Africa 2024 Journal Pages:   
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January 10 - continued
    We stopped to watch a mixed herd of zebras and wildebeest; they were hanging out in the shade together. The wildebeests had some very young babies, their light brown coats in contrast with the darker adults. There was also a really small baby zebra in the group, his slightly brownish striped coat still fuzzy with his baby fur. We again commented on the fact that all of the animals we were seeing were in very good condition, sleek and fat from the good grazing.

    A bit further on we came to a tree overlooking a waterhole, and in the shade of it there lay four lionesses. They were resting, but alert, ready to hunt if the opportunity should arise. One of them stared at us fixedly, while another yawned widely and then started licking her paws. The lionesses, with their refined features and intent expressions, seem more elegant than the male lions.

     We stopped for tea at the same large waterhole as we had the day before. A brown snake eagle sat high in a tree, no doubt searching for brown snakes to eat. There were a variety of birds all around us; a few of the new ones included the common green shank and a village indigo. Several bull elephants came down to the water, and we watched as they sucked up trunkfulls of mud and water to spray over themselves for a nice cooling mud bath. It was very peaceful, though there was a little excitement when Janell got ants in her pants.

     We returned to camp around noon for lunch. In the afternoon we packed up our belongings to be ready to move to a new camp the next day. We had a bit of extra time to rest, but it was too hot to stay inside the tents. To my delight, Gee showed up at my tent with my lost suitcase! It had arrived in Maun the previous day, and Gee had arranged for one of his friends to pick it up at the airport and drive it as far as the buffalo fence, where More met him and brought the suitcase back to camp. It was nice to be reunited with my clothes, but more importantly, Duma was safe and with us once again! I was very relieved, and I am sure Duma was also.

       We had high tea at four o'clock, and then went back out for an afternoon drive. Again we spent some time with the zebras. We noticed many of them had fainter brownish stripes between each black stripe; these are called shadow stripes. The white stripes on several of the zebras were a dusty brown; Gee told us this was a genetic trait. I was surprised; I had always thought they were just dirty. I love the way Gee pronounces ‘zebra’ the British way, with a short E sound (rhymes with Debra).

     We drove through an area where the trees had been killed by flooding; seismic shifts periodically change which areas are covered when the Delta floods. It was an eerie skeleton forest, with large bare trunks standing tall, their dead limbs reaching out toward us like grasping hands. 
     We could see dark clouds and storms around the horizon, and again we noticed the weird phenomenon of lightning without thunder; we surmised that because the land was so flat we could see the lightning from much further away than we would at home - too far to hear the thunder.     
     A few zebras and a lone elephant wandered among the dead trees, and we saw a pair of tiny steenboks. Guinea fowl scurried through the brush, and two black-backed jackals passed by like ghosts in the fading light. 

     We stopped for sundowners at the waterhole. ‘Sundowners’ is a delightful African tradition of pausing somewhere with a beautiful view to watch the sun go down while having an adult beverage. Gee had brought a bottle of pink bubbly at Janell’s request, along with wine and gin and tonics for the rest of us. We stretched our legs and admired the view. The sky was filled with dramatic clouds, backlit by the setting sun.

     It was getting quite dark by the time we arrived back at camp. We had just gotten out of the land cruiser and headed to our tents when the lady from the game reserve’s office walked in to our camp to tell us that there was a pride of lions moving down the road! We jumped back in the vehicle and Gee took us to find them.

     There were lion tracks everywhere! Gee read the spoor, and soon caught up with the pride. Sixteen lions were strolling down the road in a strung out line, mostly lionesses with their half grown cubs - the Kaziikini Pride. We tailed behind them, and they totally ignored us. We followed them for a while, and then left them to their night hunt and headed back to camp for dinner. The thing that really amazed us was the fact that the lady from the office had walked over to tell us about the lions; we didn’t think it seemed wise to be walking through the dark bush with so many lions close by, and Gee agreed. 

     Mosa announced another great meal, telling us each course amid murmurs of yep, yep, yep in what we came to realize was his signature style.  Over dinner and a glass of wine, we reviewed our favorite sightings of the day - no question about it, for me it was the wild dog hunt. 
     I heard the inquisitive whoop, whoop of a lone hyena during the night. In the wee hours I heard a series of low booming calls I couldn’t identify; Gee told us in the morning it was the call of ground hornbills.   

 January 11
     Moving day! We were heading for our next camp, near Dombo Pools in the Moremi Game Reserve, in the Okavango Delta. The seasonal rains from Angola, hundreds of miles to the north, travel down the river into the midst of the Kalahari Desert, flooding a vast inland river delta. It seems a little incongruous that the Okavango Delta is flooded during the dry season, and the waterways are empty during the rains.

      We were up at five again, and the guys were taking down our tents while we had breakfast. Gee would take us on an all-day drive today, giving the camp staff time to finish dismantling the camp, move it to the new location, and then get it all set up before we arrive in the evening. On the road before six, we saw most of the regulars; impala, warthogs, zebras, steenboks, some distant giraffes.

    As we passed the waterhole where we had sundowners the night before, to our delight we found a pair of bat-eared foxes. These small foxes are brown with black legs and tail, and they have a dark mask around their eyes. They have the most enormous ears, for which they are named. Very shy, they ran off as we approached, crossing in front of the zebras. I was surprised they were here; I had seen bat-eared foxes in the Kalahari Desert in the past, but I did not know they lived so close to the Delta. 

     There were quite a few giraffes around this morning - I never tire of seeing them. One big male was feeding on a tree close to the road, and we spent some time watching him eat. An oxpecker sat on his head, pecking relentlessly at his knobby horns.

     An impala buck stood up on a termite mound, and we had a nice encounter with an elephant that was right by the road. A Wahlberg’s eagle sat high in a dead tree. We watched a beautiful yellow bird with a black face working on a hanging nest; it was a masked weaver.  A red-billed francolin perched on a tree and posed for us; we saw these plentiful birds on nearly every game drive, but this was the best photo op of one we’d had.

     A little dark brown head peaked out of a hole in an old termite mound; it was a mother dwarf mongoose. She was soon followed by three or four youngsters. These tiny mongoose look a little like a weasel or a mink, though they are not actually related. The mongoose mother peered at us curiously, but the rest of her family scurried about unconcerned.

     We had not realized how huge the Kaziikini Reserve is until we were leaving it; we had been driving straight for hours now, and we were surprised to learn we were still in Kaziikini. Gee said that it encompasses over 60,000 hectares (nearly 150,000 acres), and stretches all the way from near the buffalo fence to the South Gate of Moremi.

     We came upon a troop of olive baboons. I always have slightly mixed feelings about the baboons; they are fascinating to watch, but at the same time mildly disturbing. Baboons are intelligent and interesting, and have an athletic loose-limbed grace to how they move. The babies are cute; they have red faces when they are newborn, which soon turn pink, and eventually grey as the get older. But the young baboons definitely become less cute as they mature; the adults tend to have sullen or belligerent expressions, and singularly unattractive bald butts. I think what really disturbs me about them as they seem just a little too human.

   A group of banded mongooses were sticking close to the baboons. They are much larger than their dwarf cousins, and have subtle striping on their bodies. One mongoose sat up in a tree (which I didn’t know they could do), and the others on the ground stood up on their hind legs and gazed at us, like meerkats on the lookout. Gee told us that baboons and mongoose hang out together and each act as a warning system to the other. 

     We came to the South Gate of Moremi, and after pausing to sign in, we entered the park and drove through some beautiful forest.  A female kudu was lying in a shady spot under the trees, along with two half grown youngsters. 

     A troop of vervet monkeys moved through the trees; we sat for a long while watching the young ones playing. They would scurry up a treetrunk, climb out onto a branch, dangle from a vine and wrestle with each other a bit, launch themselves head first into the air and plummet to the ground – and then it was back up the tree to start the whole thing over again. I have never been a fan of monkeys in captivity, but I love watching them in the wild where they belong.

   The landscape changed now that we were in the Okavango Delta. We followed the Khwai River as it wound its way through the broad floodplains. Many areas were thick with tall grass and reeds, and small rain-fed waterholes were everywhere. Gee pointed out some lovely flowers, the petals bright red, fringed in yellow - these were flame lilies, and they are very beautiful but also quite poisonous. A tiny zitting cisticola serenaded us from where he perched on a stalk of tall marsh grass. 

     As the landscape changed, so did the wildlife. It was early afternoon when we paused by the river.  Suddenly a hippopotamus stood up out of the water, the first we had seen on this trip. He looked at us for a moment and then sank back down to submerge in the water. We saw more hippos as we followed the river course. I told a few bad hippo jokes:

         What do you call a hippopotamus who talks badly about his friends?  A hippo-crit
         What do you call a hippo who always thinks she’s sick?  A hippo-chondriac.
         What do you call a one-legged hippo?  A hoppo.

     We had our first sight of red lechwes, an antelope that is at home in the Delta. Similar in size to an impala, these reddish brown antelopes are well adapted to the wetlands; they love the swampy areas, and run into the shallow water to escape predators. Their front legs are shorter than their hind, giving them a very downhill appearance. They have webbed feet that help them run through the water, and are athletic runners and jumpers. The herd took off when we approached, but stopped once they had put a bit of distance between us. We watched as a very small baby nursed on his mother. Gee told us the lechwes live almost exclusively in the Okavango Delta; they are prevalent here, but there are very few elsewhere – just a few in Chobe and in Zambia.      

     We drove along the edge of a huge open floodplain by the Khwai River. A saddle-billed stork stood in the tall grass; these striking birds have black and white bodies and huge red bills with broad stripes (or saddles) of black topped with yellow. The females have bright yellow eyes, while the males’ eyes are dark. This one was a female; a few minutes later we saw her mate as well.  These storks are an endangered species, and the Okavango Delta is one of the few places where they can still be found.

    We stopped beside a large pool occupied by over a dozen hippos. These huge animals need to be mostly in the water during the day to stay cool and have protection from the sun, but at night they come out to graze, and might travel up to ten kilometers. Though considered one of the more dangerous animals in Africa, hippos are herbivores, eating mainly grasses and plants. But the males are very territorial, and can be aggressive - don’t get between a hippo and the water!

     One huge bull hippo seemed to be swaying up and down, forward and back. At intervals he would raise his head higher out of the water, and he had a rather self-satisfied expression on his face. We suddenly realized we were witnessing hippo sex! The bull honked and chortled in his enthusiasm, his vocalizations sounding like demented laughter. We could barely see his mate; she was submerged, with her face only occasionally coming up to the surface to catch her breath. Kind of an OMGMF moment.

     As we drove on across the wetlands, we saw a variety of new waterfowl. Pygmy geese floated in the water, and squacco herons picked their way through the grass. We saw slaty egrets, an African crake, a green-backed heron and a coppery-tailed coucal. Gee said the coucal has a lovely song

     Fluffy white cumulous clouds were sidelit by shafts of afternoon sunlight, but we could see dark stormclouds gathering around us. A huge storm was blowing up; we could see the rain coming down on the other side of the treeline, covering the plane in a whitish haze of precipitation. We recognized that look now: not smoke or dust! We thought we might really get drenched so Gee stopped and put the plastic rain flaps down, but the worst of it passed by us.

     We came upon a pair of wattled cranes. These long-legged birds are extremely rare and very beautiful. They are black underneath, with silvery grey backs and wings with long feathers, and elegant white necks. They are quite shy, so we were lucky to get close enough for a good look at them.

     We passed a termite mound adorned with a set of buffalo horns; someone had a sense of humor. There were more red lechwes about, walking along in their ridiculously downhill way. We found another pair of wattled cranes. Gee pointed out several village weavers perched in the grass, attractive small yellow birds with black faces and mottled wings. We watched an African harrier hawk trying to raid a nest in a cavity in a dead tree; the starlings were mobbing him to try and drive him away and protect their nest. 

     We came to an area where Gee had seen cheetahs in the past, and we stopped to scan the grasslands looking for them. Cheetahs like wide open plains where they can see for a long ways and use their blinding speed to run down their prey. They will often sit up on a termite mound or stump for a better view. Cheetahs have become quite rare, so we did not have a high expectation of seeing them; indeed in all my trips with Gee we had only seen cheetahs once. But we could keep hoping!
     A pair of reed bucks stood camouflaged in the brush; these antelopes look very much like the white-tailed deer we have in Virginia, but are far less common. They took off and ran across in front of us, while we tried to get good action photos.

      Three female waterbucks moved through the tall grass, and a bit further on we saw a large male. These are one of my favorite antelopes; they are fairly large and have long soft coats, kind faces, gentle eyes, and a white circle on their rumps like a target.  The males have large curving ridged horns.

     We came to an open floodplain beside a strip of forest, and there we saw a row of tents. Our Dombo Pools camp! It was beautiful. Our tents were under the edge of the trees, with the campfire and dining tent beside them, and a waterhole out in front. 

     We had only been in camp a few minutes when Gee heard the cough-like call of a leopard; we all got back in the land cruiser and headed out in the gathering darkness to search for it. Gee drove slowly around the area, following the alarm calls of impalas and birds. Soon it was pitch-dark. Gee could tell the specific area the leopard had to be in, but we were not able to find it.

     It was raining lightly so we sat in the dining tent instead of by the campfire, discussing the day’s highlights. The consensus was a tossup between the bat-eared foxes and hippo sex.     

              ~ Continued on next page ~


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