Last week I headed north with a few friends to visit Moremi, one of Botswana's game reserves. We stood in the rain at 5:30 am to get an early bus for the 10-hour trip to Maun. Every bus has a sign saying the number of seated passengers it will hold and the number of standing (zero) passengers allowed. Needless to say, there were no seats for the first couple of hours of the trip, and the aisles were packed with people standing. It is amazing to me how the conductor is able to squeeze through the standing people to collect the fares, but somehow the bodies part for a moment or two and money is collected. When we arrived at the Old Bridge Backpackers hostel at the end of the day, the sight of water, greenery and space had us celebrating:
Mia, Me and Dominique
The view from our tent
The next morning we were up at 5:30 again to begin the journey into the game reserve. We bumped along in an open truck for an hour before we reached the border of the park, which is 3 separate fences. This is the boundary between domestic animals and wild animals, and Botswana is very strict about maintaining its integrity.
Although we still had to drive another 45 minutes to the main park entrance, our first 'wild' animal appeared less than 10 minutes from the boundary--giraffes having breakfast:
The giraffes were elegant and curious, eyeing us as much as we eyed them...
We consider ourselves blessed because Dominique, who is now known as Hawkeye, was able to sight a leopard, a true rarity. We met people who have been on 25 safaris and have never seen one. The cats--leopard, cheeta, lion--are nocturnal and very 'shy.'
During the rest of the day we saw elephants, impalas, hippos, impalas, a water monitor, impalas, many 'random birds' of extraordinary color, impalas, red bucks, impalas...
As we were leaving the park 12 hours later, Ice heard from another guide that lions had been spotted close by the night before. Since we had such luck seeing a Cheeta and a leopard, Ice decided to go 'off road' into the bush to see if we could track the herd. The other guide stayed on the road with his group of Belgians and said "ladies first" as we crashed through branches and drove through the brush. No more than a few meters in we saw the remains of the lion's meal--the carcass of a water buffalo. Sorry, no photos available as we were all holding our breath in hopes of spying the king of the jungle. Ice spotted the lion tracks but it was getting late and going deeper into the bush did not seem wise, so we returned to the road where the Belgians were waiting to hear the outcome of our exploration. We made the water buffalo carcass sound like more than it was...
The next day we took a sunset boat ride from Old Bridge Backpackers up into the Okavanga Delta where we were able to see zebras in the distance and enjoyed more bird sightings. On the return, as we approached the bridge next to our campsite, people on the bridge motioned to us: a hippo was in the water, blocking our way under the bridge. Again, sorry, no photos. We sat immobile, me with my heart in my mouth, as the hippo eyed us and slowly, much too slowly, moved away. Hippos are responsible for more human deaths in Africa than any other animals. Before I left the states a friend who had lived in Africa for 10 years told me 'the only thing you have to fear is mosquitoes and hippos.' We managed to slip under the bridge and have a strong drink at the lodge before going to bed to the sound of buzzing mosquitoes...another night in Africa.
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