Two-in-one: DumaTau and a weekend in the Strip – the Caprivi Strip that is.

Dear all,

Elephants, alive and dead, sitatungas and hippos and, if you read to the end, something that went bump in the boat... (Pic is courtesy of Wilderness Safaris - Caroline to be precise.)

DumaTau means ‘roar of the lion’ but I didn’t hear any. (Mind you Zibadianja means Lagoon of the Lechwe and I didn’t see any of those either, but no matter.) It is in the Linyanti concession, an enormous 125 000-ha area near Chobe for those of you who know northern Botswana, that has all of four camps, so it’s all very exclusive don’tcha know. But after the four tents of Zib it felt more like a big happy party, with a camp full of Americans who were having a whale of a time and very enthusiastic, warm, personable and efficient staff – all of whom are local Motswana (i.e. Botswananans see). Everyone was so friendly, including the Bradfield’s Hornbills and squirrels who were our companions during brunch.

Because the camp was full, Caroline and I were put in the honeymoon suite which seemed small after the enormous rooms of Zibadianja, but we managed…. The suite has a ‘sala’ added to it with a comfy mattress on which one can lie and contemplate the shining waters and afternoon sun. But the vervet monkeys it seems have taken ownership of the place and they leaped about on the mattress and cushions, clearly appreciating what Wilderness has done to the place.

The main excitement about this particular area (apart from the leopard and her cub who had taken up residence in a hamerkop’s nest but had left the morning we got there, go figure) is the filling of the Savute Channel. The Savute Channel used to flow from the Linyanti River further north and unaccountably stopped in the 1980s (probably due to tectonic movements deep below), leaving behind large dry grassy riverbeds instead. This year, what with the rain and other factors, it began again, and everyone has watched breathlessly as it has crept further and further down its former bed. But it’s not just a small stream; it has become a wide, flowing river that looks – to my first-time eyes – like it has always been there. I couldn’t appreciate it quite as much as those who have seen it empty; they let out yells of delight and wonder when they saw vast expanses of blue water glinting in the sunlight where there once was grass. The water birds seem to have taken to it with similar delight, but the hippo are more wary; they know the Savute will retreat once more.

So we had to experience and celebrate the waters creeping towards Savuti Camp. We drove to the point at which the ‘head’ of the waters can be found: a trickle that slowly but inexorably oozes its way through the dry grass. Each day the head-trickle disappears into the ground but the next day it has overcome this dry soil problem and creeps a little further forward. In honour of the occasion we all pulled off one sock and one shoe and precariously yet ceremoniously put one bare foot into the Channel – a historic moment captured on camera.

Game viewing-wise, we spent time driving between DumaTau and the other two camps in the area so that we could see them, which meant that any game we saw along the way was a bonus. We enjoyed what the Channel had to offer in terms of water birds, and also saw some interesting bateleur congregations (no, not like Glenhazel congregation, a whole bunch of these eagles in a tree together, fascinating sighting), great elephant crossings (as opposed to zebra crossings my favourite game reserve joke as some of you will know) – we watched a small herd of elephant come down to the Channel to cross. As they got closer, they bunched together and the trunks all lifted into the air to smell for danger. Then, still tightly bunched, they literally ran across the river as fast as they could, sloshing madly, trunks wobbling from side to side!

We had to drive through the mopane woodlands which tend to not have a whole horde of game, except for more excellent elephants. Including a dead one. Which had two big male lions feeding on it. So that was interesting. What was more interesting was seeing if Moss our guide could find his way to the sighting and back out when everything looks the same and each mopane tree looks like the other… but he was really good at bundu bashing and we did make it back to the sand road with sighs of relief.

After two nights, the time came for us to move on. So on Thursday morning we were taken to the airstrip where we hopped on a small plane to fly to the Kwando Airstrip where you have to do the following to get into Namibia: land at airstrip, walk 800 metres through the grass (on a soft sand road, with your guides helping you carry all those tins of kosher tuna) to the river, where you load your stuff on an aluminium boat and putter down past the Botswana army base (on our way back out we watched two elephants walk through it) where either an official gets into the boat with you or comes in his own boat to the Botswana Immigrations… um… office? This is a large canvas tent, no sides to it, some sand bags scattered for some kind of ‘official’ décor type thing, and a buffalo skull presumably for ambiance. A tattered Botswana flag flaps in the wind. Here you get stamped out of Botswana and into Namibia or vice versa depending if you know if you’re coming or going. An adventure in the middle of nowhere which creates an incredibly intrepid feeling of being a ‘real’ explorer – even though we’re not really, let’s face it.

On our way out of Botswana the soldier was smartly turned out in an army uniform, but on the way back in, it was Sunday gear - he stamped away at passports in shorts and a T-shirt… Of course no photos may be taken they get quite upset about that. After all the border formalities, we met our guide Justin and trainee guide Poniso and boarded the little boat again to begin the 25-minute cruise upriver to camp.

There’s something to be said for sailing between two countries as we puttered along the Kwando River (which is the border between the two), with Botswana on the left and Namibia on the right. I definitely got a thrill of being in no-man’s land (or no-woman’s water to be accurate) – floating as it were in mid-geography.

And what a river. The water reminds me intensely of the Delta with that mirror-stillness, crystal clarity all the way to the desert sands two metres deep, the upside-down trees and sky, all framed by the papyrus reeds. But when the engine stops, you realise it is indeed a river as the boat is taken quite quickly downstream towards the Indian Ocean. Well, eventually.

Lovely Lianshulu. It rolls off the tongue and is pretty accurate too. While the camp itself is quite old-style and not Wilderness-style accommodation – bricks and mortar etc – it is one of the most scenic camps I’ve seen, lying as it does along that stunning Kwando River, and shaded beneath riverine vegetation.

Although not known as a wildlife destination we actually had some amazing sightings. On that first journey to camp, we spotted an elephant feeding in the reeds. Justin killed the engine and floated the boat into an inlet, bumping onto the banks. The elephant, not 3 metres away, rose up out of the water. And I mean up: as he was clearly standing in deeper water, he climbed up out onto the banks and he grew and grew until we were literally staring up at him. While he stared down at us. Ears fanning out, this magnificent bull was obviously contemplating whether to charge these pesky intruders but changed his mind and had a drink instead. All was so silent around us that we could here the sucking noise as the water whooshed up his trunk, and then the echoing water-hitting-large-empty-bucket noise as he emptied it down his cavernous throat. He did this a few times then flapped his ears at us from that dizzy height and finally turn away, leaving us with beating hearts and pictures that definitely didn’t need the zoom!

On our sundowner cruise we saw a sitatunga! (Cue excitement for those of us who know it is a rarely seen antelope that loves to lurk in the reeds.) Even Justin last saw one five months ago. Then there was the fish eagle feeding on a bank who took off when we arrived, giving us that classic ‘raptor with fish in talon’ scene, a Nile monitor (leguaan) in a hamerkop nest, lots of hippo heads snorting at us and a group of Americans drinking their sundowners pretty much finished that trip off.

I’m not sure why but the staff at this camp specialise in very different names: There’s Cacius, Shylock, Brighton, Creandz and a Calicious. Yes, he says, it’s like ‘delicious’ but no, he doesn’t know what it means either. But names aside, very friendly bunch. They all were thoroughly entranced at the whole kashrut thing as usual. Shabbat at Lianshulu was scenic but not adventurous as there are no walks in the area, however nothing wrong with just sitting on the deck and watching the stars as they shine upside down in the river.

On the last morning I met Nandi the muffin-eating crocodile. While feeding the wildlife isn’t my favourite idea, she was brought up from a croclet in the water next to the camp and seems to have been fed muffins since then. She is a big mama now, who glides in stealthily when her name is called – and then you drop a muffin next to her head and that typical croc behaviour – lethal teeth in yawning gape, thrashing body and tail – takes place. All for a muffin. Seems a bit of an anticlimax really. The guests like it though.

Our last boat cruise back to the border post was as magical as the first, with great sightings of birds such as western banded snake eagle and an African skimmer! Once again a very rare sighting in this area, so we were all transfixed on the red-beaked creature, Caroline trying to catch a good shot – when something went BUMP on the bottom of the boat, almost tipping it! Sour (another interestingly named guide) hit the throttle and the boat leaped forward – we all turned around to see a disgruntled hippo glare at us….

Quite a way to end the trip but actually the final bit was that as we roared away from the hippo and the now forgotten skimmer, hearts thumping madly, my coat flew gracefully into the water – effectively ending this journey with a Kwando baptism.

Even though Poniso successfully fished it out, I think it’s a sign: I have to return to the Strip.

Botswana Again - the Water-filled North

Dear all,

In which Ilana visits northern Botswana, has a weekend in Namibia, and meets a pangolin. Now some of you will have read that and hissed in frustration that you weren’t with me. Others of you will have shrugged your shoulders and said: Wha…?

By the way, I just read that “to explore” in Latin means “to cry out”. The people who used to go before the others on a journey would cry out about where the wildlife was. [As per dictionary: explôrâre to search out, examine, + plôrâre to cry out, prob. orig. with reference to hunting cries.] Now they still cry out – or write out, if you’re me – about yes, where the wildlife was three weeks ago.

And also by the way, the pics here are courtesy of Wilderness Safaris.

But to begin at the beginning. Colleague Caroline and I decided that neither of us had been to the Selinda Reserve in northern Botswana and I hadn’t been to our Linyanti Concession in that area either. Added to this we’ve just started to market a camp called Lianshulu Lodge just over the border in Namibia’s Caprivi Strip, so we put it to boss Chris to make a week of it. He obliged by saying yes and so on a merry Sunday morning, laden with cooler bags for me and camera bags for Caro, we boarded an Air Botswana plane to fly to Maun, to board a Caravan (plane, remember) to take off again for our first port of call: the Selinda Reserve.

Selinda means “place of many pools” and at the moment that’s exactly what it is. Thanks to amazing rains in summer (which weren’t so incredibly amazing to plod through in Joburg as I recall whinging several times) the grasslands and floodplains are punctuated with bodies of still water, scenically stunning, reflecting the cloudy sky and just clumps of reeds and hippo heads breaking the surface. In fact, the water-filled ground was the leitmotif, the theme throughout our journey as each place we went to had more water than there had been for many a year – about which more anon.

I won’t go into details of the general game – elephant, buffalo, impala etc etc but I do need to tell you about the flocks of red-billed queleas (tiny birds like small sparrows) that are currently swarming in enormous numbers – I use the word ‘swarm’ because there are so many of them and they’re so small that it looks like a swarm or a cloud, while the noise that this swarm makes as these birds fly is such a loud rumble it reminded me uncannily of the London underground which is a weird surreal feeling when you’re standing in the middle of the bush.

We spent the first night at Selinda Camp, which is very pretty, and then used the morning game drive as a transfer to Zibadianja Camp so that we could spend good daylight hours at the latter for photographing – it’s been upgraded to “premier” i.e. very zhoosh in Wilderness standards. A quiet morning suddenly became exciting when first we came across a herd of about 2 000 buffalo and then we off-roaded to where Dukes, a Zibadianja guide, had tracked the Selinda Pride – all 12 of them (2 males, 3 females, 5 juvenile males and 2 juvenile females) – who were all very alert, attempting to attack another, smaller herd of buffalo. The latter bunched up, horns facing outwards, and the situation ended in a stalemate – still, an amazing interaction to watch.

We spent the afternoon photographing the stunning Zibadianja Camp – well, that was Caroline’s job. Mine was to test the outdoor shower – which works very well I’m happy to report – and to sit on the deck made of railway sleeper-wood, which gives a colonial historical feel to the place, added to all the campaign-style furniture, brass-studded wooden boxes that hold whiskey or coffee depending but I digress… and watch the elephants come down to the Zibadianja Lagoon to drink.

The game drive that afternoon turned out to be the GDL – Game Drive of a Lifetime. We headed off to see the two Selinda Brothers – cheetah siblings that our guide Gordie and Dukes had spotted earlier. We found them lying nonchalantly and nobly as only these Egyptian royalty cats can on a termite mound, showing off their photogenic skills. They did the cat thing – dozed then looked up at us, yawned and plopped down again. But it was a very close sighting and we eventually left them (it did seem sacrilegious I agree) to see if we could find the lions for the two new guests on the vehicle – Doug and Sheryl from Seattle.

But the lions would have to wait. On the way, Gordon spotted a small brown mound shuffling through the grass a few metres away from the road. He gave a yelp, echoed by Caroline and me as we realised what it was, and whirled the vehicle around to stop next to what was undeniably and thrillingly a pangolin! The poor beast tried to waddle off but to no avail, he (unless it was a she) had some incredibly excited people around him all yelping and taking photos so he just curled his snout under him and pretended he was a large artichoke (this animal is covered with large scales that look like artichoke leaves, but they’re hard as nails and made of the same substance). But it was too late, we had realised we were looking at a once-in-a-lifetime sighting and hurled ourselves after him.

It’s also meant to be good luck to see one according to local lore, so all guides in the area raced over to spend time with it. As the sun went down, we had three vehicles, their occupants alternately taking pictures of the pangolin (after we’d explained what it was to some of the bemused Americans, they got almost as excited as we had) or sipping drinks and marvelling at this creature – “how complex are Your works,” I found myself thinking, looking at a creature that occasionally – very occasionally – would allow us a glance of a face with a long snout, almost no mouth, and bleary eyes. The pangolin – for those of you who shrugged at the beginning of this email – looks similar to the South American armadillo but is in another family, eats ants, is secretive, nocturnal and small and endangered – hence the almost impossibility of seeing one and hence the incredible warm fuzzies we had on doing so. His official name is Temminck's or Ground Pangolin and he is the only one of three species in Africa and the ONLY one to be found in Southern Africa. So there.

After an hour (by which time I was worrying about the traumatic affect we were having on the poor fellow), the sun had set and we all left him to waddle determinedly off and hopefully calm himself down after that dreadful experience with a helping of termites. There was no time to see the lions now so we turned around and chugged home, each of us feeling immensely satisfied with the sighting. But the night wasn’t over, for as it got truly dark, what should come padding down the road towards us but a leopard. Instead of turning off and disappearing into the darkness providing that usual thrilling 3-second sighting, she just continued walking towards us. Gordie stopped the vehicle and switched off. The friendly beast didn’t falter, but continued towards us and started to walk around the vehicle so close that she could have rubbed herself on the wheel. She stopped just below where I was sitting holding camera and breath, looked up at me, those green eyes lazily taking me in – and purred. I’m not really sure if it was a purr but that’s what it sounded like. If you take a cat’s purr and slow it down so you can hear each click in it, then lower it to a deep base sound: that was the noise. But it crossed my mesmerised mind that if she had decided to jump up and bite my face it wouldn’t take too much effort on her part and I couldn’t do a thing about it. Anyway, she didn’t, which is probably a good thing, and continued her minute examination of the vehicle, circling it, looking under it and around, before deciding we were no use to her and continuing down the road. We still followed her for a while; she circled us again, and then finally ditched us for the darkness of the bush.

GDL indeed.

The day was brought to a perfect end when we had dinner at TV dinner tables all set around the campfire, and served from food cooked on said fire. Even mine, albeit in layers of tinfoil.

Tuesday morning was a great if cloudy game drive, which while not living up to the previous evening, didn’t hurt either. Our cheetah brothers were walking from one hillock or termite mound to the next scent marking, and we followed them for a while before leaving them to do their thing. Gordie then found the lion pride again for Doug and Sheryl but this time they were sleeping, and watching sleeping lions after the first 5 minutes is like watching grass grow. I’m afraid to sound so spoilt but it’s true.

After brunch on the sleeper deck under a beautiful blue sky with elephant drinking in a couple of directions, we headed to our next destination: DumaTau.