Locals know there’s no easy way to the main road from the river outside Janet’s place. Okes from Durban know better, so they venture off looking for a shortcut. Which ends up needing rescue, a towrope, mocking laughter, eye-rolling and getting to the tyre place an hour later than planned. Luckily, Janet’s old Mazda BT – a stablemate of my Ford Ranger and about the same vintage – is 4X4. All it needs is GPS, but despite the well-known Humphrey navigational challenges (Trish could get lost too), Janet did eventually find and rescue me. Easily. Damn. Ignominy.
At SupaQuik, Reggie and his men say they can fix me up with their eyes closed and one hand tied behind their back. All we have to do is bugger off to the Dusty Donkey for coffee and cake, and come back with a credit card.
– Dusty Donkey chook & chicks-
As we’re leaving the Donkey a roadside trader waves and makes a rolling motion while pointing at Janet’s left front wheel. Puncture. We hop out and deploy the jack and spanner and wooden base for the sand and start expertly changing the tyre like a Ferrari pitcrew. Good fortune makes my cap fall off as I bend down. The trader and his mate take one look at the whispy white hair surrounding the large pink bald spot and they gently nudge me aside and change the wheel for us. Ke a leboga borra!
Weg is ons back to Reggie where I exchange 3700 pula for two new tyres and we’re free to go, driving off feeling like I’m wearing brand new shoes.
~~oo0oo~~
Ke a leboga borra! – thank you gentlemen!
Weg is ons – beetle off
Feature pic – re-enactment of the humiliation. Jess forgot to take pics; she’s not cruel like her Ma
Janet has a lot of energy. A lot. Also, she knows her patch. So when she said in the pitch dark of way-too-early morning, ‘Please come and help me,’ you don’t argue. Shoes on, grab your torch and out into the chilly fullmoon morning. What us loafers would more accurately call the chilly fullmoon night.
‘There’s a puppy with its head stuck in the fence. Go there, I’m going round outside to behind it.’ You do as you’re told.
And so there was: A cute little blonde pup with its head poked through the bonnox wire; its head smaller than the hole, so it could easily have pulled back but was pushing forward, determined to get into the yard. Word must have got out that the lady at number 1414 is a softie who feeds and waters five cats, a mutt, ten thousand birds and sundry cattle, goats and donkeys.
Well, the pup was right. Once it got into the yard there was food and milk and four outraged and indignant cats. Mom! You’re not letting This Thing into paradise, are you? they sniffed at Janet.
Still way too early, we left on Janet’s power walk up and down the dry Thamalakane river with Muppet, the large hound with the small brain, most of the grey matter dedicated to enthusiasm, little to forethought. Raising dust as we strode towards, then away from, then back towards the sun, which had sensibly not risen yet. The full moon was still trying to set.
And at her heels was the new arrival, trotting along as if trained and long used to this. The walk was a good long one, up to Wilmot Island and down to Kagiso and back, but lil Puppy was relaxed and happy.
As we got back to Jan’s gate a young chap who told us his name was Gift met us and asked, ‘Have you seen a puppy? A female puppy?’ at which Puppy ran to him and rubbed against his ankles. Happy reunion and happy cats who muttered, ‘Damn Right, Be Off With You!’
Lucky for Puppy too, as while we thought she was a he, we had already planned his de-nackering.
Raintree Camp is just short of Shorobe, north of Maun. Janet and I, gaily chatting our heads off, woke up when we got to the fork-off to Kazakiini Camp, a good 26km past the turnoff. We pretended we knew all along and were just reconoittring the area. Jess was unimpressed at our u-turn. We had actually both noticed the Shorobe Basket Weavers sign, but hadn’t figured out that meant we were passing through that village!
While backtracking, we went straight back to yakking and solving the world’s problems, including the fact that the bakkie was pulling to the left as a result of the road camber and the thick sand on the left compared to the harder calcrete in the middle.
Which was actually neither of those things. It was because of a left front puncture. Our prolonged diagnosis meant the tyre was shredded by the time we stopped.
Jess then took a near-plumber’s crack picture, which resulted in her forfeiting supper last night.
Some young guys stopped to help, only to be told we had everything under control. Noticing some slight huffing n puffing, they ignored me and kindly loosened the wheelnuts with ease. Other than that, of course, everything was under control.
~~oo0oo~~
A short drive north of Raintree there’s a lagoon in the Thamalakane with water from the last rains. Yellow-billed Storks, Spoonbills, Hamerkops, a lone Pelican, a Saddle-bill Stork, flocks of Sandgrouse, Blacksmith Lapwings, and a large pod of Hippo. A mokoro poler with two passengers gave the hippos a wide berth, hugging the reedbed on the western shore.
Along the dry shore, Magpie Shrikes, White-crowned Shrikes, Meves Starling.
We had a lovely campsite under a raintree – lots of those here! – near to Janet’s safari tent. The third night I moved the bakkie next to her tent as I had brilliantly left a light shining all night, so needed to charge the aux batteries by plugging in to Botswana Power Corporation.
To complete my puncture and battery faux pas trifecta, I then moved the car, snapping the charging cable. f&#-it! Luckily, we were fully charged already, and the fridge’s two compartments were back down to 5⁰ and 0⁰C.
Raintree Camp is a lovely place with lovely people, big trees, great ablution facilities, a bar and a pool. We enjoyed our three day stay. Some of the tents are close to the road, so noise can be an occasional factor. New chalets are planned on the water side of the property, away from the road, owner Neil Kendrick told us. So do check it out if you’re headed that way. As a transit camp on the way to or from Moremi, it’s ideally located.
Yay! Camping in Khama Rhino, good to be back in Botswana. Jessie’s first visit. She lost her passport and has only just got round to getting a new one.
Pumping up the tyres after reducing pressure for the sandy and twisty roads in the camp:
Palapye Red VW DubDub Club?
Back at Janet’s place at last! The Tamalakhane River on her doorstep dry and dusty:
– Father’s Day – a big breakfast at Sitatunga Camp –
I paid and moved on after posing a big challenge to Swamp Stop’s sewerage system. I’d cooked wors, pap, steak and chicken high sosaties and it took two flushes to get rid of it. Did I say cooked? I mean eaten. Cecelia had cooked it. Also potatoes in foil, butternut and a salad. Her broad beam and broad smile had convinced me immediately that her offer of supper would surpass my intended cold baked beans straight outa the tin. And it did, it was delicious. I recommend the meals on offer at Sepupa Swamp Stop! At 200P it was quite expensive, but they have to source it, fetch it, store it, cook it, serve it, so I was happy to pay. No schlep, no washing up and way more variety and quantity that I would have had. Yum!
Two misbehaving teenage fishermen Peter and Ken (ages 75 and 79) were camped next to me the two nights I was there. I tried to get them to behave, but would they listen? Constant gin, beer, wine and tall tales of the bream they were going to catch. Next time. They did catch some fine tigers and barbel, and they poured a good gin, it must be said. But the bream remained promises while I was there.
They told frightening tales of the terrible A35 north road after I had said the road was fine. ‘No it’s not!’ said these drivers of a new Discovery, ‘It’s a nightmare! We couldn’t even go 70 / 75 towing this Conqueror off-road trailer!’ OK, I said, I admit I usually cruise slower than that, and no trailer; So the road was fine for me. Also, I was driving a 2007 Ford Ranger! They made the obligatory groans that all envious okes seem to do when I mention this fact. Always amazes me when Landrover victims think they know about things automotive.
When I left camp after breakfast (Cecelia’s scrambled eggs on toast) I thought, Can 154 Years of Experience be wrong? so I decided to dodge the now dreaded, newly notorious A35 and get to Nxamasere off the grid, taking a sand road parallel and nearer the Okavango’s western-most channel. ‘You can’t go that way!’ they told me in Sepupa village but I read somewhere, “All Roads Lead to Nxamasere,” so I felt confident. I think that’s what it said.
And I was right. It was a magic little bush track, smooth sand mostly, and winding along merrily, scratching my pristine 15yr-old paintwork only occasionally. After an hour I stopped for a pee in the cool shade of a magnificent Knob Thorn.
– so two magnificent knobs there then –
At times the road did seem to peter swanie out a bit, but it would re-appear, and every now and then blue concrete beacons marked ‘WP’ would appear reassuringly. I thought, If this route goes to Western Province I’m sure it goes through Namibia, and Nxamasere will be en route.
At Kajaja health post two men were building a house right on the road. They gave me a smile and a big wave so I asked them (quickly trying, but failing, to ask them a question that could not be answered ‘YES’).
‘NO,’ they said, You cannot get to Nxamasere this way, you have to take the tar road.’ OK, thanks, I said, I’m sure you’re right, but I am going to try. I’ll see you back here if I fail, to admit to you: You Were Right. They thought that was helluva funny. I started to move off and one said, ‘Wait! Let me ask Our Father.’ I bowed my head and closed my eyes but he meant his earthly father who was sitting on a chair under a shady tree behind the house they were building. ‘Dad!’ he shouted in fluent seTswana, ‘Can one get to Nxamasere this way? There’s an ancient white-haired goat here who is determined not to drive on tar.’ No, said our father, There is no way to Nxamasere that way. ‘Our father says No, there is no way to Nxamasere that way,’ said my man. OK, I said, I’m sure he is right, so I will come back if I get stuck and I will say to him, I admit: You Were Right.
The road meandered on vaguely northwards, maybe a bit more overgrown and a touch less confidently, but on it meandered nevertheless, with an occasional detour and only one bit of gardening needed where a tree had fallen across and needed a bit of branch breaking, a rope and a backward tug to make a gap. It was surrounded by elephant droppings so maybe those pachyderm foresters had felled it. Still a smooth sandy track, no corrugations, hard enough to not deflate my tyres; occasionally a patch of calcrete which made me think maybe this was the old great north road before the A35? Second gear 30kmh; Third gear 40kmh at times.
Then it did peter out. I took a left detour but that turned back towards Kajaja; a right detour went downhill towards the channel and ran into some dongas where lots of sand had been extracted. They call them ‘borrow pits’ – I think that is seTswana for ‘quarry.’
Defeat.
I arrived back in Kajaja with a grin and my men grinned back. Our father waved from under the tree. You Were Right, I said, triggering laughter again, and made my way with my exhaust pipe between my legs to the tar.
And Peter and Ken were right. The A35 tar road was bladdy awful. Smooth; Straight; Wide; Boring.
Even this donkey felt my disappointment, as you can see if you zoom in on his ass. Terrible road.
Up in the northwest of Botswana a magnificent river enters the country. Called the Cubango in Angola, the Kavango in Namibia and the Okavango in Botswana, it’s in the top twelve longest and biggest rivers in Africa. Unusual in that it doesn’t reach the sea. Instead, it discharges into the Kalahari Desert and forms the famous Okavango Delta. I have been into that stunning Delta on numerous occasions, but I had never visited “the panhandle.” Till now.
Swamp Stop is a well-known camp which bills itself as the gateway to the Okavango Delta. It’s up in NW Botswana near Sepupa village, about 50km south of the Namibian border.
The camp has been around since Bobby Wilmot’s days and they know exactly what is needed. They have friendly people, a long shady bar, a lovely deck overlooking the channel, a restaurant providing good grub, two cool pools, chairs and tables under cover and under the trees, and accommodation ranging from comfy chalets to great campsites. And much more, I’m sure. Boats for hire to get into the Delta, for instance.
Drotsky’s Cabins is another well-known stop a bit further north near the bigger town of Shakawe. The campsites are splendid. Huge trees and lots of birds and animals on the riverbank. Including a very horny donkey Jack complaining loudly – and for hours! – that the Jenny of his desires was being mean to him. Meantime, she was just ignoring his bleating horniness.
Lee organised his umpteenth trip to the CKGR – the Central Kalahari Game Reserve – and my first! His frequent fellow-travelers Hans and Karina joined him on their annual visit from the Netherlands; as did Dwayne the pilot; he also invited Janet – and me! At last, a trip to a long-desired destination.
We headed east to Makalamabedi, then south along a long cutline to Motsware gate. On to Deception Pan. Kori campsite No.2 I think.
– water attracts all sorts of creatures to camp –
Day trips in Lee and Dwayne’s Toyotas to Owen’s camp for sundowners; Sundays Pan – water pumped; Campsite on dune for brunch – delish; Leopard Pan.
Struggling to get a deckchair back into its bag, Lee says he knows why. At the factory in Australia the worker asks, Where’s This Batch Going? Suffefrica, says the foreman. Right, make the bags 10% smaller, they all shout in unison.
(A re-post with added pictures, as I throw out paper photo albums after copying and uploading. Major un-cluttering happening as I prepare my home for the past sixteen years for sale. Next chapter about to begin!)
Another trip to the Delta!
Aitch and I flew from Maun to Xudum in August 2001 when Janet & Duncan were helping Landela Safaris run their show. We landed on the nearby bush strip. We had been before, in January 2000. This post has pictures from both trips.
– Maun airport heading for Xudum –– . . . in the Xudum area, east of the Sandveldt Tongue –– Xudum landing strip in high water – a 2020 picture –
After a few days in camp they had business in Maun and we accompanied them on the drive out of the Delta to Maun in the Land Cruiser. Rickety bridges, deep water crossings with water washing over the bonnet onto the windscreen.
On the drive back to camp after the day in the big smoke of the metropolis of Maun we entered a Tamboti grove and saw two leopard cubs in the road. They split and ran off to left and right, then ran alongside of us on either side for a minute calling to each other before we moved off and let them be.
We enjoyed mekoro trips, game drives & walks and afternoon boat trips stretching into evenings watching the sunset from the boat while fishing for silver catfish or silvertooth barbel – I forget what they called them. Later, wading in thigh-deep water sorting out the pumps, earning my keep as a guest of the lodge managers. Only afterwards did I think hmm, crocs.
Visited Rann’s camp for lunch where Keith and Angie Rowles were our hosts. That’s where we first heard the now-common salute before starting a meal: “Born Up a Tree.”
Janet moved us from camp to camp as guests arrive, filling in where there were gaps in other camps. We transferred by boat, mekoro or 4X4 vehicle. One night we stayed in a tree house in Little Xudum camp.
Lazy days in camp drinking G&T’s
Here’s Trish’s paper album – photographed and discarded:
~~~oo0oo~~~
Later Xudum was taken over by super-luxury company ‘&Beyond.’ OTT luxury, and R15 000 per person per night! Very different to the lovely rustic – but still luxurious – tented camp it was when we were there. Should ‘conservationists’ really be using miles of glass and wooden decking and flooring in the bush!? Methinks rich spoilt children are doing the designing for Daddy’s company and perspective has flown out the canvas-zip window and crashed into the plate glass floor-length picture window.
In May 2019 it burnt down. Had it been rustic there’d have been less pollution from the fire and the rebuild, methinks.
On our trip up north in 2003 Aitch and five year old Jessie kept a diary; when they got home they made this picture album as a memento of the trip. Enjoy the slideshow!
(Slides change every four seconds. To pause a slide, click in the top right corner. To speed it up or to go back, swipe, or use the arrows).
Last year Maun received none of the floodwaters that usually arrive in winter. The summer rains in Angola 1000km to the north had been poor, and the flood just didn’t get right through the Okavango Delta to Maun; Well below average summer rainfall added to the drought. Rainy season is December to March in Angola and Botswana. So this winter, as word got out that the highlands in Angola had had good summer rain, and knowing that local rainfall had been above average, filling the pans and raising the underground water table, word got out that the flood was a big one and there was a lot of excitement in town.
Everybody who’s like me (!) followed the progress of the water flowing south with great interest. The levels are monitored as the mighty Okavango leaves Namibia and enters Botswana and spreads out into its beautiful delta in the Kalahari desert.
The highlands in central Angola is where the water is coming from – 1000km north as the crow flies. Rain that fell in January and February is reaching Maun in May. It travels the first 700km in about a month, then slows down as it spreads out in a fan in its dryland delta on the sands of the Kalahari.
– Maun is left (west) of the number 1 below the B of Botswana –
The focus of the townspeople of Maun was when the floodwaters would reach Old Bridge. My main focus was when it would reach little sis Janet’s home 13km further downstream. We started getting updates when the headwaters of the flood reached the Boro river, which flows into the Thamalakane.
– there’s Maun and its airstrip – the flood is about 21km from the Tamalakhane river confluence –
Monitoring the incoming flood was Hennie Rawlinson, a neighbour two doors down from Janet in Tsanakona ward. Janet’s lovely cottage on the river is the feature pic above. Hennie had the inspired idea to turn the event into a fundraiser for WoMen Against Rape and the Polokong center by allowing people to follow him daily as he tracked the headwaters. On average the flood moves about 2km per day, but that’s a huge variable, depending on the terrain, the foliage and the water table, the porousness of the sand its moving over, how much its channeled or spread out at that point, etc. Even in a river bed, where it moves quicker, it will reach a pool and have to fill that up before overflowing and moving on. So there can be long hours of ‘no progress’ – no forward progress, that is.
– watch the waters flowing steadily South Eastward in the Boro river towards the Tamalakhane river which flows South Westward towards Maun –
Hennie traveled into the Delta fringe to find the headwaters. Here’s one of his videos:
Then the water reached the confluence of the Boro and the Thamalakane! Great day! But wait! It headed NORTH East! It had to fill up a few pools and only then did it push South East towards Maun.
– 8 May and the headwaters reach the confluence of the Boro with the Tamalakhane – that was quicker, mostly in a riverbed now –
Much excitement as the water past under the high new bridge across the Thamalakane and approached Old Bridge, a historic landmark with a backpackers and pub just downstream of it on the left bank; and the site Hennie had chosen for his ‘Finish Marker.’ Other denizens of Maun also awaited the flood:
Finally the time came when the pool before Old Bridge started filling up and Hennie decided the flood would flow under it that night. He and a few others got permits to be up all night on the bridge as Maun was under corona virus stay-at-home orders like most places.
– the late night vigil with friends and crocodiles –
They waited all night, along with a crocodile or two. The water took a couple hours longer, and arrived in the wee hours of the next morning:
The fundraiser: The Rawlinsons tallied up all the donations and announced: The final amount we have raised is: P50 511 – We will be handing the money over to WoMen Against Rape and the Polokong center this week. The winner who guessed the time the water would arrive was James Stenner and that couldn’t have been luckier, as he had pledged the prize – a chopper flight over the Delta – to three deserving people of his choice who are involved in research on the delta but have never flown over it! What a mensch! He runs luxury mobile safaris – have a look at his website.
From the air you could see more: the flood was approaching. That’s ‘Wilmot Island’ in the riverbed in the distance – dry – water arriving – water filling up. Over the course of just three days. Janet’s home is in the lower left corner just out of picture.
Wilmot Island – Thamalakane river
On the ground her view changed from the one above to:
One of her neighbours in Tsanakona ward made a collage of the view from his gate:
In dry times the river is a road and many streets cross straight across it. When the flood arrives you have to cross at the three big bridges:
And so Maun celebrates and heaves a huge sigh of relief. Residents flocked to the waters, welcoming it and scooping up some from the very front of the headwaters to take home. Pula!! The waters have arrived!
~~~oo0oo~~~
Of course the water doesnt stop till it has evaporated, sunk into the Kalahari sand or been pumped out and used by us humans. It carries on! Onward towards the Boteti and Nhabe rivers, with their endpoints in Lake Xau and Lake Ngami respectively. There it does stop. Those are lowpoints and there’s nowhere else to go.
I may post on that. The headwaters have already reached the split where the Boteti flows SE and the Nhabe SW.
Read how the Okavango may just be the site where humankind originated! Latest mitochondrial research moves the probable origin site of the direct ancestors of people alive today. Fascinating work by an Aussie scientist.
There are about 6000 species of hoverfly. They disguise themselves as wasps but they’re harmless little buggers and they do a great deal of good pollinating and eating pests like aphids. They love flowers and nectar so they hang around lovely perfume-smelling things:
A rose by any other name on the deck at Mogotlho Lodge
My cellphone pics and videos of the Khwai River hoverfly weren’t great so I didn’t post this until my ex-Saffer-turned-Kiwi, now in Aussie, mate Stephen Charles Reed sent a better picture of a Brisbane hoverfly.
– Steve’s pic you can see the wings – – cropped for a closer view –Stunning Hoverflies
They are amazing hoverers! They can hold dead still in mid-air and then flick to another spot in any direction, zip! just like that. They can do anything mid-air:
. . . even get it on! If that’s the female below, she’s like Ginger Rogers, who could do everything Fred Astaire did, backwards and in high heels!
~~~~~ooo000ooo~~~~~
All this made me go looking and I found a new hero. Fredrik Sjöberg lives on Runmarö Island in Sweden and looks for hoverflies, butterflies, beetles and anything that else that might flit by. He wrote a wonderful book on hoverflies, life the universe and everything which his publishers thought might sell 1600 copies in five years. Well, he sold 30 000 and has since published it in numerous other countries! Then – I told you he’s my hero – he won the IgNobel Prize for Literature in 2016!!
IgNobel LITERATURE PRIZE [SWEDEN] — Fredrik Sjöberg, for his three-volume autobiographical work about the pleasures of collecting flies that are dead, and flies that are not yet dead. REFERENCE: The Fly Trap is the first volume of Fredrik Sjöberg’s autobiographical trilogy, En flugsamlares väg (“The Path of a Fly Collector”), and the first to be published in English. Pantheon Books, 2015, ISBN 978-1101870150.
We humans finally started to learn how to hover in 1907 when the French brothers Breguet flew the Gyroplane No.1 quadcopter about 0.61 m above ground for a minute. Hoverflies all around the world laughed at us.
It has gone wimpish! Actually Oddballs Palm Island Luxury Lodge is still a wonderful, more affordable way to see the Okavango Delta and this post must be taken with a pinch of salt; My tongue is in my cheek;
This is classic “The Good Old Days Was Better” bulldust. As my friend Greg Bennett says, ‘The older we get the better we were.’
When WE went in 1993 (‘the olden daze’) we had to take our own food! And that ain’t easy when there’s a 10kg limit on the Cessna 206’s; because one naturally has to take binoculars, a spotting scope, a tripod, a camera and books:
I exaggerate, these were Jessie’s books for her field guide course last year, but still: weight. So we took very little food. At Oddballs we bought their last potatoes and onions in the supply store, and then we pitched our tent. Not like these wimpish days when the tent is semi-permanent, pitched for you on a wooden deck with shower en-suite!! Here’s THEN and NOW:
– re-arranging the furniture outside our bedroom –
en-suite bathroom!!? -No-o!!
– me in the wonderful communal showers –
Here’s Aitch snoozing inside an old Oddballs Palm Island Luxury Lodge bedroom. And the wimpish new arrangement! Aargh!
Luckily, the rest is still the same! You head out on a mokoro with a guide who really knows his patch: Our guide was Thaba Kamanakao – Delta legend.
You pitch your own tent on an island without anyone else in sight:
And you enjoy true wilderness. When you get back, Oddballs really does seem like a Palm Island Luxury Lodge:
There’s a bar, there’s cold beer, gin and tonic and ice. You can order a meal! And – NOWADAYS! – a double bed is made up for you, ya bleedin’ wimps!
With all due respect to Moremi, Chobe and Makgadikgadi, the birds you can see in and around Maun give them a good go for their m$ney. In fact, pound-for-pound or especially dollar-per-bird, Maun wins hands-down. Especially when you’re staying in your little sis’ house, eating her food and driving her car!
So here’s a good recipe for Best Botswana Birding: Don’t just land in Maun and buzz off elsewhere! Rather stay in this lovely home:
Drive this superb 4X4. With 400 000km of all-Botswana roads experience on the clock, it didn’t even need much steering:
and bird the immediate vicinity:
– Janet’s lovely home on the Tamalakhane in the Tsanakona suburb of Maun –
Here are some of the birds seen in and around Janet’s home and along the Tamalakhane where she walks her dogs. Forty one shown, but there were more.
Added bonus: Visit the spots like The French Connection, Miguel’s Place, Tshilli Cafe, Island Safari Lodge along the river – and Ann’s CinemaMultiPlex for breakfast. Wonderful food and they all serve alcohol! What more could you want?
But the best and best-value meals are found here: Janet’s cottage in the salubrious Tsanakona suburb and Bev’s cottage in the salubrious, upmarket and fashionable Disaneng suburb. Neither had vegetarian-only or no-alcohol policies. Um, actually quite the contrary!
On a drive out towards the Boro River Janet and I stopped at a flooded grassland and watched a bird party frolicking on three little acacia trees, constantly dropping down to the ground then flying back into these small thorn trees. We wondered what the attraction was. Here’s the spot: Most of the action was in that small acacia dead-centre, behind the foxglove (help me here) stem.
Twenty three species within half an hour! It got quite “Shu’ Up! Another One?” Here are fourteen of them (Lee Ouzman pics mostly).
These two black birds were mingling with the unsuspecting colourful hosts that they parasitise! Like, your spouse’s lover has come to supper . .
The Indigobird was a LIFER for me! Long time since I nailed a lifer.
– turquoise marks the spot –
When we were about to leave we strolled over to the spot to see what the huge attraction was for such a variety of birds. It was crystal clear water in some deepish tyre tracks. That’s it!
Here’s some other stuff as we searched for the Boro – and there’s the lily to prove that we found it. How’s the height of that termitarium? Janet is not tall, but that’s still some structure!
– little things – and a termitarium –
Yet another advantage to having a little sis who’s a nineteen-year Maun veteran is she can sweet-talk curmudgeons into showing you their patch. So we ended up one morning walking the Tamalakhane flood plains in Disaneng guided by an old bullet with a long lens after drinking free coffee here:
– Ouzman hideaway – rich in biodiversity . . and some rooms –
Imagine if he got a wife how she’d make him smarten up that stoep, nê!? Despite the low-key decor, the coffee’s top-notch.
We saw three of these birds plus a bat hawk flying. These are his pics, but from his website. His lovebirds he shot in Namibia, but we saw a few in his garden that morning! Escapees? Or had they followed him home?
Read about the history of Maun here where Lee Ouzman has more old photos like the one on top of Maun ca.1985 when I first visited this Kalahari metropolis, and he arrived – to stay.
From Maun we ventured North-east to Mogotlho and back to Maun; then south-west to Khumaga and back to Maun. Both trips in that fine Toyota skorokoro 4X4.
~~oo0oo~~
While I was there I was covered by these good people, thanks to Janet! For a very reasonable fee you can buy air rescue cover for a whole year.
The Tamalakhane River runs south-west out of Maun and when it turns east it’s called the Boteti. After a while it runs southward forming the western boundary of the huge Makgadikgadi-Nxai Pans National Park.
At Kumagha village there’s a gate into the park. When the river has water in it a ferryman carries you across, one vehicle at a time.
– our ferryman is Tiaan, Kalahari character –
We were guests at Tiaan’s Camp as Tiaan is looking for someone to help him start a new admin system and Janet’s just the person to do that. I got lucky as they decided she needed to visit him to check out the camp and discuss how Janet’s consultancy could run the project for him. Tiaan is a character. He was once a diplomat although you would never guess that in a game of Twenty Questions. Nor in game of One Hundred and Twenty Questions.
Tiaan has run mobile safaris in Zambia, Botswana and Zululand among many other places. He has been involved in lodges on the Delta panhandle and has now settled in Khumaga village in a camp he built himself with comfy chalets, lovely campsites, a crystal-clear swimming pool and a huge central building housing an open dining area, an open raised deck overlooking the Boteti where 22 elephants came to bathe the afternoon we arrived.
AND he operates a cool bar run on the honour system. You know, gooi and skryf.
– gin n tonic n eles –
He has a delightful accent, a mischievous laugh, speaks three languages well, and has an amazing store of tales from brain surgery to government service to building in Botswana and Jakobsbaai on the Cape West Coast; to safaris, interesting guests, religion, Land Rovers (he’s afflicted with six of them), philosophy and fascinating animal stories. Maybe he does have a diplomatic side, but he keeps it well-camouflaged.
He took us on a game drive in one of his Land Rovers – and we didn’t even break down – so he could show us his knowledge of and love for his patch, the very southern end of the great Okavango Delta, just before the waters from Angola sink into the Kalahari sand for the very last time at Lake Xau.
The next day Janet and I took her old Toyota – now well over 400 000km on the clock – into the park along the green Boteti river valley. The water was dropping so the ferryman had me move the Toyota forward a couple metres, then back a couple metres on the ferry to rock it across the shallows. We found plenty of interesting little things to photograph, and only got stuck in the deep sand once.
In between all this there were the gin n tonics, whiskies, beers and Tiaan’s home-made absinthe, generously dispensed – the absinthe gratis on the wonderful Tiaan system of “Have another and listen to this . . . !”
Interesting birds included Double-banded Sandgrouse, Acacia Pied Barbet, Hoopoe, Crimson-breasted Boubou, a young Verreaux’s Eagle-Owl, Pin-tailed and Shaft-tailed Whydahs, Red-faced Mousebird, Bateleur, Pale Chanting Goshawk, Blue-cheeked, European and Little Bee-eaters, Meyers Parrot, Goliath Heron and a Grey-backed Camaroptera who clacked at me fourteen times!* Here in KwaZulu Natal they usually clack five to seven times. Here are some Lee Ouzman pics from his website:
– Lee Ouzman pics –
Before this leg of the trip we had been to Mogotlhong.
~~~oo0oo~~~
gooi and skryf – honour system in a bar: pour your dop and write it down, you’ll be billed later
dop – grog
*record broken now. A camaroptera clicked at me 29 times in Mtwalume, KZN!
Straight after posting this I got a gotcha! email from Janet in Maun: Ha! Now I’ve got you! Stop procrastinating and VISIT!
So I have booked to go to Botswana in March after years of procrastinating. That is, Janet’s friend Bronwyn arranged a great price and booked. The 14th of March.
YES! Can’t wait!
~~oo0oo~~
Later: And what a trip it was! See here and here and here.
Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique via Botswana. We only had a bit more than a month, so not as leisurely as we would have liked. Can hardly believe it was fourteen years ago – 2003! The kids are now 19 and 15!
Mostly we drove at a leisurely pace and didn’t do great distances. We did put in a long day of driving on four stretches, which allowed us to chill on other days: Lusaka to Chipata in Zambia; Blantyre in Malawi to Tete in Mocambique; Tete to Vilanculos in Mocambique, and lastly Zavora to Nelspruit back in South Africa were all long-hauls. On those days we left early with the kids strapped in and sleeping. We’d drive for hours before breakfast. Aitch always had food or entertainment for them.
– TomTom and Stripey enjoying lunch – life is good! –
For the rest our days were unhurried. Slowly with the windows down, as we didn’t use the aircon. Anyway, speeding and potholes are not a good combination. At places we liked we’d stay up to three nights. Each of our five three-night stays felt like a complete holiday on its own. The Bushman off-road trailer proved its worth at every stop, unfolding like a luxury Bedouin oasis, replete with shade, cold fridge, lounge chairs, books, binocs, groaning tables, food and drink. Next time, belly dancers.
Waterberg, South Africa
– the only time we needed the awning – Waterberg trees were see-through –
Zambia
On through Botswana and to the Zambian border at Kasane where a ferry carries you over the Zambesi. One of the ferries had dropped a big truck overboard and got damaged, so only one was in operation, which slowed things down. Took about four hours and we were safely across the Zambezi river in Zambia. Tommy took to the “fewwy” in a big way and called all boats fewwies for a while. The battered and half-drowned second ferry and truck and trailer were visible looking sad at the side of the riverbank. The border post was pleasant enough. They charged us more for our “minibus” and tut-tutted sympathetically at my exaggerated protests that this was not a fee-earning taxi, but just our vehicle! Laughingly insisted “Well, sir, it’s the rules.” Had a good chuckle and they wished us well in their country.
In Livingstone we camped on the grounds of the Maramba River Lodge. It was full, so we squeezed in near the gate – not the best site, but quite OK. Lovely pool again. Drove to the falls at daybreak where a vervet monkey snatched Jess’ breakfast apple out of her hand. Our first sight of the falls from the Zambian side. Spectacular and different, showing the interesting rock face with the very low flow.
We drove to Taita Lodge on the very lip of the Batoka Gorge downstream of the falls overlooking where we had rafted years before. A warm welcome and a great lunch on the deck hanging over the river. Ice-cold beer, great sarmies. Looked for Taita Falcons, saw Verreaux’s (Black) eagles soaring below. Tom & Jess banging on the dinner drum and xylophone was un-musical, but no other guests around, so no one minded – in fact the staff loved the brats and spoilt them with attention. I thought I’d better step up and perform, as Aitch had been doing all the lessons and homework, so I taught them Cheers! Salut! and Prost! Life skills.
Whoa!
On the way out of Livingstone we hit the best section of road we saw on the whole trip – brand new wide black tar with centre white stripe and side yellow lines! Amazing!
The road was in fact so smooth that the ole kombi fainted. And died. Stat. Not a shudder or a hiccup first. Just suddenly nothing. That much-dreaded “CAR TROUBLE” silence thing! Well, after 197 000km I spose it’s OK. All my mechanical skills, like turning the key repeatedly while muttering fierce incantations, didn’t work. So I hopped out and unpacked the back where I had heard kombis hide their engines. Lifted the lid to stare at that thing. That’s my other mechanical trick: I stare at and swear at engines. I’ve sworn at sumps too, in my time.
Some school kids walked up and said Don’t worry, they know a mechanic at the nearby village, and the toothy one on the battered bicycle offered to go and call him. Sure, I said, not hopefully. “JP” from Gauteng, on his way to service some big crane, stopped his rented car and kindly offered his assistance. Soon he was joined (I was amazed) by Carl the mechanic, who had indeed been summoned by those schoolkids. He had a metal toolbox on his shoulder, and between the two of them they peered, prodded, unscrewed, fiddled – and broke the distributor cap! Using mostly my tools and swallowing the ice-cold drinks I passed them, they eventually gave up. ‘Must be something computerised in one of these little black boxes’ was their verdict. Right!
‘There’s a VW agent in Lusaka’ says Carl cheerfully. Right! 200km away. As they’re about to leave, Carl spots a loose wire under near the sump. Kombis have sumps, ja? Finds another loose end of a wire and joins the two. Vrooom! I mean, VROOOM! Apparently the wire was from a cutout switch to a heat sensor in the block. The kombi roared to life to tremendous applause! Well, four of us cheered. JP said ‘My pleasure’, Carl said ‘R200’, I said ‘Bargain’, Trish and the kids said ‘Thank you!’ and we were on the road again!
Next stop Lochinvar National Park at the south end of the Kafue National Park. We’d never heard of it but saw it on the map. Quite a bumpy road got us to the gate after dark. ‘Sorry, but you can’t go in’, said the soldier with a gun. ‘Sorry, but I have to’, said me. ‘You see, I can’t let these little kids sleep out here and nor can you, so hop onto your radio and explain that to your main man’. Back he came – ‘Sorry. The main man says the gate is closed’. ‘You just didn’t explain it to him nicely enough’ I said – ‘Please tell him I can’t, you can’t and he can’t leave a 22 month old baby sleeping in the sticks’. Off he went and back he came. ‘The main man will meet you at the camp inside’. ‘You’re a marvel, well done, thank you!’ we shouted and drove in on a 4km free night drive in Lochinvar. No animals, but some nightjars.
We slept in the kombi. Next day we sorted out our fairly primitive campsite, saw the ablutions were out of commission, so rigged up our own shower. Nice big trees to hang it from.
– that ablution hut not working –
Lochinvar – Scottish name, one sposes – has beautiful flood plain lakes on the Kafue river in the middle of dry surroundings.
In Lusaka we found that VW agency. They told us replacing the cracked distributor cap was no problem whatsoever, they could do it with one hand tied behind their back. In fact they’d have a new one ready for us in a mere two weeks when a spares delivery was due. We drove on.
South Luangwa National Park in Zambia was my main destination of the whole trip – I had read about it for decades. It was everything and more I imagined. What a river! Flatdogs Camp just outside the park was a blast, too. Big shady trees, a hearty meal available in their casual restaurant if you didn’t want to cook, we didn’t – pizzas or burgers – and a swimming pool with a home-made painted cement slide. Jess loved it so much she wore a big hole right through the bumular zone of her cozzie.
There we met an American Mom with three kids. She’d married a Zambian man in the USA and had shipped over a converted yellow school bus to tour around Zambia.
– the three ZambiYanks with Jess n Tom –
Then into the park – South Luangwa Park! – a long-awaited dream. It was terrific. Saw puku antelope for the first time.
– Thornicrofts giraffe looked huge, but zoom back and the sausage tree dwarfed him –
To get there we had to drive from Chipata town – that dreaded road we’d been warned against! Well, the grader had been a few days ahead of us and it turned out to be one of the smoothest stretches of gravel on our whole trip!
– travelling tinker –
On to Malawi
As you approach big water – the sea especially, but here it was a big lake – you encounter more and more sand. Deeper and deeper sand, which 2WD vehicles towing trailers sometimes have ever-so-slight problems negotiating. So it was that even before we first caught sight of Lake Malawi I got that uh oh! feeling, accelerated but no go, I was slightly stuck in sand in a park in a village. I hopped out to let down my six tyres, thinking A: Why were you lazy, you should have done so earlier; and B: Because I use a manual pump and it’s hard work getting back up to tar road pressure in hot weather. But just then I was saved ! Religion saved me!
A few young people from a nearby big group who were watching me ran up: “No, no. Don’t worry. Hop back in. We’ll push you out!” Turns out they were Bahá’í Faith folks having a picnic on a day of religious significance to them (maybe the Birth of the Báb in 1819?). They believe in World Peace. Me too, brothers! I firmly believe in three chief tenets: World Peace, Friendly Pushes and not having to Re-inflate Tyres – long-held convictions! Handshakes and good wishes all round when I stopped on firmer ground.
Our destination was Chembe village on the shores of Lake Malawi, Monkey Bay and the famous Cape Maclear, where we had snorkeled some ten years earlier. On the way I provided more entertainment to my appreciative family. A steep hill got the better of our 2.3 litre 4 cylinder petrol engine as I had been dawdling, birding and tree-spotting. The old kombi just couldn’t drag the Bushman any further. I had run out of steam, even in first gear. My bad. I pulled up the handbrake, hopped out, pulled up the trailer brake, unhitched and swung the trailer round manually using its handbrake, and faced it downhill. Now the kombi was a powerful beast without the brick on its butt, so I could drive it down, reverse up to the Bushman, re-hitch and retreat back down the hill. Then I found a place wide enough to turn my rig around and take a run at the hill – easy this time. Fine when you’re focused!
Aitch’s goal was the freshwater snorkelling off Mumbo island in Lake Malawi, cichlid fishes, and bats and swifts in a water cave.
– Stephens’ Ace Luxury Lakeside Lodge. Deluxe – or was it Emmanuel’s? –
Emmanuel’s had a vacancy so we booked in for a few days. Fair-minded people will agree with my assessment of it as ‘luxury’ but Aitch veto’d that and stuck it firmly under ‘basic with roof,’ even though the shower was almost en-suite. She insisted on ‘basic’ even when I reminded her that, unlike ten years ago, no cockroach had run up the outside of the mozzie net here. Some people are just hard to please . .
– true confessions, I airbrushed my boep out of this pic –
Outside the room, Aitch was in heaven. This was her main destination:
– thar she blows –
Mocambique
Leaving Malawi we crossed the wide Zambesi at Tete, where we stayed in a motel on the right bank as we wanted to head straight off the next morning. Probably Aitch’s least favourite lodgings of the trip – mozzies and an empty swimming pool. Leaving town two garages had no petrol. They said the word was that the town on the far bank had, so we crossed back over the Zambesi, filled up and crossed back again. The kombi liked that! What a bridge! What a river!
Then, after a long day’s drive, our biggest luxury – three nights at Vilanculos Beach Lodge. Sea, sand, a bar, lovely food, huge soft beds, friendly staff. Especially João, who spoiled the kids rotten. They thought he was a wizard, as he had this magic trick, writing up cooldrinks to our room number!
We took a boat to Bazaruto Island and then on to Two Mile reef offshore in the big Indian Ocean. Lake Malawi and Bazaruto were Aitch’s main snorkeling destinations and she LOVED them both! Two-Mile reef really is ‘like an over-stocked aquarium.’
Two Mile Reef, two miles east of Bazaruto Island off Vilanculos, Mocambique
Zavora Bay near Inharrime. Stunning lakes and a wi-ide bay; A reef at the point, so you can walk in and snorkel in sheltered water for a kilometre; Lovely cottages – houses, really, on top of the dunes overlooking the bay. Our best find in Mocambique. We hadn’t heard about it before and we fell in love with it. We agreed: “We MUST come back here one day!”
Ponta Zavora, Mocambique
One Child, One Beach
Here’s where the kids got sick. We tested them – high positive readings for malaria. Looking back, we suspected the one night we had let them stay up after sunset at a shebeen on the banks of the Zambezi in Zambia – parents drinking alcohol and enjoying the music and laughter, irresponsible louts. Luckily the Zavora lodge owner gave us Coartem pills which we fed them – Tom took some persuading, pursing his lips tightly at first. Early next morning we set off for South Africa. A stop at a pharmacy and clinic in Xai Xai and a stop at ‘the ex-pats clinic’ in Maputo only scored us some anti-inflammatories.
– Jess & Jabu, not happy –– Tom, not happy –
When we got to Nelspruit/Mbombela hospital they tested all clear! The Coartem had done its job perfectly. No parasites detected! Phew! We spent another night there just to be near the hospital. A day trip to Kruger was enjoyed by the kids who seemed to be saying, What’s The Fuss?
Our last overnight before getting home to Westville was a quick stop at Badplaas. Indoor hot water pools and garish plastic slides in red, green, blue and yellow. So fake after all the natural wonders we had seen, right? Jess said, Mom! This is the BEST place we’ve been! Oh boy, holidays are gonna be different going forward, I thought . .
Two Memory Highlights:
Firstly, the rivers – stunning! The Limpopo, Chobe, Zambezi, Kafue, Luangwa, Shire, the Zambezi again (at Tete it’s wi-i-ide and beautiful), the Save and the Limpopo again, were all magnificent and welcome and we stopped and stared. South Africa has some lovely rivers, but these seemed wider, swifter-flowing and often clearer. I love rivers.
Secondly, the friendly people. Everywhere we went we were helped and fussed over and we heard laughter and “No Problem!”, and quite often, as in SA: “Are these your children?” I love people.
Accommodation: We camped 14 nights; Basic shelter with roof 6 nights (better than it sounds, Aitch!); Comfy lodgings 7 nights (luxury!); Spoiled ourselves with super-luxury 5 nights; The last two involve food brought to you ready-cooked and dishes magically disappearing, never to be seen again. I say that’s lukshury with a Capital KSH!
Duration: Five 3-night stays; Three 2-night stays; Eleven 1-night stands;
~~oo0oo~~
Cook’s Tour: Thomas Cook (1808 – 1892) was an English businessman best known for founding the organised travel industry. In 1855 he took two groups on a ‘grand circular tour’ of Belgium, Germany and France, ending in Paris for the Exhibition. The expression ‘A Cook’s Tour’ was humorously used for any rapid or cursory guided tour: Like, “If it’s Tuesday, this must be Belgium.”
