – he guides photographic safaris. His blogpost on his last visit is what prompted me to look for that duck and that snake-eagle.
*Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher said, ‘No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.’
. . is beautiful. The sandy rivers have huge fig, jackalberry, apple-leaf, marula, nyala and thorn trees along their banks. Lots of shade.
The surrounding area is dominated by mopani woodland and mopani scrub. Little shade.
When Jess chooses to loaf in camp, I go on slow short drives consisting mainly of parking and letting the birds come to me. When she comes along there’s more searching for furry creatures.
On one of those I left early to the sound of a booming duet: There aren't, There aren't, There arent any earthworms! There are There are, Dig Deeper, Dig Deeper! of a pair of Ground Hornbills.
Later, when watching a pair of Jacobin Cuckoos chasing each other round and round my parked car, the distant sound of a lion giving his best constipated rendition: Ooom, ooom, ooh, uh uh uh
– Jess finds the third leopard of our trip in a faraway tree –– me n Jess’ travels in the park in pink –
After three nights in Shingwedzi I said Punda Maria next, Jess? But she said, Whoa! Dad. Three weeks is enough. I need some DSTV and aircon. So we left the park thru the Phalaborwa gate and Jess found a chalet with her essential necessities. There was good birding there, and a great outdoor shower. Phalaborwa Safari Park.
Chuffed to have spent my longest spell in Kruger yet. More to come, I hope!
So Jess and I have been in the park for over two weeks now. We’ve stayed in Pretoriuskop, Berg n Dal, Skukuza, Satara and Olifants camps so far. I’m hoping to keep heading north – Shingwedzi next, but will have to negotiate. I’m aware that three weeks in nowhere with an old toppie might not be every 25yr-old’s idea of heaven. Can’t understand them, huh?
Negotiations opened with (and ended with), ‘First let’s get to a town so I can get all I need, then we’ll come back into the park.’ Fair enough Jess, so tonight we’re in a chalet just outside the Phalaborwa gate. Tomorrow hopefully camping in Shingwedzi.
– Found an Aitch tree – Sterculia – the African Star Chestnut –
We loved Nselweni Bush Camp on the right bank of the Black Mfolosi river in Mfolosi Game Reserve. Kinda artistic/rustic, but with everything you need; solid walls with canvas ceilings above and a canvas roof over that; a good kitchen good bathroom en-suite. Windows and doors that open WIDE.
Nice and quiet; and full of birdlife while we were there. Some bush pigs visited us nightly, giving us a good closeup look by torchlight. And – we didn’t take pics!
On the riverbed, we watched an ele having a moment . .
Heard at night: Lion; Hyena; Bushbaby thicktail; Hippo
~~oo0oo~~
An early adoption of solar energy with batteries is now derelict – lead acid batteries short shelflife! Godd to see the thinking, and hopefully new renewable energy sources are being investigated in all our parks?
I got a wifi-enabled camera! My cellphone can now operate the camera remotely! I am going to set it up on a tripod and sit somewhere comfortable and take pictures of unwitting birds. No, man! Feathered ones.
Having this would also have been handy to see what the hyenas and bushpigs were doing outside our hut late at night last time we were in Mfolosi, and I always want to know what’s that snuffling around my tent when camping.
So now I finally have a camera I can set up on a tripod and take pics from my cellphone. Being a cheapskate I waited till I could do it with a cheap camera – a Canon Powershot SX620HS. It’s a tiny little compact camera so I can carry it everywhere in my shirt pocket; the biggest advantage it has over the cellphone camera is 25X optical zoom.
So now I got the camera aiming at the birdbath waiting for the first exciting shot.
Hmm, getting the camera and phone to talk to each other has taken way longer than I thought. While I was sukkeling, two spectacled weavers, a golden-rumped tinker, an olive sunbird, two brown-hooded kingfishers, a fork-tailed drongo and a speckled mousebird hopped on and grinned at me. Now that I’m rigged up, nothing so far!
Ons sal sien what comes of this! Maybe word got out in the bird world that the binocular pervert who always stares at them while they’re bathing now has a camera? This Red-capped Robin-chat showed what she thought of me at the other birdbath. And this was while I was still shooting from long range!
Once I got the setup going, I soon noticed another small problem: My attention span! This is not really a sport for someone who hops from twig to twig and makes frequent forays to the fridge and/or the kettle. One olive sunbird has been spotted and photographed, small and blurry; moving fast and olive-greenish against an olive-greenish backdrop. Meantime various ostriches and vultures might have taken gulps while my attention was elsewhere. I wouldn’t know.
I can see I need auto-shoot with a movement detector so I can leave it and go to sleep and then see what happened in my absence. And so the drive for ever-more expensive equipment starts!
Other challenges: Battery life! After waiting a few hours the whole setup suddenly switches off: “Re-charge Battery” it commands. And mine only operates with wifi – I’ll need bluetooth to be able to do this in the wild, far from wifi.
So whenever you see a great bird picture, take your hat off to the patience, perseverance, skill and equipment required to get those shots!
I now remember the stories Neville Brickell used to tell me about how he got his bird pics. Something along these lines: He would find a spot where his target bird was likely to be. He would give a big bag of the right seed or feed to someone living nearby and ask them to put a handful out every day for a few weeks. He would set up a hide in a good position and place likely perches with good backgrounds. Later he would return, enter the hide and wait. If all went to plan he would get his picture! His resident feeder would be rewarded for that ultimate success so he had a reason to keep up the feeding. A lot of work and patience! Of course, he also sometimes caught birds and photographed them in cages with controlled light and backgrounds.
~~oo0oo~~
I finally started getting a few fun pics – better anyway than I could get with my little camera from my stoep 30m away. And I could play with the images:
– purple-crested turaco –
and I could zoom in:
Once when I was setting up, this Yellow-rumped Tinkerbird landed a metre away and asked What You Doin’? So I shot him right there, free-hand.
Now that I’ve sold my home and am wandering around, I really need to get going on an alternative system. Fingers crossed. One day . .
Update: I picked Lee Ouzman’s brain and our last thought was Get Another Cellphone and let them talk to each other. So for now I think that’s what I’ll do. I’ll need to mount one on my Manfrotto tripod . . .
Jess and I had a wonderful chill at Abba Game Lodge in the greater Waterberg, near Modimolle. No traveling to do, nowhere to go, we just chilled for four days. Jess enjoyed the attention and kindness shown her by the ladies who run the show, especially Chantel, who encouraged her to get out and about on the grounds, but couldn’t persuade her to swim in their heated pool. She did get some exercise wandering around searching for the wifi signal!
Took me a while to get used to the pitch black impala and pale, not quite pure white, blesbok roaming the grounds. Weird!
The road we took to get there from Bela Bela was rough; the road to Modimolle much easier, so we left that way, stopping for breakfast en route to Dinokeng, north of Pretoria.
When Jess hit seven weeks on her opioid addiction treatment – and seven weeks of enduring Dad – halfway to her goal of beating her last record, I said, ‘You Choose a Place To Stay Tonight Jess!’ like it was something new. She mostly did that for us anyway, using lekkeslaap.co.za or booking.com apps. But her budget was usually Under R1000 and this time – it wasn’t.
I thought, Here Comes a Luxury Game Lodge, I’m going to enjoy this, but no. It was a suite in The Lost Palace at Sun City:
As we walked into our room she knew she’d made the right choice: Dad! Look at the size of the TV! she grinned.
Anton used to tell me about the Baviaans with great excitement and enthusiasm. You gotta go there, Pete! Well I finally got there about thirty years later. After, when I got to Gqeberha I phoned my old colleague, now in Jo’burg, to tell him the valley was even better and more spectacular than he’d said!
The full Baviaanskloof route was a lot longer than I had thought; it was also far more rugged than I’d imagined; and it certainly was beautiful and spectacular, as Anton had shouted while also telling me how indestructible his old Toyota bakkie was. You know what Toyota groupies are like.
On the way we met Ian, farmboy from Ireland, put-putting through the kloof alone on his motorbike while slowly going round the world. Africa is his last continent and he’s doing it slowly and thoroughly with a puptent for a home. Made me feel overdressed, did Ian, what with my Ford Ranger and canopy tent!
We stayed at Zandvlakte farm in a lovely big cottage. Only after leaving there did I realise the friendly owner Magriet Kruger was the co-author of this magnificent newly published book! Aitch would have kicked me (and bought three copies!).
So we did *sometimes* go where the signs *sometimes* said Notice: Maybe You Shouldn’t.
We were rescued by friendly Damara ous in the Namib desert, by feisty ous in tight khaki shorts on Mocambican beaches, and by faithful Bahá’ís at their picnic on the Báb’s birthday on a Malawian beach. Bless em all.
You just gotta have faith ye shall be rescued.
– stuck in the Namib –– whenever I got stuck Aitch was out with the camera like a shot! – Zavora Bay, Mocambique –
I first heard about this lovely lodge on Jejane Private Nature Reserve“up towards the Olifants River area” way back last century from Rob, one of the early members. Now at last I got to visit, thanks to Carl and Mandy, co-owners with four other families – all farmers around Harrismith and Bergville.
It was everything I’d imagined and more; we had a lovely stay with game drives, lots of laughter, great meals, lots of beer, sunshine, lots of rain. Carl and I were on our best behaviour as we were outnumbered, Mandy having brought in three young lasses from her distant past to stand by her. All from GHS – Grey-headed Sparrows? Or was it PSGH – Posh School Girls Har? I dunno, don’t quote me. We sensibly didn’t have those kind of schools in the vrystaat. We had schools that you just went to till you were allowed to leave and you didn’t endlessly talk about them for decades afterwards.
Mandy is full of nonsense and I am well-behaved. She told this raucous crowd before I arrived that I was ‘a genius,’ so, having not been taught manners or etiquette at whatever school for ladies it was, they ripped the ring out of that handle. I suffered. Or maybe Miss Manners did try to teach them, but the four of them stuck their fingers in their ears and yelled na na na NA na?
These four cheekily nominated me Airfryer Fundi, pretending they didn’t know what to do with the machine; so I, the least experienced in any kitchen, pushed, pulled and stroked various knobs so they could cook dinner. That seemed to work. Meantime its really just always 180⁰ for 20mins, fullstop.
– impressive clouds came and went, rain and sunshine, rainbows every day –
The rain was lovely – not as hectic as in the Kruger Park next door, which had actually been closed down completely, if briefly. I got out just in time, driving from Berg en Dal camp in the SW corner of the park.
In Jejane, dams and pans that were mud puddles filled rapidly and overflowed. Streams rushed all over, threatening road crossings, but the level would soon drop and the roads remained good as the water soaked into the sand.
Paradise.
~~oo0oo~~
After Jejane I pulled into Waterval Boven on my way back to KwaZulu Natal, to an Inn I had visited years before. This time I had a less eventful stay. Quiet, early to bed.
The manne were curious at least, won’t say envious. Tom had caught five fish before the other ten or so anglers on the beach caught their first. Hey, Rasta! What bait are you using? Then they started catching too. And then the fish went off the bite. Tom only caught anther two. All small stone bream, he called them.
Maybe Tom had an advantage though? He had, after all, fished here before, in 2005:
This time he was his own gillie. No smelly fish bait for me.
Actually to Ondangwa, but that doesn’t sing like Tipperary.
So after I’d dug myself out of the hole on the – I now know – Bravo cutline 4X4 trail **, I headed due west past Okongo and Eenhana to Okatope, tiny towns, then south to Ondangwa, big town. A thought: Eenhana must feel so eensaam being in Northern Namibia and not starting with an ‘O.’ Do they apologise for this, I wonder? Like, jammer Oom . .
I was looking for wifi to do emails and banking but no go, so I kept moving, looking for a campground to stay, or a lodge if I had to. Didn’t find any. Drove on and on all the way to Omuthiya where I decided I’d have to reluctantly return to Ondangwa for a better chance of lodging, as the sun was setting, big dark storm clouds loomed and intermittent showers fell. A beautiful 🌈 rainbow shone to the South East.
The clouds got blacker and stormier and lightninger till the heavens opened, my windscreen wipers impotent against le deluge; and then an impressive thunder-crack switched off all the lights in Ondangwa. Taking this as an omen to stop being so stubborn, I tucked my tail between my legs and reluctantly checked into the Protea hotel, getting soaked carrying my stuff in even though I’d parked just ten metres from the door. Ja, ‘strue, this wimp checked into a soulless hotel with his camper parked at the door.
Oh well, hot water, warm bed and, when the lights came back on, wifi.
I was the only person in the large dining room for breakfast the next morning; the food was fine but the mood was ruined. Softly in the background they were playing Jingle Bells. In October. Or maybe it was November, was it? Gave me jingled bowels, it did.
On to Etosha, where wide open plains stretched as far as my eyes could see – literally. To the east there was a low line of trees in the far hazy distance, but to the west the grassland continued uninterrupted to the horizon. Herds of springbok, gemsbok and zebra scattered themselves about so as to look picturesque and Africa-y.
I had a good look around Namutoni camp. My last visit had been in 1986 and my first way back in 1969. The fort looked the same, but I think the camp behind it has grown.
Now my destination was Kakombo farm outside Omaruru, but first this ou had to drive through some more ‘O’s’ – Otavi and Otjivarongo.
Lee in Maun had recommended Rainbow River Lodge on the Kavango River near Popa Falls. It was great. Lodge owner Deon was welcoming and helpful. He took me boating to see Carmine Bee-eaters and the beautiful cataracts called Popa Falls.
Twice I drove south to Bwabwata Park, also on the right bank of the Kavango, downstream.
Back at Rainbow, I watched skeins of duck and geese fly downriver; and a mokoro paddle past, from my deckchair.
Hippo, crocs and otters in front of the riverbank campsites, plentiful birdlife. Rainbow Lodge is really worth a visit.
Next I’d be tracking the Kavango river upstream till it becomes the Cubango – the border between Namibia and Angola. I’d be getting my first-ever glimpse of Angola.
~~oo0oo~~
Bridges – I have since found out about all the new bridges that cross the two mighty rivers in the region, where before, ferries did duty.
Across the Cubango/Kavango/Okavango: In Namibia – At Rundu into Angola; At Divundu from Namibia into the Caprivi; In Botswana at Muhambo; I saw these three on my travels and got a distant pic of the Muhambo Bridge’s ‘elephant tusk’ supports looking south from Namibia’s Bwabwata park.
Across the Zambesi – At Katimo Mulilo from Namibia into Zambia; At Kazungula from Botswana into Zambia.
Just across the border I turned off into Bwabwata National Park which runs along the floodplain on the right bank of the Kavango river.
I should have posted sooner, as I have forgotten where – or if – I wrote a bird list for the drive. I do remember counting about 150 Marabou Storks mulling about on the ground while another 150 circled overhead. Fascinating birds.
