(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.
Tea on the patio was a pantomime with five vervet youngsters playing tag and hide-and-seek in my meadow using branches, the birdbath and the semi-engulfed garden bench as their staging posts.
Then as they left, two banded mongooses arrived:
and the White Pear showed up nicely. Apodytes dimidiata Trish got from Geoff Caruth’s Geoff’s Jungle
izilwane – (wild) animal/s. Phinda game reserve started as Phinda Izilwane – ‘the return of the wild animals.’ We’ve been missing our monthly jaunts up to Zululand in this COVID lockdown time. Jessie asked yesterday ‘Dad, when can we go to Mfolosi again?’
One consolation: I have been added to the whatsapp groups that share sightings in Mkhuze and in Hluhluwe-Mfolosi reserves. Now the reserves are closed they’re sharing past pictures. Beautiful.
– whatsapp groups of Zululand reserves – pics over the years –
And I sent in some of mine taken over the years
– some pics I have taken in Hluhuwe, Mfolosi and Mkhuze reserves over time –
Later we go on a night game drive in an open vehicle with Patrick, ‘our’ Mkhuze Ezemvelo Ranger. The three of us and a family of four from Durban. On the drive I realise that of the eight people on the vehicle I am the only one reflecting an excessive amount of moonlight from my peachy face. Probably scaring the animals.
I’ll have to get meself a balaclava.
On the drive, Patrick spots a nightjar in his spotlight, sitting lengthwise on a low branch. Probly a European Nightjar judging only by that behaviour.
Getting into Botswana’s Okavango Delta can be awfully expensive.
A cheaper way is to fly in to Oddballs Palm Island Luxury Lodge, get on a mokoro and disappear off into the wild with a guide who – unlike you – knows where he’s going and what he’s doing. In 1993 Aitch and I did just that, spending a night at Oddballs, where you are given a little dome tent to pitch on the hard-baked earth under the palm trees.
You get visitors:
Aitch watches our visitor rearrange the furniture – near our bedroom
The name is ironic, see (“contrary to what is expected, and typically causing wry amusement because of this” – I made a quick check; don’t want to get ‘ironic’ wrong). While in camp you stock up on the meagre supplies available in their shop, like potatoes and onions; a tent, a braai grid; add it to the 10kg you’re allowed to bring in on the high-wing Cessna 206’s and you’re away! 10kg doesn’t go far when you’re a books, binocs and spotting scope junkie!
The next morning we pushed off in our gentles S-shaped tree trunk mokoro to enjoy six nights out on the water in the care of a wonderful man named Thaba Kamanakao. He rigged up the seats so they were really comfy, the backrests enabling you to fall asleep at times!
Thaba said we could choose where we wanted to camp – anywhere. Soon after lunch we saw a magnificent Jackalberry tree on an island and said ‘there!’ – my guess is he knew that! We set up camp – our tent and two deckchairs and a ready-made campfire spot which he’d likely used many times before. The rest of the day was given to lurking, loafing, listening, lazing. Thaba set his gill nets, gathered firewood, pitched his smaller tent and set his chair at the fire. We were all quiet most of the time, listening and loving as night fell. After we’d eaten we sat talking and listening some more. Then Thaba played his mbira – his ‘thumb harp’ – and sang to us; I’ll never forget his introduction as we switched on our tape recorder: ‘My name is Thaba; Thaba Kamanakao; Kamanakao is surname;‘
– shady jackalberry camp – Thaba and Aitch organise –
We chose not to move camp each day, electing to sleep three nights under a Jackalberry and three nights under an African Mangosteen, both giving welcome shade and birdlife. We had little food, but Thaba provided us with the fish he caught in his gill net each night.
I ate the barbel and he and Aitch the bream. Lucky me, it was delicious! He also loved barbel, but his lifestyle advisor – a sangoma? a shaman? a nutritionist? – had told him he wasn’t allowed it! So a myth robbed a man of a tasty and useful source of protein. The first night we were joined by newly-qualified Pommy doctors Louise and Richard and their guide “BT.”
When we moved camp from the camp Aitch named Jackalberry Camp, to her new chosen Mangosteen or Squirrel Camp, we decided we needed a bath on the way, so Thaba took us to a stunning clear lagoon, carefully checked for big things that could bite and then stood guard on the mokoro while we swam and rinsed – no soap, please! Anyone going to this beautiful inland delta: Pack some small swimming goggles and an underwater camera if you can. The clarity of that water is awesome.
David Doubilet pic
Beautiful underwater pic by David Doubilet – to show the clarity.
Squirrel Camp nights were again spent cooking and sitting around the fire; talking and listening to Thaba playing his mbira and singing;
Days were spent birding the camp, hiking the island and an daily foray in the mokoro. Once we we were ‘moved off’ by an impatient ele, Aitch getting mildly reprimanded for turning round to get a fuzzy picture as we retreated. Another time Thaba – scouting ahead – spooked a herd of buffalo, who thundered in a tight mass towards us. We climbed the nearby termite mound – Thaba had told us to stay next to or on it – and they thundered all around us;
– our ‘buffalo hide’ termite mound –
We would sally out daily on short mokoro trips,
– colourful dragonflies, lilies and reed frogs at eye level –
Back before the sun got too high so we could loaf in our shady camp, where the squirrels and birds kept us entertained for hours. Six lazy, wonderful, awesome days.
One night a herd of eles moved in and we lay listening to their tummy rumbles. We kept dead quiet and just peered at them in the moonlight through the tent flap, as they had a little baby with them and we didn’t want to upset mama.
– still life with Sausage Tree flowers & leaves – Aitch saw the beauty at her feet –
Then we headed back reluctantly for a last night at Oddballs. Warm showers under the open sky; cold beer & gin’n’tonics on the deck, ice tinkling in the glass; watching spotted-necked otters in the lagoon, lounging in comfy chairs. Topped off that evening by a big hearty hot meal prepared for us and plonked onto a table on the deck. We ate watching the sunset turn the water red.
palm tree showers – warm water– jackalberry tree pub –
And suddenly it dawned on us that, even though we did have to pitch our own tent again, Oddballs really IS a Luxury Lodge!
– chandeliers of sausage tree flowers hang over the lagoon –
mokoro – dugout canoe; one mokoro, two mekoro, three mekoro, FOUR
sangoma – shaman? traditional healer? medicine man? says he communes with the ancestors; gives advice
mbira – thumb piano or thumb harp musical instrument
~~~oo0oo~~~
postscript 2018: This post was found by Thaba’s son, who informed me in the comments below that Thaba the legend had passed away. Damn!
R.I.P Thaba Kamanakao; You made our trip unforgettable.
~~oo0oo~~
Read an account of another 1993 trip to the Okavango Delta – Delta Camp right next to Oddballs) by Bill Keller, a US journalist for the NY Times based in Joburg.
~~~oo0oo~~~
(Here’s Trish’s 1993 photo album. I have copied, posted it here and discarded the album in my downsizing while selling our home in 2021)
One of Aitch’s list of ‘things to do’ once we knew she had cancer, was to visit her twin sis in Botswana. Janet quickly mustered her network and arranged a trip to Hwange, Zimbabwe’s wonderful big national park. We’d been once before – also with Janet. Her friends Beks and Sarah Ndlovu of African Bush Camps own a concession and run a very special camp at Somalisa in the south-eastern area called Linkwasha.
Beks calls it his Hemingway-style camp. We called it bliss. Unpretentious tents from the outside, luxury inside.
The weather was amazing! Bright sunshine, then huge gathering clouds, then pouring rain and back to sunshine in a few hours. Repeated daily. Enough rain to bring out the bullfrogs – the first time I have seen them, not for lack of looking. They were out for their annual month of ribaldry: Bawdy songs, lewd & lascivious pixicephallic behaviour. Lie still honey, lemme love you! Also gluttony. Then hastily raise a bunch of different-looking kids, and it’s back underground for 11 months of regrets. I was a bit wild; I wonder if she’ll still respect me next season?
The rainstorms were spectacular!
We were dry under the Landcruiser canopy and enjoyed every minute of the downpour. Once, unbeknown to us, Janet at the back had water pouring down her neck and was getting freezing wet! She didn’t want to spoil the beauty and awesomeness so suffered in silence. When she told us back in camp we roared with sympathetic laughter as she turned the air blue with choice expletives!
After the rain there’s sunshine, and the bush telegraph page is wiped clean: New spoor becomes clearly evident. Aha! The lions and cubs passed this way!
After a good soaking the animals would have to drip-dry. We could get under cover and have hot showers, hot drinks and warm dry clothing.
– warm & dry ladies après le déluge –
I think Hwange has become my favourite of all Africa’s big parks. It is simply fantastic.
Those sand roads are very special, smooth and quiet; a breakfast spread on a termite mound out on Ngweshla or Kennedy pans is special too.
Prologue – I had dashed off an email to Aitch in February 2009:
Hi Aitch – As ‘they’ so crudely put it, we need to ‘shit, or get off the pot’ as far as a decision to get to Okavango and to Beks Ndlovu’s camps this year. Either soonish (March), or September / October (very hot). We must decide yes or no, and if yes, who could we leave the kids with? Dilemma – K
–oo0oo– So glad we stayed on the pot! The kids were fine; We got to Botswana eleven months after that email, in January 2010, then flew to Kasane, where Karen & Mike Bullock kindly hosted us; Then Janet trekked us on into Zimbabwe for Aitch’s last – great, unforgettable – Hwange trip.
Lunchtime high on the Momfo cliffs overlooking a great bend in the Mfolosi river. Our guides lit a fire and began to prepare our lunch. We shucked off our light daypacks and settled down for another ‘well-deserved’ break after our gentle amble up the hill.
From our high vantage point we had already seen a buffalo in the sandy river bed, a rhino on the far bank and a lioness hiding behind the reeds on the opposite bank. As we watched she stalked across the wide river bed towards some zebra. She lay down and waited once she was on the near bank. A few more lionesses and a lion walked across the sand to our left, crouching and flanking the zebra, who panicked and dashed off straight towards the first lioness. She pounced in a cloud of dust and she and her target disappeared behind the thorn bush. We strained to see what happened. Did they get their lunch?
After a while they all walked out looking a bit disgusted with themselves. So no, probably not.
While scanning with my telescope I took a good look at the rhino and called out excitedly to the rest. Hey, come and look! It’s uBhejane, not another white rhino like the many we’ve seen. We all had a good look and confirmed the jizz and the hooked lip of the rarely-seen ‘black’ rhino. What a sighting!
Scoping well left of the river up an adjacent valley I noticed baboons in two sycamore figs, the mfolosi tree that give the river and the park its name. Suddenly they started barking and swearing in fluent baboon-vloek, and a magnificent leopard appeared in view, staring up into the tree above him. I got the scope on him and called the others. He was most obliging and waited till all nine of us, including the two rangers had a good look before flicking his long tail and bounding up the tree, to increased pandemonium from the residents. We heard loud shrieks, even ruder words and then much barking and squealing. I watched for a long while to see if I could spot the leopard again. But we didn’t find out if he got his lunch either.
So as far as lunches go, we can only confirm that we definitely ate ours, and that it was the delicious traditional huge white bread sarmies with butter, tomato and raw onion with salt and black pepper, washed down with freshly-brewed Five Roses tea. Mmm mmmm!
Four of the Big Five for lunch. On foot! Actually, sitting on our bums at lunchtime. What a day! And the rhino was the real Big Five member, not the more placid white rhino. The big five idea originated in the days when they were considered the five most dangerous animals to hunt. The days when the way you “got” the big five was to kill them, not just to see them. We joked as we packed up to walk back to base camp that we now needed to see an ele on the way home to round off our lunch. Well, we did. It was almost ridiculous. But thrilling.
And that was not all . . .
The next day our walk took us on a different route. As we crossed the low Mfolosi in the blazing sun we asked our guides if we could swim. ‘Well, you can wallow,’ they said, ‘It’s not deep enough to swim.’ So wallow we did, King Fogg and I; and that’s how we came to spot the Big Six, adding the rare Pink-faced Ceramic-white Freshwater Mfolosi Beluga Whale to our tally of wondrous things spotted in that very special place, the wonderful Mfolosi Wilderness Area.
– thankfully dressed again after our underpants wallow – the skin would have over-exposed the picture! –
~~~oo0oo~~~
The next day we walked upon this sleeping pride, loafing on the riverbed. They scattered when they saw us, the male on the right leading the flee-ing, tail tucked ‘tween his legs! They’ve learnt not to trust those dangerous upright pale primates.
– a pride about to skrik –
~~~oo0oo~~~
baboon-vloek – impolite baboon dialect used when worried
In Tsavo East we walked down a long underground tunnel from Elephant Hills Lodge on the hilltop in the first pic below, to the waterhole below the hill, where the tunnel ends in an iron-barred underground hide looking out at elephant feet and buffalo legs as they drink within pebble-tossing distance. Almost.
– bottom left is where the tunnel emerges –
In Tsavo West we climbed down into an old metal tank with glass portholes looking out into the crystal clear waters of Mzima Spring, where fish swim past and hippos can be seen looking like graceful ballerinas who have ‘let themselves go’ as they move daintily by, holding their breath. We watched and waited and held our breath, but not one of them farted while we were there.
down into the tankunderwater view of fish & hippos!There’s the underwater observation tank opposite
The spring bubbles out of the hillside volcanic rock, crystal clear and forming a sizeable stream.
– bubbling out of the volcanic rock: The start of a river –hippos in clear waterMzima springs– Mzima Springs –
Ducked off to a game reserve again yesterday. Third time in a month! This time Hluhluwe.
Tom was off ritalin (at his request) and MAN did he talk!! Non-stop for HOURS! I loved it. A running, stream-of-conscious patter of the life and thoughts of TomTom!
A lot of it was about hunting. Dad, I’ve decided to give fishing a rest for a while, I’m going to do hunting.
Mmm? Yes, I need a rifle, can I have an M16? and I’m going to hunt kudu.
Actually, Tom, that’s not how it works, fella. You need a licence to shoot a gun, and you need to pass a course before you can go hunting. When can I start, Dad?
I’ll phone my friend Andre and ask him. He was President of the KZN hunting club at one time. Will he take me tomorrow?
He starts reading my Smithers mammal book. Looks up kudu and starts learning about them. Amazed that I know a lot of the answers to questions he asks me from the book.
I tell him he needs to start with grasses, then shrubs, then trees, then birds. WHY, Dad? Well, hunters need to know what animals eat, and they need to know what birds are doing as they stalk their prey. The Go-Away bird will shout when it sees you and that will alert the buck, and as you walk past the little warblers will go quiet and the buck will look up to see why. Oh. Dad, if I shoot a buck right up its asshole will the bullet come out its mouth?
TOM!! Just kidding Dad, you know I wouldn’t, but I’m jus saying . . . So an anatomy lesson followed about the tortuous route a bullet would have to take to find the mouth if it started at the a-hole.
Dad, is it true you have to eat the liver of the first buck you shoot – raw?
Can I shoot birds with my air rifle?
How do you take the skin off a buck? Do you have to carry the buck home after you’ve shot it?
Dad, what does Nyala taste like? And kudu? And duiker? And wildebeest? Can you eat a warthog? Can you eat lion meat?
ens.
Every now and then: I love you Dad! Arsecreeping, see? Possible translation: You don’t really mean Forget it! about the M16, right?
And Jessie? Quietly listening to her music and looking out. She spotted the lion, the rhino, the lone ele, the eagle, a snake in a tree, etc.
She took that lovely pic of the long-tailed Paradise Whydah. 
Walking around in a campsite which shall remain nameless (I don’t want anyone to disturb him), I heard a host of birds kicking up a big fuss. I couldn’t see anything, so lay down on my back and searched the whole tree with my binocs. Then a toppie revealed him by flying right at his head and slapping his face with its wings! A big beautiful black mamba, who just quietly took the birds’ abuse. Maybe wrote down her name . . ?
I carefully marked the spot where I’d lain on the dirt road to spot him, so I could find the snake again – I know how snakes can ‘disappear’ – and went back to our chalet nearby and called friends Jon n Dizzi to come and look. I got them to X Marks The Spot . . . and I could not find him! I searched thoroughly, but no go.
We assumed he had moved off, but after my friends left I lay down again and searched the branches again. He was in almost the same position! He’d hardly moved. How the heck had we missed him? The incredible camouflage power of ‘not moving!’
Then while lying on my back on the mowed lawn I spotted a butterfly land on a blade of grass and twist its abdomen, wriggle, then fly off. I went to look and found a neat single spherical egg laid on the under-surface of the green blade of grass. Beautiful. A greenish-yellow colour, I think. I thought I took a photo of the egg but I can’t find it.
– the snake and the butterfly were near here –– Dizzi spotted butterflies against those far-off cliffs! – some will now recognise the place! –Walking along next to “The Approaches”
Let’s go to the lion park, Dad, I’ve never seen lions! This is Jess. I remind her that she has, actually, in Zambia – but she was little – five years old, 2003. I must show her the pics in South Luangwa Park.
They’re in hard bargaining mode, as we’re on our way to my folks’ place in PMB. It’s my ole man’s 91st birthday lunch, which is why I’m dragging them to Sleepy Hollow. It’s not their best place to visit, so I agree: Behave sociably and we can go to the lion park after lunch. OK?
By the time we get to the “Lion Park” it’s closed, but we can “see the lions only”. Same price, one hundred Saffrican Ront. I decide stuffit, let’s rather do this properly. “Stuff these lions” I announce, “We’re going to Mfolosi game reserve for the day tomorrow”. “Let’s go and see if we can spot some real lions”.
We left at 6:00am sharp and were in the park at 8:40am, already paid and entered, R240 for the five of us and the car for the day.
We had a ball. The kids were expert spotters, we saw lots & lots of eles, rhino, buff, giraffe, nyala, impala, bushbuck, wilderbeasts, wartpigs ensovoorts. – And a clear sighting of a gorgeous bush shrike!!
We sang rap and Mama Mia all the way there and back. And we laughed! These brats have decided they don’t like mixing with too many communities. Especially in crowds. Used to be bantu, then plurals, anderskleuriges, euphemisms, etc. Now its communities.
“Don’t stop here, Dad” as we drive through a village, “there are too many communities here”. I threaten to buy them each a mirror so they can check their mahogany brown selves whenever they think of such nonsense, but they just hose themselves at me.
They must have introspected a bit, though, because at lunch at the picnic spot they announce: “Hey we’re the only communities here!” To shine them up I made them do a spot of community tribal dancing in a tree.
– the communities climb a tree – Jess & Minenhle –
And of course the two 12yr olds Tom & Lungelo couldn’t miss the opportunity to disgust the teenage girls by letting rip on the way back, causing a hasty winding down of windows and heads hanging out for fresh air till the green fumes could waft away.
So the lion park sparked a search for ‘real’ lions.
We didn’t see a lion this visit, but I heard a whole lotta lyin’.
~~~oo0oo~~~
Saffrican Ront – South African Rand; worth anywhere from US$1.42 (1973) to less than a dime (2015)! Depends when you ask;
