Night Game Drives

We went on two night game drives, one in Kafue National Park and one in Hwange National Park.  I’ll combine photos from the two night game drives into this one post.  We didn’t see very many animals but it was an interesting experience.  Knowing that some of the predators liked to climb trees and the fact that we were driving under trees and couldn’t see very much was the interesting part.  The good news was that it was much cooler at night.  If it just wasn’t so dark…

This is an Open-billed stork in the fading light of early evening.  You can see in this photo how this stork gets its name.

An owl is somewhat of an expected sighting on a night game drive.  This one was right next to the road and showed plenty of patience with my taking the photo.

We heard this lion but we waited a long time before he came out of the woods.  When he did, he walked down this road for quite a while.  We followed a short distance behind it and the lion seemed to pay us no attention at all.  I’m not sure where he was headed but it seemed that the walking was much easier on the road than through the woods.

This photo was from Hwange and just below our camp.  This is a wild dog and it was really dark at this point.  This was the only good wild dog photo but we saw eight adults and eleven puppies in this pack.  The pack was loud at times and very antsy.  They seemed concerned about us but they didn’t run away.  They just stirred around in the same area while we watched them.

The night game drive ended but not the night wildlife.  You can see Cory and Vicky dancing up a storm with the rest of our crew and the staff.

Kafue Miscellaneous

This post is just some odds and ends from Kafue National Park.  It will just round out the safari trip a bit.

Bee-eaters are bright-colored birds that specialize in catching large, flying, stinging insects.  After banging a bee or wasp dead, they squeeze the venom out and remove the stinger.  There are 24 species of bee-eaters worldwide and there are 19 species in Africa.  We saw at least a half dozen different kinds of bee-eaters.  This is a bee-eater high-rise apartment house.  It’s built into the side of a hill.  Our guide said these were Bohm’s bee-eaters but I couldn’t find that name in our field guide.  At any rate, this area had lots of busy bee-eaters flying about.  They were very colorful and entertaining.

I haven’t gotten down to the insect level, but sometimes even the insects were colorful and entertaining.  Right in the middle, you can see a red dragonfly.  This was on the edge of the river.  We saw lots of these and watched them for some time.  Africa has plenty of colorful insects. 

We frequently had a lecture from one of our safari guides in the afternoon.  Our lecture was usually after lunch and before our afternoon game drive.  These lectures could be about animals, conservation, local culture, people or governments.  The guides were very clear on their thoughts and positions but also ready to admit that many times, no one knew the right answer.  We usually were served a drink and snacks during the lectures.

I indicated in an earlier post that we did not hunt on our trip, except with our cameras.  That may not have been entirely true.  Kafue National Park is tsetse fly country.  This was the only one of the four safari parks where we had to fend off the tsetse flies.  Tsetse flies are about the size of one of our horse flies, a half-inch or slightly longer.  They look about like a horse fly too.  They weren’t a huge bother as they tend to be a bit slow for a fly.  They are very hard to kill and they bite rather quickly.  Since I found them so hard to kill, I generally opted to brush them off when one landed on me.  I only got bitten a few times but when I did, the bite was so painful that I tended to slap them as hard as I could.  It was really just a reaction to the painful bite.  Our guides burned dried elephant manure in a bucket on the front of our land rovers to deter the tsetse’s.  That seemed to work somewhat.  The other thing our guides told us was to wear light colored clothing.  They said the tsetse flies are attracted to dark colors.  I followed all the directions.  But late one afternoon on a game drive, I got bitten twice in a short amount of time.  Each time, I slapped hard where I felt the pain.  You can see the results in this photo. 

Before I leave the tsetse flies, I would like to point out one more thing.  We had sixteen tourists, three guides, and over a dozen staff members, and I was the only person to get bitten by the tsetse flies.  If you look at the last photo, each splotch of my blood from one of the tsetse bites was about the size of a nickel.  Now for my point.  My wife has indicated that in recent years, I might be losing a bit of my sweet disposition and be getting a bit curmudgeonly.  Well, I would submit that the Kafue National Park Tsetse fly vote is in – and the tsetse’s think that I’m as sweet as can be…

Kafue River Wildlife

This was our second river game drive and it was in the afternoon.  This is on the Kafue River.  We saw all the same animals on the Kafue River that we saw on the Lufupa River, so I thought I would show off some of the more unusual wildlife sightings.  Again, people go to Africa for the big five and the other major animals but we got to see all sorts of animals and many were interesting and entertaining.

I included this photo just to show the size of the boat.  Clearly this boat was not made for running into hippos.  It was just six tourists and one guide so plenty of room to move around to get into position for good photos.

This baby hippo was asleep and never moved while we watched it.  It’s mother and other family members were in the river and just out of the photo to the left.  Our guide estimated this baby to be two weeks old.  I would guess that momma hippo positioned the baby here to be difficult to see and access from the land above and in a place that she could easily guard from the river.  It seemed to be sleeping peacefully.

Here’s one reason that momma hippo needed to be careful where she had her baby hippo sleeping.  This was a big crocodile.  He went into the river and started swimming in our direction before it went below the surface of the water.  I made sure I wasn’t leaning out of the boat at that point.

I took this photo looking straight down into the shallow water of the river, near the bank.  Mr. Crab looked pretty comfortable in his environment.  We never got to eat any crab in southern Africa but they definitely have some crab in the rivers and this was a good sized crab at that.

African Fish-Eagles are one of Africa’s iconic birds.  We saw many of these birds every time we were near a large river or lake.  They were easy to spot and to identify.  They make a loud piercing yelp that is a common sound in areas where they live.  They build large nests high in large trees.  They generally hunt from high perches over or near the water.  African Fish-Eagle’s mostly catch large fish that swim near the surface of the water.  They will also take young flamingoes, ducks, crocodile hatchlings, monitor lizards, and turtles.  Sometimes they are pirates and snatch fish away from herons, storks, pelicans, and kingfishers.

Lufupa Birds

Birds were just as big a hit on the Lufupa River game drive as they were on our land game drives.  I think that the birds were probably even more prominent along the rivers.  We watched them nesting, diving for fish, flying every which way, and very much enjoyed the show.  Once again, these are all photos from my daughter, Cory.

This is an African Darter and it’s drying its wings.  This bird can be quite entertaining.  It dives into the river for fish and after spearing a fish, it flips the fish up in the air, catches it, and swallows it headfirst.  In this photo, the African Darter is drying off its wings.  We saw several of them doing this.  I presume this is after catching a fish. 

This Half-collared Kingfisher seemed to like the quieter parts of the river and liked where the bank was covered with some dense vegetation.  These birds perched on low branches quite close to the water and they didn’t seem to mind us getting close to them, hence the good close-up photo.  They also dive into the water for fish and also eat the fish headfirst.  When they did move, they were very fast.

Great White Egrets were well represented in this area.  We see them at home as well but this was a nice photo of one.  These birds are excellent at catching fish and at night, roost high up in trees.  We saw them mostly along the shores and in the shallow water.

This is a Hammerkop.  It’s a somewhat peculiar bird with an oversized head, shaped somewhat like a hammer.  It’s sometimes called a Hammerhead.  It builds an incredibly large enclosed nest.  We saw one Hammerkop nest very close to the river and it must have been three feet high and almost as wide.  It was built low on the base of a small tree.  Our guide indicated that they use the same nests for years and just keep adding to them every year.  Our guide also said the large nest was developed to intimidate predators.  Hammerkops feed primarily on frogs and tadpoles in the shallow waters along the river and amongst the water weeds.

I took a couple of good photos of the Open-billed Stork, where you could actually see it’s beak and see that it’s open in the middle.  But I included this photo of the stork with a Puku because we saw birds mixed in with Puku and Impalas quite often.  I don’t know if there’s a reason, like warnings against predators, but birds and antelope seemed to be ready companions in Kafue.

Lufupa River Animals

We did two river game drives during our stay at Kafue National Park.  Our first river game drive was on the Lufupa River and it was in the morning.  The river game drives were very similar to our regular game drives, but much cooler and not dusty.  We saw plenty of animals and had plenty of exciting sightings.  It was a nice change.

This is a baby crocodile.  Our guides said it was about nine months old.  It was probably close to three feet long.  I don’t know if it was laying on the log to get warm or to stay away from predators but it never moved and we stayed here for quite a while.

This monitor lizard photo could have been a “Where’s Waldo” photo.  It was quite a ways up in a tree that was overhanging the river.  We were parked under it, but not right under it.  We saw another monitor lizard walking on the river bank.  As we sat and watched this monitor lizard, Carl, one of our fellow travelers, asked me, “Bill, the important question here is what kind of wine do you serve with monitor lizard?”  It seems like sometimes, I just can’t get away from work…

This crocodile was a really big one.  It was right next to our small boat, so close that I could almost reach it.  This crocodile kept turning around and around in a tight circle and making quite a big splash while doing it.  We never did figure out what it was doing, but it was exciting to see and to try and figure out what was happening.

The Lufupa River was full of hippos.  At times we could see ten or more.  They popped up and down below water level all the time so it was difficult trying to get photos.  Many of the river hippos were really large, like a couple in this photo.  You can also see a baby in this one.  Our boat was not that big so we steered clear of them, but it was hard to do sometimes since there were so many in the river.

We saw game animals, even when we were on the river.  We are on our morning tea break in this photo, but as you can see, we were still viewing game along the river.

Kafue Animals

These are some of the animals that we saw in Kafue National Park.  You will notice lots more trees and bushes in the photos.  In Kafue, we were mostly in the woodlands or on one of the rivers.  We saw fewer animals but still saw plenty.  It was just a different experience but also very enjoyable.

This first photo is no contest winner but this was the only Blue Wildebeest that we saw.  I don’t remember seeing any Blue Wildebeest in eastern Africa and this one did have a distinct blue color.

This is a small herd of Puku.  We didn’t see big numbers of Puku on this trip but saw several decent size groups in Kafue.

Cory got a good photo of this young Bushbuck.  I’m sure those big ears help it hear predators approaching.

We must have seen over fifty Vervet Monkeys, like this one.  They were in most areas that we stayed and didn’t cause too much trouble.

It’s hard choosing elephant photos, since we got so many.  I liked this photo of Cory’s.  These are two young elephants and I’m not sure what game they are playing but they reminded me of my twin grandsons fooling around.

Scatology

This is another post on tracking animals in southern Africa.  Scatology is the biological study of or preoccupation with excrement.  Scientists and naturalists often study feces to determine or learn about an animals diet or health or diseases and so forth.  Our safari guides also used poop piles to determine what animals were in the area, much like their prints.  So here’s a Poop Posting.

I have to say that sometimes, without any prior training, it was actually very easy to do.  In this first photo for instance, before our safari guides said a word, I knew we were on the trail of a large parade of elephants.

This second one was tough at first, but after learning about it, it was really easy to identify going forward.  These are called “hyena rocks”.  Why?  Because this is hyena scat.  It’s white because the hyenas eat the whole animal, including the bones.  Because they eat an animal’s bones, they get large amounts of calcium, hence the white scat.

This was really a hard one at first.  If you look close, you can see that the entire area of the photo has manure sprayed on it.  You can see it on the big tree, the bushes, the grass, and the ground.  This is Hippo’s feces.  The male hippo does this to mark his territory.  He turns around and backs up, then as he starts to poop, he swishes his tail to fan the poop out onto a larger area – to better mark his territory.  Again, once we learned this, we saw lots of hippo poop and kept a lookout for hippos.

These next two go together.  The first one is elephant scat and everyone probably guessed it.  The large lumps of poop could be six to eight inches across.  I have nothing in this photo for scale, but the lumps were really large.  We saw lots and lots of elephant poop on our game drives.

Then one day while on a game drive in Kafue National Park, we saw the poop below.  It looked like elephant poop, but clearly different.  The lumps were much smaller and much rounder.  Vicky called our safari guide to stop the land rover.  She pointed out the difference to him, but he didn’t seem to understand.  He just went on about it being elephant poop.  Vicky persisted and he finally realized what she was saying.  He then explained that some nearby trees were coconut palm trees, but a different variety from the coconuts that we are familiar with.  In this case, he said the elephants shake the trees and then eat the coconuts.  But the elephants can only digest the outer portion of the coconuts and not the inner portion, or nuts.  So the small round balls are the coconut nuts that have passed through the elephant’s system.  Upon finally realizing Vicky’s point, our safari guide somewhat sheepishly complimented her on her astute observation.  Vicky replied - with attitude, and I quote, “Hey, I know my shit!”

Animal Tracks

As we progressed from safari camp to safari camp, the animals got scarcer and harder to find.  For that reason, our guides employed more investigative methods for finding the wildlife.  One method was looking for animal tracks along the roads to follow or just to determine what animals might be in the area.  They also pointed out other signs that gave them clues about animals in certain locations.

This first track is a hyena track.  Again, the hyena is the second largest carnivore in Africa, so this is a very large paw print.  There’s nothing here for scale, but this print is probably five or six inches across.  I wouldn’t want to run into the hyena that made this track on a dark night…

This is a pair of lion tracks.  These were also rather large tracks.  I like this photo of Vicky’s as she got two prints in the photo.

This leopard track is much harder to see but it’s right in the middle of the photo.  You might notice that on the hyena track, you could see the nails on the hyena’s print.  But there are no such nail marks on the leopard print.  That’s one of the ways you can tell the difference between these two animal’s prints.

Don’t get too discouraged by trying to determine these animal prints as it wasn’t easy.  But here’s a “softball” for you: the elephant print.

Our guides would point out other signs for us to see and realize that we might see a certain animal.  In the last photo, you can see the Lufupa River in the background and trails coming from the river.  Our guide called these deep and wide trails, “Hippo Highways”.  The hippos come out of the water at night to feed, sometimes feeding quite a ways from the river.  They always go back to the river on the same trail that they came out of the river.

"Lion Coming"

On August 25, 2015, a safari guide was leading a “walking safari” when he was mauled by a male lion and killed.  The guide was only forty years old.  We arrived at our first southern Africa safari camp on September 12, 2015 – or less than three weeks after this incident.  Now, several people have asked me about finding bathroom facilities when we were out on safari.  They hear me say that sometimes we were out on game drives for five to six hours and that we left right after breakfast and three cups of coffee.  All that is correct.  But you need to understand that FINDING bathroom facilities was not a problem, as you can see in the first photo.  Bathroom facilities were easy to find… 

On this morning, we stopped at the spot below for morning tea.  Our guide suggested that we go behind the rocks for the facilities.  All seemed well and it was a great location.  I was out ahead of the rest of our eight tourists and by myself.  I stopped for a few moments to look at the rocks and trees as I found them quite interesting.  The rock was different than most of the other rock we had seen and I love the baobab trees.   

From the other side of the front of the vehicle you see in the prior photo, I was about fifty feet from the land rover when I stopped and took the photo below.  As soon as I snapped this photo, I heard our safari guide yell out, “Lion Coming”!  I immediately pivoted and ran to our vehicle and dove into it, landing against Vicky.  I wasn’t afraid and was thinking about where Vicky and Cory were as I was running.  I could see some other people, who were on the other side of our vehicle running my way, so I determined that the lion was in front of me.  Cory was actually quite a bit closer to the lion, but also much closer to our vehicle.  Vicky hadn’t yet exited the land rover.

What happened?  Our group had sixteen tourists and two vehicles.  Each vehicle drove different routes during our game drives, so that no one was behind another vehicle eating Kalahari dust.  But for tea or lunch, we would meet and have our break together.  On this morning, we had already arrived at our break location.  The other vehicle was driving right for us.  As they came, they surprised a lion that was laying in the grass.  You can see him below.  The lion reacted by running directly away from our other vehicle, which meant that he was running right at us.  In short order, the lion saw us scrambling around and made a perpendicular turn, exiting both our directions.  But at the point of our guide yelling “Lion Coming”, the lion was running right at us.

We all got into our vehicle and followed the lion.  Our guides said that this was a young male lion who should not have been out and prowling about at this time of the day.  At the point of my last photo of this lion, our guides decided to give up the chase.  They said it was a dangerous situation since this was a young lion where it should not be.  That plus they were concerned about the high grass in this area.  When it headed into the woods, we broke it off and went back to the same spot for our morning tea.  So FINDING bathroom facilities was not a problem.  The problem was SURVIVING a bathroom stop.  I decided that I’d had enough coffee for this morning…

Where's Waldo?

Southern Africa was a different game-viewing experience from eastern Africa.  At times, it reminded me of the “Where’s Waldo” books that we read to our kids when they were young.  The book's whole focus was trying to find the Waldo character in the pictures.  So I’m going to give you a glimpse of why game viewing in southern Africa reminded me of the “Where’s Waldo” books.  Find the animals in these photos. I will add that I had many other photos that made the animals even harder to find.

There are two animals in this first photo.  These are the two primary water animals that we saw in the Okavango: hippos and crocs.

I put this in just to show that even with animals as big as elephants, they can be hard to find at times in the woodlands.  I believe there are at least 10 elephants in this photo.

This one is really tough, but no tougher than our trying to find it and photograph it.  A leopard is right in the middle of the photo.  He sprang up from the grass right in front of our land rover but before we could pull up our cameras and start shooting photos, it had made it into the nearby woods.

There are multiple hippos in this Okavango scene, but of course, they are wearing their Okavango camouflage….

Giraffe’s are another animal that you would not imagine would be hard to spot.  But on numerous occasions, we nearly passed them by before someone noticed a head or some legs.

Lufupa River Camp

The Lufupa River Camp is in the heart of Zambia’s Kafue National Park.  Kafue is Zambia’s largest park and Africa’s second largest park.  It totals over 8,600 square miles of parkland.  The Lufupa River Camp sits at the confluence of the Lufupa River and the Kafue River.  Kafue National Park is located in western Zambia in a remote wilderness.  The park is a mix of floodplains, seasonal grasslands, woodlands, riverine forest and evergreen forest along the river banks.  The park offers boat rides, canoe rides, day and night game drives, and walking safaris.  The park has many of Africa’s large animals, almost 500 species of birds, and a healthy tsetse fly population.

This was our arrival to the Lufupa River Camp.  The staff came out to greet us with singing and dancing.  The main camp buildings are right behind the staff and overlook the river.

We quickly settled into our tents with a couple of hours before our evening game drive.  Cory and Vicky are sitting on Cory’s porch overlooking the Kafue River.  This eventually becomes the Zambezi River far downstream.

Vicky is sitting inside of our tent.  It was a tent, but a very room tent.  The shower is on the left with the curtains and we had a portable fan plus mosquito netting over our beds.

Vicky and Cory are working on breakfast on the deck of the main building.  The Lufupa river comes in from the left and the Kafue river is coming down from above in the photo.  We could frequently watch hippos off the deck and occasionally see crocodiles.  Birds also flew about most of the time and we saw lots of fish jumping in the river.

This is the wood oven in the main dining area.  The chef was cooking pizzas for us for snacks.  They also baked bread in this oven and cooked many other items as well.  

Lufupa International Airport

From the Okavango Delta, we flew from Banoka airport to Kasane airport.  Then we drove by bus to the Zambia border.  We crossed the river by small boat, went through immigration and boarded another bus.  We drove to the Livingstone International Airport.  Then we boarded a 7-seater airplane for our flight to the Lufupa International Airport – at least that’s what our tickets said.  After three days in Lufupa, we flew back the same way.  These photos combine our arrival and our departure from the Lufupa International Airport.  Lufupa and the international airport were really all about the game viewing…

On our way to the Lufupa International Airport for our departure, you can see our plane behind the elephants.  There was only a small memorial of elephants but several (not pictured) were about as big as our plane.

You can see the entire airport in this photo.  Cory is between the terminal and our plane.  Right behind Cory, on the left end of the terminal, is the safety station.  Over to the right – the small green building – is the restroom.  I would have to say that having a restroom was a big step up from the Banoka Airport, but more on that later.

The Lufupa International Airport did not have any employees, just the facilities that you saw in the prior photo.  We did our own security check.  You can see Cory here security clearing the runway – after chasing off the few odd animals.  Again, it was all about the game viewing.

We noticed this animal track between our plane and the runway.  We got our guide and asked for an identification.  He said it was a lion track and a big one at that.  Standing out in the wide open spaces, I inquired about how soon our flight was boarding.

Now back to the restroom.  Like I said, it was all about the game viewing at the Lufupa International Airport.  I went to use the facilities, and you can see them in the last photo.  I looked at it this way: if the elephants came back, I had a great seat for viewing them.  If that big lion came along, my plan was to sit high on the throne and act like I was the king of the jungle…

Okavango Animals

This posting is just another animal posting – because I never get tired of seeing the animals, which is why we went to southern Africa in the first place.  We really wanted to visit the Okavango and in large part it was to see the hippos and crocodiles and birds that are in and around the water, versus other areas of southern Africa.  So this post will highlight more of those animals.

I estimate that we saw about 100 crocodiles on this trip and almost all of them were in the Okavango.  We saw them frequently in both the waterways and on land and several times in groups of double digit numbers.  They moved about quite a bit, usually on our approach to them.  We watched them crawl about, swim around, and eat the elephant carcass.  One night, as we were having a sundowner, they were rolling in the water over and over and over again which was very loud and very entertaining.  We weren’t sure why they were doing it but it was highly entertaining.  I really like this shot of the crocs and the vultures.  

I estimate that we saw about 115 hippos and the majority of those were in the Okavango.  I could do several posts with just hippo photos as we saw them in lots of entertaining circumstances.  We got quite close to the hippos and they always seemed a bit wary of us but we were never intrusive enough that they moved in our direction.  That would be a bad thing.

Most, if not all, of these photos are Cory’s photos and it’s hard not to keep posting them.  We frequently saw crocodiles in groups and you can see three in this photo on the near bank.  I’ve seen crocodiles in many other places on our other trips but I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so entertained by them as in the Okavango.

I just put this zebra photo in to make sure that everyone knows that all the other animals are also located in the Okavango.  We saw giraffes, elephants, lions, zebra, and many other large animals every day in the Okavango.

This photo was near sundown.  My memory is that we had stopped for a “sundowner” cocktail near a river.  These hippos seemed curious about us and who knows, they might have liked to join us.

Mokoro Ride

One morning while in the Okavango, we went for a mokoro ride.  A mokoro is a canoe that historically was made by hollowing out the trunk of a large, straight tree, such as an ebony tree.  It was powered by a boatman with a pole.  The river was moving slowly and we were moving slowly so it was a leisurely trip.  We spent about seventy-five minutes out on the water.  Our mokoro ride was very cool and relaxing so it was a nice change from our land rover and the heat and dust. 

Cory and I are enjoying our ride in the river.  We were required to wear the life vests but the water was not very deep.  We asked about what to do if we capsized, since there were so many crocodiles in the water.  The answer was to just lay still until we were rescued.  They said the crocodiles respond to movement and splashing.  I understood but it would have been hard to lie still in crocodile infested water. 

We hadn’t gone too far up river when our guides stopped poling.  They stood still for several minutes.  We asked what was going on and they pointed up ahead.  If you look in the water up ahead, just before the grass bank and just to the right of the termite mound, you can see a hippo’s head sticking out of the water.  That concerned our guides.

We got just a bit closer but came to understand their concern even better.  It wasn’t just a hippo but a momma hippo with a baby.  That was our sign to turn around and go back down river.   One other point is that a hippo can easily turn over a mokoro and that is the worry in the Okavango, not crocodiles.  In the past, locals hunted hippos from mokoro’s, so hippos learned that the best defense was a good offense and now the hippos tend to turn them over.

Cory was just kicking back, relaxing, and enjoying the ride.  It was a great morning in the Okavango. 

Vicky was doing the same thing, but in a different mokoro.  You can see that the river narrowed in places and at times we were poling through the water weeds.  Even the water weed areas were interesting as there was lots of insect wildlife including some bright red dragonflies and other interesting critters.

Okavango Miscellaneous

This post will just be a few odds and ends photos and stories from the Okavango Delta.

Animals were harder to spot in the Okavango Delta than they were in Chobe National Park.  That trend continued for each stop on our safari trip.  That resulted in our safari guides being more creative about finding animals.  They would look for animal tracks in the road and sometimes we would try and follow the tracks to find the animal.  In this instance, our guide spotted a lion track and decided we would follow the tracks and try and find the lion, as our guide thought it a fresh track.  We went off-road but in truth, there wasn’t much room off the road for our vehicle in this location.  You can see us following lion tracks in the first photo.  Our vehicle was pushing aside branches and bushes and we were dodging the branches and thorns as we went.  We never found this lion but it was a great adventure trying to find it, very suspenseful and exciting.

This termite mound was probably twelve to fourteen feet high.  Our guide said that the termite mounds are high due to the high water table in the Okavango.  Termite populations are similar to bees in that they have a king, a queen, workers, soldiers, and flyers.  Each type does its own job.  Our guide also said that the queens can live for around thirty years.  We saw lots of termite mounds on this trip but the highest mounds were in the Okavango. 

Our game drives could last for six hours or more.  Sometimes we ate lunch while out on the drives.  In those instances, the trucks became our tables.  We usually had cold food but sometimes they had hot food for us as well.  Beverages included hot beverages, tea, soft drinks, beer and wine. 

This trip was quite busy and we were always up early in the morning and frequently didn’t get back to our tents until nine at night.  But I don’t want to give the impression that we didn’t have any time to relax and have a cocktail, game viewing optional.

Every single sunrise and sunset on this trip was a great one.  This is the dry season and the Kalahari was dusty so there was plenty of smoke and dust in the air.  But the sunrises and sunsets were really great.  It was always a great start and great finish to each day of the trip.

More Animals

The safari game drives were mostly about the wildlife, so I’ll post some more animal photos.  I’ll show a few different animals and some stories to go with some of them.

This is a spotted hyena, also known as the laughing hyena.  We saw quite a few hyenas and we heard more than that, both during the day and the night.  While they don’t look it, our guide book calls the spotted hyena the second largest carnivore in Africa, behind the lion.  They are a solid looking animal with surprisingly long legs and very big teeth.  Most carnivores kill their prey and then take their time consuming it.  The hyena, on the other hand, bypasses the killing stage and just starts eating the animal, while it’s still alive.  Our guidebook says an adult spotted hyena is capable of running down and killing a bull wildebeest and that packs of hyenas kill zebras and even larger animals.  This guy may not look that dangerous, but he’s one to be wary of.

We came across this group of elephants in the Okavango and they reacted to us rather strongly.  They circled around their two babies and warned us to stay away.  It reminded me of the old western movies where they circle the wagon train for protection.  Those babies were quite safe from us and probably from everything else as well. 

This is a Tsessebe Topi, which is an antelope.  These animals are built for speed and endurance with high shoulders, deep chest, and long legs.  Our guide said this was the second fastest animal on earth, behind the Cheetah.  Sometime later, he called another animal the second fastest on earth, so I’m not sure about second or third but I think it goes without saying that they are very fast.  This antelope is a pure grazer and is usually found in the grasslands.  But with this being the dry season and a drought period at that, they were seeking food far and wide, including in the woodlands. 

This is a Bushbuck.  Our guidebook describes it as “the smallest member of the tribe; a secretive woodland antelope”.  We only saw a few bushbucks.  The bushbuck is a mixed feeder on green grass, foliage, herbs, fruit, and flowers.  This is one you wouldn’t want in your garden.  For much of the time, they are a solitary antelope.  This one wasn’t all that small and I liked its look.  

I put this photo in mostly for the story.  This is a combination of a rank of impala and a troop of baboons.  So why are they mixed in together?  They hang out together for mutual protection.  The baboons have excellent sight and the impala have excellent hearing.  That gives all of them an advantage of earlier detection of predators over if they grazed separately.

Camp Food

The food this trip was very good and we got plenty of it.  I would say that the food was not a major part of this trip but meal time was a great part of the day as we discussed our day and what we had seen and done.  Almost all of the meals were served buffet style, so I didn’t get very many photos of our food.  But as you will see, I did manage to take a few food photos.

The first photo is a freshly baked crocodile bread.  The fresh baked bread this trip was really a highlight.  I would say that the bread was so good, that four or five times, I would have been perfectly happy to just eat the bread for my meal, it was that good.  You can also see a nice plate of fresh fruit and melons next to the bread.  Fresh fruit and melons were another staple of our camp meals.

Salads and vegetables were served with every meal.  In this photo, I managed to get three salads that we had for lunch one day in the photo.  All three were very good.  They were all fresh, tasty, and well presented.

While the food was usually rather simple, we did have some fancy items on occasion.  These mushrooms were in a flavorful sauce and served on top of puff pastry and were excellent.

This was a deep-fried cheese dumpling that we were served as an appetizer.  I had several of them.

We didn’t get to see much of the cooking or food preparation, with one exception.  We did get to see plenty of BBQ action.  That’s because it was usually done right out in the open on the edge of camp.  And since there were only sixteen of us and they prepared plenty of meat, we could have all we wanted to eat…and I did.

Okavango Birds

The Okavango Delta was also loaded with birds of all sorts.  We saw many of the same birds that we saw in Chobe but also many new ones.  I decided to pick some of the larger birds here.  They might be less colorful than the birds I posted from Chobe but they still have good color.  I also leaned towards some of the birds that we saw in the water in the Okavango.

This is a Saddle-billed Stork.  We saw at least six different kinds of storks in the Okavango.  The Saddle-billed Stork is a pretty striking bird.  We saw them walking in the water and in the short grass near the water.  They can be as high as five feet and can have a wingspan of up to nine feet, so they are a big bird.  They nest in trees.  We watched them several times and they walk very slowly, giving us ample opportunity for good photos.  They can catch a fish, clean off the spines, wash it, and throw it up into the air and swallow it headfirst on the way down.  They also eat frogs and lizards and the like.

This is a Barred Owl.  At least, that’s what I think this was called by our safari guide.  We saw four or five owls on our trip including several that were out in the middle of the day.  This owl is on the small side but it gave us plenty of time to take photos.

These are Wattled Cranes and a rather artistic and elegant looking duo.  They are an endangered bird with only several thousand pairs left, but they have a stronghold in the Okavango.  They can be up to four feet high, so another tall bird.  They graze with other birds and also with animals.  They eat plants, roots, seeds, insects, and frogs.

These are Black-winged Stilts.  They may look small but can be about fifteen inches high.  These stilts can give an excited holler like kik-kik-kik-kik-kik-kik.  This is about where we usually saw them.  They eat flies, beetles, dragonflies, worms, spiders, crustaceans, tadpoles, frogs, and minnows.  They sometimes sleep standing on one leg. 

These are Marabou Storks.  Our guides indicated that they are the ugliest birds in the world.  We got close-up photos of them, but perhaps it’s better to show them at a distance.  They can stand five feet tall and can have a wingspan of over ten feet.  They sound more like a cow than a bird.  I mostly liked seeing these very large birds standing atop of small branches some seventy feet up on a large tree, like in this photo.  And now I know who delivered my three young grandsons.  The one on the left delivered my grandson Archer while the two on the right delivered my twin grandsons: Henry and Vincent.

Wild Kingdom Episode

We were most anxious to visit the Okavango Delta and the Okavango did not disappoint us.  This post will cover our first afternoon, evening, and the next morning viewing in the Okavango of one single stopping point: a dead elephant carcass.  When I was growing up, one of the early television shows that I remember watching was “Marlin Perkins Wild Kingdom.”  The show ran from 1963 to 1985.  Marlin Perkins was an American zoologist and a big advocate for the animal conservation movement.  His shows always had an exciting story to tell, including a little danger, with animals in their own habitat.  This sequence reminded me of a Marlin Perkins Wild Kingdom episode. 

According to our guides, they guessed that the elephant had been dead for about a week.  They could not determine the cause of death.  The carcass was lying in a narrow portion of a river and very near one bank.  You can see the carcass at the edge of the water in late afternoon and you can also see that the crocodiles had gathered for dinner.  

This second photo is to indicate that the crocodiles did not seem to want to share the elephant carcass, which is lying just to the right of this photo.  Carl Holguin, one of our fellow travelers, took this photo.  It’s one of the photos that Carl sent to the group to share.  I got several really good photos of crocs but this one was really great.

We finished our afternoon game drive about sundown and stopped along a portion of a river for a “sundowner”, or cocktail.  We had a great time as the temperature was great and there were no bugs bothering us.  Then, on our way back to camp, we happened to go back the direction of the elephant carcass.  To our surprise and delight, two hyenas were feasting on the carcass.  But then four lions came along and chased off the hyenas.  But as great as that was, it was only a small portion of the action.  The two hyenas stayed right behind the lions and kept yowling about losing their dinner.  Before long, we noticed that the lions were growling in long low substantial growls.  We determined that they were not growling at the hyenas but at the crocodiles who were eating the elephant from below.  You can see at least two crocodiles in the water right in front of the lions.  Then, two more hyenas showed up, on our side of the river and they joined the other two hyenas in protesting not having anything to eat.  If that wasn’t enough, several hippos began working their way down the river towards the carcass.  At some point when the hippos were very near the carcass, they turned and ran for quite a distance splashing and snorting loudly as they went.  Our guides guessed that these hippos were residents here and knew the river including what was supposed to be there and what wasn’t and they guessed that the hippos were surprised by the dead elephant, which was not supposed to be there.  At any rate, we sat and watched for quite a while, but to get the full experience, you would really need to have a sound track of all the action.  This photo was also taken by Carl Holguin and it’s another great photo.

On our early morning game drive the next morning, our first stop was the carcass to see what we could see.  As you can see, the lions did quite a job of disposing of the elephant.  But if you look close, you can still see two crocodiles in the water, one on the left and one on the right.  Evidently, the lions hadn’t eaten the portion of the elephant below the water and it was probably too heavy to drag out of the water.

One of the hyenas had been successful in getting some portion of the dead elephant.  The hyena had dragged the piece of meat some forty yards away from the river.  But the hyena still didn’t have it all to himself.  About a dozen vultures were following the hyena and demanding some portion for themselves.  It was a real dog-eat-dog world in southern Africa and there were no free lunches.  Marlin Perkins would have loved it.

Okavango Delta

The main area that we wanted to see in taking our trip to southern Africa was the Okavango Delta in Botswana.  The Okavango is a large inland delta where the Okavango River reaches a tectonic trough in the central endorheic basin area of the Kalahari Desert.  No water from the Okavango Delta flows to any sea or ocean.  The water that flows into the Okavango either evaporates or transpires.  Moremi National Park is on the eastern side of the delta.  Our wilderness camp was on private land that bordered Moremi National Park.  The Okavango is a blend of woodlands, floodplain, wetland, and grassland.

Moremi National Park was originally the Moremi Game Reserve which meant that the native people such as the Bushman were allowed to live there.  It has since been designated a national park.  The Okavango Delta is over 6500 square miles while the Moremi portion is around 1900 square miles.  The Okavango is in the heart of the Kalahari Desert.  The sand in the Kalahari is very fine.  That means that the dust rises substantially when driving around in the Delta.  Our two land rovers never went together to ease the dust on the second vehicle.  To give you an idea how dusty the Kalahari can be, we were out driving one morning after a nice thunderstorm.  Despite the ground being wet, dust was still rising behind our land rover as we drove along the road.

The Okavango Delta is a big area and in the eastern portion, we were not near the largest water areas.  That plus this was the end of the dry season and the second year of severe drought there.  Still the rivers that we saw had plenty of water in them for the wildlife, including the hippos and crocodiles.

We only had to cross one bridge on our stay in the Okavango but we crossed it four or five times.  I would say that they used an interesting architecture to build this bridge.  It was a pole type bridge but not like any that I’ve seen before in my travels.  Nonetheless, it was sturdy enough to keep us from having to swim with the hippos and crocodiles.

Woodlands occupied a large portion of the land in the Okavango.  For that reason, we would find new and interesting areas all the time since we could not see too far ahead.  Hippos were in most rivers, even the smaller ones.  There were probably a dozen in this pod. 

Red Lechwe are antelope and we saw them in large numbers in the Okavango.  They graze on aquatic plants and seemed to spend most of their time near the water in wetlands or grasslands.

Despite being a delta area, the Okavango Delta grasslands and woodlands support a large number of animals including large animals, such as these elephants.  The area floods in winter giving the lands plenty of water to grow grass and there is always water for all the animals.