I can't speak for Martin here, but I was very impressed with all of the people that we met while on safari. Even though we were out seeing lions and elephants and giraffes, the biggest and nicest surprise to me was the people.
When we first booked the safari, I had been nervous that we would have to eat all our meals and spend all our days with strangers. Every single meal, with new and different people. What if they were obnoxious or annoying or people we just didn't get along with? What if there were a bunch of morose teenagers or children who didn't want to be there or who didn't appreciate the trip? Would Martin and I get to spend any time alone on the safari if we hated all the people in our camps?
My fears were completely unjustified. Everybody in the safari camps ended up having a lot in common - we were all there to see some wildlife, we all enjoyed being outdoors and in nature, and we all cared about the animals and the environment. And, we all spent a fortune to safari in Botswana! It turns out that Botswana purposely keeps the cost of travelling into and around the country astronomical in order to keep their lands and wildlife in as pristine and natural of a condition as possible. The fewer people that trample through the environment, the better condition it will stay in, obviously. And, the high price tag keeps out all of the what I would call annoying or not-as-serious tourists.
We ended up meeting people from Australia, Spain, New Zealand, Switzerland, Germany, California, Detroit, Hawaii, and England. New people come and go from the camp every single day - almost every meal has a different group of people at it. In Kanana, we started our activities with two men from Spain who spoke very little English but who were hilarious. They were always laughing and arguing and doing stupid things to try to get pictures of animals ... they were quite comical. They were replaced by a middle-aged couple from Australia who were in love with birds and baobab trees (Kanana is the place to go for birds). You get to know the people who share your guide and ride in the jeep with you each day quite well, however people in the other groups you only see at meals and when there are 16-20 people at the table you don't necessarily get to know anybody particularly well.
At Okuti, we had most of our game drives with a couple from the UK who were our age and also honeymooning, Archie and Hazel. They were both doctors, or training to be doctors. Archie was also trying to finish up a PhD while training to be a doctor. So we were able to have discussions with them about graduate school and the busy life of working on a PhD in the sciences, and the differences between the U.S. and the U.K. PhD programs. Once they left, they were replaced by Don and Karen from San Diego - an elderly couple who had decided to travel like crazy before they got too old. They had a great story too. Karen and her husband had always been friends with Don and his wife since they had been young. Karen's husband of 44 years had passed away a few years back and Don's wife passed away soon after and then Karen and Don started to get to know each other better and then they got married! Apparently Don proposed to Karen only 3 months after they started dating and Karen said it was too soon but Don told her they didn't have time to waste so she said yes. They were the sweetest couple, but boy they sure did talk a lot. They had like 6 children between the two of them, all with grandchildren, living all over the U.S. Hours and hours of stories out of Don and Karen.
At Savute, we were with the same people for most of our stay. A young couple from Germany who knew a decent amount of English, a couple with their two college-aged daughters from England, and an older couple from New Zealand. There were so many different backgrounds and cultures there, the conversation was always good. I was sad every time somebody left a camp (except the annoying picky-eater couple from Hawaii), but was also always excited to see who we'd get next. Our last night at Savute-Under-Canvas we were joined by a group of 4 people from Switzerland who had flown into Gaborone and driven to the camp. I couldn't imagine trying to drive around Botswana, seeing as there were almost no roads and the roads there were were dirt tracks if you were lucky. These people had apparently driven themselves on safari in Namibia and had loved it, and had thought Botswana would be similar but apparently the road conditions in Botswana are nowhere near as good as they are in Namibia (and I can't imagine Namibia has a spectacular road system either). But, when you drive across a country, you get to drive through villages and meet people that live there and see how they live. It sounded fascinating but I'm not sure I'd do it. It takes hours to get anywhere in Botswana because you can only go about 10mph on the bumpy roads.
And then there were all of the natives of Botswana who worked at the safari camps. Of course they were all very friendly because they were paid to be. But several of them shared bits of their personal lives with us. They work for three months straight at the safari camps, 7 days a week from 5am until all the guests go to bed at night, and then they get one month off. They must have been tired all of the time. But they always smiled at us and greeted us warmly and they waited on us hand and foot. Our first two guides had both grown up hunting with their fathers. They had learned each animal's unique tracks and the call of each bird. Both of these guides, Shakapira and Solomon, told us that they had girlfriends back in their villages but that they were scared to make a commitment to them. Solomon told us that he would have to buy his bride when they became engaged, and that it would cost him about $4,000 USD. I wonder to this day if the guides were just making up these stories to get bigger tips out of us Americans, or if they really were too scared to commit to their girlfriends. Maybe it would mean they couldn't have affairs with tourists anymore? Not sure. Solomon also told us that they are allowed to apply for a transfer each year to a different camp - and one of their options was to work at Disney World for a year. I can't imagine anybody could go from the bush in Botswana to DisneyWorld, where the safari kingdom is a bunch of animals in cages. But Solomon seemed to want to go out to clubs and live a fun and fancy free life for a year in Orlando. And what of his girlfriend back in Africa then? I gave up trying to understand relationships in Africa.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Savute-Under-Canvas
We left Okuti and flew to our final camp, Savute-Under-Canvas (SUC). The flight there was fine, a little bumpier than our first few flights but neither one of us felt at all ill.
We called SUC rustic compared to our first two camps. Here, we were in tents. Real tents, not enormous tents built onto wooden platforms with running water, but canvas tents laid down on the sand with no running water or electricity. We got to shower under a big canvas pouch filled with water with a spout on its bottom you could open or close to allow water to trickle out onto you. These pouches were filled with hot water in the evenings so we could shower before dinner. But no matter how many times we showered at SUC, we were always covered with dirt and sand. Our beds, which were the most comfortable beds of our entire trip, were also filled with dirt and sand. This was real camping.
SUC was manned by a staff of 8 men. Every four days, they packed up the entire camp and moved it a half mile or so away. They are only allowed to be set up in the national park if they only stay in one place for no more than 4 nights. The camp had 5 tents so it could hold a max of 10 guests at a time.
We also decided that SUC was our diet camp. There was no morning beverage brought to your tent, no hot breakfast, only one lunch and dinner option instead of a buffet of dishes, no sundowners, and no pre-dinner appetizers! We were grateful that we had packed a few granola bars for the trip because we ended up eating them here so our stomachs didn't eat themselves while we waited for dinner at 8pm, with our last meal being at brunch at 11am. Thankfully we had some New Zealanders with us here who brought beer on our evening drives so we could have some informal sundowners. After eating at least 4,000 calories per day at our previous two camps, this camp was definitely diet camp even though we were still probably eating 2,000 calories per day. On the bright side, SUC did have a well-stocked bar that was open all day long. So if you wanted to drink your afternoon siesta away, you were perfectly welcome to.
Oh yeah, and it was HOT while we were there. In the 90's every afternoon, with very few clouds in the sky, and there was no way to escape the heat. The tents heated up throughout the afternoon siesta so that you could not go into them without sweating. Which left you to sit outside at the dining table, which was under an awning, to try to stay cool. We tried to nap a few times one afternoon but it was too sweaty and not worth it. By the last afternoon we figured out that the best way to beat the heat was to take a cold shower. Even though our bucket shower was just a trickle of water, standing under it when it was colder than the air felt amazing. Having cold wet hair on a sweltering afternoon was the way to go.
At night, we would return from our evening game drives to a camp lit with lanterns hanging from poles outside of our tents, and lanterns all around the dinner table and the awning above it. It was beautiful. There would also be a fire in the middle of the tent area with chairs all around it so we could convene there for cocktails and conversation once we had showered. All of the candlelight made evenings the best time in the camp. We tried to capture some of the night lights around the dinner table:
The stars were also amazing at night. Since you're not near any cities in Botswana, there is never any light to interfere with the night skies. Although we did have a full moon or close-to-full moon for our entire stay there so that got in the way of being able to see all of the stars and constellations fully, but it was still way better than trying to view the night sky from Boston!
At SUC, the only activity was game drives. Compared to Okuti, the game here was slightly disappointing. We came from a place where we had just seen a pride of lions stalk a herd of buffalo ... and at SUC there was not a single lion to be found. Apparently they used to have lions, and all the guidebooks say that Savute is known for its lion population, but all the lions moved out over the past year or two and the guidebooks had not been updated to reflect that. And, we were in Savute during the dry season, and we witnessed firsthand the last waterhole in the area run dry. No worries though, the camps in Savute created manmade waterholes for all the elephants to drink out of; otherwise the elephants tear up the underground pipes that run water around the national park.
SUC did have a ridiculous amount of elephants. They were everywhere - and all males. They called them bachelor herds. The female elephants were smart enough to leave with their babies when water got scarce in the dry season but the men stay back and get thirsty for some reason. If you want to see a lot of elephants, SUC is the place to be. We also saw a baby leopard, in a tree, through a large amount of foliage. Its mother was out hunting and had left it in the tree. We went back the next day to check on it and its mom had come and taken it someplace else where it wouldn't be found by all the tourists. We also saw a few things here that we hadn't seen yet - like a cliffspringer and some Roan antelope (which I think are actually called Oryx). And there were some hills here! We hadn't seen hills in our other camps.
A lilacbreasted roller:
At night, different animals would be out and about than what you'd see during the day. Hyenas, honey badgers, genets, springhares, and hippos would be wandering around ... and all the big cats would be hunting too. In SUC, the honeybadgers made themselves well known. We were lucky enough to see a few of them one evening while on our way back from a game drive. They look like big skunks and are kind of cute. On our last night at the camp, in the middle of the night, there was a large crash from the kitchen followed by scurrying footsteps running by our tent through the leaves - honeybadgers. So cute! They'd get into the kitchen every night, as the kitchen is also just a canvas tent and easy to get into if you're a small hunger-motivated animal. The camp staff took great pains to leave the kitchen clean at night, but the badgers would come back every night anyway to see what they could scrape up.
The vegetation was markedly different in each of the 3 camps that we stayed in. In Kanana, it was flat and dry and open with a lot of tall grass and very few trees. In Okuti, there were many trees but they were not densely packed, which was neat. Everything there was also quite green and lush and not as dry. In Savute-Under-Canvas, everything was sandy and dusty and dry. There were a lot of bushes and short trees, about the height of a person or a little taller. And they were all starting to bloom in a very pale pink/purple color. It was quite subtle but very pretty. There were a few bigger trees that were blooming in bright yellow as well. Spring in Africa!
Kanana:
Okuti:
Savute:
We called SUC rustic compared to our first two camps. Here, we were in tents. Real tents, not enormous tents built onto wooden platforms with running water, but canvas tents laid down on the sand with no running water or electricity. We got to shower under a big canvas pouch filled with water with a spout on its bottom you could open or close to allow water to trickle out onto you. These pouches were filled with hot water in the evenings so we could shower before dinner. But no matter how many times we showered at SUC, we were always covered with dirt and sand. Our beds, which were the most comfortable beds of our entire trip, were also filled with dirt and sand. This was real camping.
SUC was manned by a staff of 8 men. Every four days, they packed up the entire camp and moved it a half mile or so away. They are only allowed to be set up in the national park if they only stay in one place for no more than 4 nights. The camp had 5 tents so it could hold a max of 10 guests at a time.
We also decided that SUC was our diet camp. There was no morning beverage brought to your tent, no hot breakfast, only one lunch and dinner option instead of a buffet of dishes, no sundowners, and no pre-dinner appetizers! We were grateful that we had packed a few granola bars for the trip because we ended up eating them here so our stomachs didn't eat themselves while we waited for dinner at 8pm, with our last meal being at brunch at 11am. Thankfully we had some New Zealanders with us here who brought beer on our evening drives so we could have some informal sundowners. After eating at least 4,000 calories per day at our previous two camps, this camp was definitely diet camp even though we were still probably eating 2,000 calories per day. On the bright side, SUC did have a well-stocked bar that was open all day long. So if you wanted to drink your afternoon siesta away, you were perfectly welcome to.
Oh yeah, and it was HOT while we were there. In the 90's every afternoon, with very few clouds in the sky, and there was no way to escape the heat. The tents heated up throughout the afternoon siesta so that you could not go into them without sweating. Which left you to sit outside at the dining table, which was under an awning, to try to stay cool. We tried to nap a few times one afternoon but it was too sweaty and not worth it. By the last afternoon we figured out that the best way to beat the heat was to take a cold shower. Even though our bucket shower was just a trickle of water, standing under it when it was colder than the air felt amazing. Having cold wet hair on a sweltering afternoon was the way to go.
At night, we would return from our evening game drives to a camp lit with lanterns hanging from poles outside of our tents, and lanterns all around the dinner table and the awning above it. It was beautiful. There would also be a fire in the middle of the tent area with chairs all around it so we could convene there for cocktails and conversation once we had showered. All of the candlelight made evenings the best time in the camp. We tried to capture some of the night lights around the dinner table:
The stars were also amazing at night. Since you're not near any cities in Botswana, there is never any light to interfere with the night skies. Although we did have a full moon or close-to-full moon for our entire stay there so that got in the way of being able to see all of the stars and constellations fully, but it was still way better than trying to view the night sky from Boston!
At SUC, the only activity was game drives. Compared to Okuti, the game here was slightly disappointing. We came from a place where we had just seen a pride of lions stalk a herd of buffalo ... and at SUC there was not a single lion to be found. Apparently they used to have lions, and all the guidebooks say that Savute is known for its lion population, but all the lions moved out over the past year or two and the guidebooks had not been updated to reflect that. And, we were in Savute during the dry season, and we witnessed firsthand the last waterhole in the area run dry. No worries though, the camps in Savute created manmade waterholes for all the elephants to drink out of; otherwise the elephants tear up the underground pipes that run water around the national park.
SUC did have a ridiculous amount of elephants. They were everywhere - and all males. They called them bachelor herds. The female elephants were smart enough to leave with their babies when water got scarce in the dry season but the men stay back and get thirsty for some reason. If you want to see a lot of elephants, SUC is the place to be. We also saw a baby leopard, in a tree, through a large amount of foliage. Its mother was out hunting and had left it in the tree. We went back the next day to check on it and its mom had come and taken it someplace else where it wouldn't be found by all the tourists. We also saw a few things here that we hadn't seen yet - like a cliffspringer and some Roan antelope (which I think are actually called Oryx). And there were some hills here! We hadn't seen hills in our other camps.
A lilacbreasted roller:
At night, different animals would be out and about than what you'd see during the day. Hyenas, honey badgers, genets, springhares, and hippos would be wandering around ... and all the big cats would be hunting too. In SUC, the honeybadgers made themselves well known. We were lucky enough to see a few of them one evening while on our way back from a game drive. They look like big skunks and are kind of cute. On our last night at the camp, in the middle of the night, there was a large crash from the kitchen followed by scurrying footsteps running by our tent through the leaves - honeybadgers. So cute! They'd get into the kitchen every night, as the kitchen is also just a canvas tent and easy to get into if you're a small hunger-motivated animal. The camp staff took great pains to leave the kitchen clean at night, but the badgers would come back every night anyway to see what they could scrape up.
The vegetation was markedly different in each of the 3 camps that we stayed in. In Kanana, it was flat and dry and open with a lot of tall grass and very few trees. In Okuti, there were many trees but they were not densely packed, which was neat. Everything there was also quite green and lush and not as dry. In Savute-Under-Canvas, everything was sandy and dusty and dry. There were a lot of bushes and short trees, about the height of a person or a little taller. And they were all starting to bloom in a very pale pink/purple color. It was quite subtle but very pretty. There were a few bigger trees that were blooming in bright yellow as well. Spring in Africa!
Kanana:
Okuti:
Savute:
Thursday, December 17, 2009
A Typical Day in Food
6am: wake-up call with a beverage of your choice (coffee, tea, or juice) delivered to your tent.
6:30am: breakfast. You start with a buffet of yogurt, granola/muesli, fruit, toast/muffin/pancake and oatmeal/porridge, and then a waiter comes and takes your eggs/bacon/sausage order. And, yes, we ate all that every morning. With peanut butter on our toast too. We'd have a full bowl of yogurt with granola and a piece of toast or muffin and still be ordering eggs with bacon.
9:30am: tea/coffee or hot cocoa with cookies.
11:30am: brunch. Usually some sort of casserole or stir-fry with a carb and a vegetable side. A big green salad, a lentil salad, a potato salad, and a fruit salad. Served with cold white wine, and followed up with a cheese platter.
Take a 3-hour nap in here, to allow for maximum weight gain.
3pm: afternoon tea. Your choice of tea, coffee, or juice, with a sweet snack (cake or cream puff) and a savory snack (quiche or a mini-pizza or a spring roll).
6pm: sundowners. A cocktail with a snack that usually involved sausage. Sometimes it was bite-sized pieces of sausage and cheese on toothpicks, or sausage wrapped in puff pastry.
7pm: pre-dinner drinks and snacks. Sometimes snacks were healthy like carrot sticks or popcorn (with great spices on it), and sometimes they were prunes wrapped in bacon or chips. Prunes wrapped in bacon were really big for some reason.
7:30pm: 3-course dinner that included an appetizer, 2 meat entrees, 1 vegetarian entree, 2 vegetable sides, 2 carb sides, of which you ate a little of each (sometimes all the dishes were new to us so we had to try them all), served with rolls and real butter and copious amounts of wine or whatever you were drinking. Wine glasses were never allowed to be less than half full! Followed by dessert. Followed by a cheese plate. Followed by after-dinner drinks around the fire.
10pm: In-room after-dinner drink from the decanter of sherry left in your room every evening for your drinking enjoyment. Complimented by homemade cookies, also left (in an airtight container) in your room, in case you got hungry inbetween meals.
Sleep. Repeat.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Camp Okuti
After our marvelous flight from Kanana, we arrived at Okuti and met our guide for the next 4 days, Solomon. He drove us back to camp in his squeaky jeep (at first it was annoying that it squeaked every time it went over a bump, which was all the time, but by the end we didn't really notice it). Camp Okuti had raised wooden walkways all around it so you would always be walking about 3 feet off of the ground. This way you didn't have to worry so much about hippos charging at you because they're too big and fat to get up onto the walkway.
We were greeted at Okuti with yet another bottle of complementary champagne, which we managed to drink at 3pm. Then, we went out on our first game drive. The game at Okuti was amazing. By far the best game we saw on the entire trip. Within five minutes of our first drive, we had found a leopard. However at Okuti, leopards are easy to spot because they are wherever all the jeeps are. At Kanana, there were no other camps around so our jeep was always the only jeep in the area. At Okuti, there were 3 safari camps located right next to each other so sometimes there were 8 or more jeeps looking at a single animal, all bunched up together trying to get the best view. And since Okuti was located in a national park, any yahoo could drive there from the airport or a neighboring country and follow the jeeps around if they so desired or even try to safari on their own.
Back to the leopard. He was in a tree. Leopards sleep in trees during the day and come down at night to hunt. They are incredibly hard to spot and it makes you wonder how many leopards could see us at any given time that we were unaware of. Our guide Solomon told us that we would come back to the leopard around 5:30 because that is when he would come out of the tree and do something more interesting than just sleeping. So we moved on and we saw zebras and waterbucks (antelope with a white ring on their bums that looks like they sat on a toilet seat with wet white paint on it) and elephants and a pride with 11 lions in it! Our first lions. And they were easy to find too because they were lying in the middle of the road. They were not very exciting though because they had just eaten a buffalo and their bellies were enormously full and all they did was lie around and sleep. One got up to drink out of a little stream nearby and that was about it. But they were our first lions so they were awesome! And, one of the males (there were two grown males in the pride) got up and walked right up to the Jeep where Martin was sitting and peed on it! That was pretty exciting. We all were sitting very still, barely breathing because even though you're fairly sure the lion won't jump up into the jeep and attack you ... you just never know.
Then it was 5:30 and so we headed back to the leopard because he was magically going to come down at that exact moment. Interestingly, as soon as we pulled up to the tree that he was in, he got up! And, wild dogs chased some impala right under the tree and the leopard jumped out of the tree into the middle of the running impala and tried to catch one. He missed though. But it was really exciting that we literally just pulled up moments before all the action. Solomon knew what he was talking about! And, now that we had seen some wild dogs, the chase was on. People get very excited about wild dogs. They are apparently nearing extinction because they catch viruses from regular dogs and people and die from them. But they're quite entertaining - like dogs with ADHD. They never stand still. We got one blurry photo of the ones we saw and that was it. Usually all you see of them is a blurry streak as they run by you and Solomon shouts "wild dogs!!!" and you all pile into the jeep and take off after them but never catch up to them. But now we know that wild dogs come out at 6pm every evening, right as the sun is setting, and they chase things and catch their dinner.
Our leopard friend:
Here's our blurry wild dog pic:
How can you beat such a great first game drive? Well for several days we didn't, really. We saw a lot of elephants and followed around the same pride of lions while their food digested, and followed around the same leopard from tree to tree. One morning we went out to open areas to try to find a cheetah but had no luck. One interesting bit was that each morning the leopard had caught a new impala during the previous night. Leopards drag their kills up into trees so other animals can't eat it or take it away. So we got to see several dead impala hanging in trees at odd angles, in various states of being eaten, as the first sight of our morning drives at 7am right after breakfast. It was pretty swell.
A grey lory:
On our second night at Okuti, just like at Kanana, we were led off to a secluded spot for a romantic dinner. This time we were up on a raised platform just big enough for a little table and two chairs. There were lots of lanterns and candles lighting the walkway and stairs up to the platform. And, while we ate our private little dinner, hippos grazed in the grasses around the camp. They didn't bother us since we were up on a platform but it's interesting how quiet hippos are. They're big, but stealthy. The following night there were three hippos munching on some grass right outside of our tent.
On our last morning at Okuti, Solomon took us to where the lions were usually sleeping in the middle of the road, but they weren't there. Solomon managed to find their tracks in the roadway for us to follow. Animals always walk on the roads because they're lazy and it's easier than walking in the grass so they always left nice neat tracks for us to follow. Solomon tracked the lions 6km, using their pawprints and also some fresh patches of buffalo dung to determine the direction they had gone in. We finally found them asleep in a pile in the middle of a field. With a herd of about 200 buffalo just 1km away! The lions seemed fast asleep but Solomon assured us that they were following the buffalo and would soon get up and possibly hunt and kill a buffalo. And, lo and behold, about 15 minutes later the lions got up and headed over to the buffalo. It was great fun following them around while they were active, playing with each other and climbing trees - they have the same habits and mannerisms of domestic cats, except they're much bigger and would eat you if they were hungry. The female lions soon fanned out to hunt some buffalo, but then it was apparently just too hot for them and they all walked into the shade of a big tree, flopped down in a pile, and fell back to sleep.
Lazy lions:
We drove back over to the lions and buffalo on our evening game drive that day, but neither group had moved and the lions were still asleep so we left and never saw the kill. Lazy lions. They literally get up and walk five feet and then lie back down and fall asleep again.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Those Small Planes
Airstrips in Botswana are little more than a strip of dirt or gravel a few hundred meters long, with a windsock somewhere at the top of a pole. Sometimes there is a little ladder or stairway that can be pushed up to a plane to aid in getting on or off, but not always.
As we waited for our plane to take us from Kanana to our next camp, Okuti, I was filled with anxiety that the next camp would not be as good. The staff would not be as good, our guide would not be as good as Shakapira, the lodging and food would not be as good, the activities would not be as good, etc. Of course this was just my malarone making me crazy, but I was kind of right because the staff at Kanana gave us a unique experience that other camps did not match.
The plane soon landed and it was a 6-seater. The smallest plane I had ever been on. We had been warned before we left on our trip to stock up on motion sickness pills (by people who had been on the same trip to Botswana), which we had dutifully done but neither of us had taken any because we'd never gotten sick on planes before. However when this plane landed, all 6 passengers very very slowly exited the plane. One of the men had his pants off and was rebuckling them. All of them were carrying paper bags filled with ... something. Something that was quickly soaking through them. And they were looking for a trash at the airstrip to put them in (this is funny because there was no trash)! I was like, why did they bring food on such a short plane ride? Until I realized that they were air sickness bags ... FULL. And the 6 passengers were not doing well at all. Actually, one of them was fine. Several of them were at their final destination so they were taken off in jeeps to their camps, including the guy with his pants down who was the most violently ill of all of them. One woman was very unhappy. She had to get back onto the plane to fly to Camp Pompom, which was literally a 2-minute flight away from Kanana. But she couldn't do it. She said she'd never been so sick in her life and she wanted to walk to the next camp. Lions? Buffalo? Whatever ... better than being on a plane! Ha.
The pilot, who was the same guy who flew us to Kanana in the first place (only so many pilots out there!), got out of the plane and came over to us and told the woman coming with us from Kanana, Benike, who worked at our next camp, that there was no seat for her on the plane because someone had gotten sick all over it. She ended up covering it with a thick blanket and still sitting in it because she had to get back to work. The angry irrational woman from above was forced back onto the plane and boy did she COMPLAIN for the next 5 minutes until we reached her stop. The seat Martin sat in was fine. The seat I sat in had vomit all over the back of the seat in front of it. Somebody had thrown up into the seat pocket and it was leaking through ... and dripping onto my sneakers. You can't even imagine my panic mode for that flight. And the plane was hot. And it was a very traumatizing experience to have so many sick and upset people around us, with vomit literally all over the tiny, full 6-seater plane we were in. It makes you wonder what kind of turbulence they had experienced ... had it really been that bad? Or had one person just had a weak stomach and vomited, causing a chain reaction in all the other passengers? The pilot said they had had a good amount of turbulence, but he compared it to the flight we had already been on, which didn't seem all that bad to us. We will never know. But, I took motion sickness pills for the remainder of the flights after that one, just in case.
As we waited for our plane to take us from Kanana to our next camp, Okuti, I was filled with anxiety that the next camp would not be as good. The staff would not be as good, our guide would not be as good as Shakapira, the lodging and food would not be as good, the activities would not be as good, etc. Of course this was just my malarone making me crazy, but I was kind of right because the staff at Kanana gave us a unique experience that other camps did not match.
The plane soon landed and it was a 6-seater. The smallest plane I had ever been on. We had been warned before we left on our trip to stock up on motion sickness pills (by people who had been on the same trip to Botswana), which we had dutifully done but neither of us had taken any because we'd never gotten sick on planes before. However when this plane landed, all 6 passengers very very slowly exited the plane. One of the men had his pants off and was rebuckling them. All of them were carrying paper bags filled with ... something. Something that was quickly soaking through them. And they were looking for a trash at the airstrip to put them in (this is funny because there was no trash)! I was like, why did they bring food on such a short plane ride? Until I realized that they were air sickness bags ... FULL. And the 6 passengers were not doing well at all. Actually, one of them was fine. Several of them were at their final destination so they were taken off in jeeps to their camps, including the guy with his pants down who was the most violently ill of all of them. One woman was very unhappy. She had to get back onto the plane to fly to Camp Pompom, which was literally a 2-minute flight away from Kanana. But she couldn't do it. She said she'd never been so sick in her life and she wanted to walk to the next camp. Lions? Buffalo? Whatever ... better than being on a plane! Ha.
The pilot, who was the same guy who flew us to Kanana in the first place (only so many pilots out there!), got out of the plane and came over to us and told the woman coming with us from Kanana, Benike, who worked at our next camp, that there was no seat for her on the plane because someone had gotten sick all over it. She ended up covering it with a thick blanket and still sitting in it because she had to get back to work. The angry irrational woman from above was forced back onto the plane and boy did she COMPLAIN for the next 5 minutes until we reached her stop. The seat Martin sat in was fine. The seat I sat in had vomit all over the back of the seat in front of it. Somebody had thrown up into the seat pocket and it was leaking through ... and dripping onto my sneakers. You can't even imagine my panic mode for that flight. And the plane was hot. And it was a very traumatizing experience to have so many sick and upset people around us, with vomit literally all over the tiny, full 6-seater plane we were in. It makes you wonder what kind of turbulence they had experienced ... had it really been that bad? Or had one person just had a weak stomach and vomited, causing a chain reaction in all the other passengers? The pilot said they had had a good amount of turbulence, but he compared it to the flight we had already been on, which didn't seem all that bad to us. We will never know. But, I took motion sickness pills for the remainder of the flights after that one, just in case.
Camp Kanana
8/31/09
Our flight to Maun was very smooth on a brand new Air Botswana plane. Maun doesn't seem that big from the air (picture dirt roads and sparsely distributed rickety-looking houses) and the airport is quite tiny. It's exactly one room big. Our Air Botswana plane sat right outside the one-room airport and it was the only big plane there. Lots of 4- and 6-seater planes lined up outside though! Customs looked like it happened in a garage back home. Airport employees here were wearing face masks - the first ones we'd seen and we'd already been to 5 airports!
We were immediately met by Julius (love the 5-star luxury treatment of being met off of every single flight with a bottle of water and an airport guide) and transferred to small aircraft for our flight to camp Kanana. The plane was actually a 10-seater and not any more bumpy than a normal flight, we thought. But, holy man are those small planes HOT. It's in the 90's and hot in Botswana, and those small planes have no air circulation in them so you just sit in them and sweat. And look out the windows. You see lots of elephants and giraffes and unidentifiable beasts from the planes since they fly so low to the ground. You can also see the houses that make up the bustling metropolis of Maun in this pic taken from our first small plane ride:
Upon arrival at Kanana, about 10 staff members were standing out front singing to us. Not in English so they could have been singing anything but I'm sure it was welcoming. Then they bombarded us with their names, which we remembered one or two of (very embarrassing spending 3 days somewhere not knowing anybody's names). The staff at Kanana sang a lot, in Setswana which is one of the national languages of Botswana (along with English). The traditional singing and dancing, which we often had to join in on, was a very nice touch and we only found it at Kanana. After we were greeted, we were fed lunch. Lunch was enormous. This day it was tacos. The camps always worked to cook a variety of dishes from all over the world for meals so people could feel more at home. And, wine is served with lunch every day.
After lunch we set out on our very first game drive. Within five minutes we saw a family of elephants, complete with a baby, and a baby giraffe not too far away from them. Though whenever you see a baby by itself it's sad because it means something happened to the mother for her to not be near her baby. Later in the drive we saw some buffalo, but only 3 of them, not a whole herd. Little did we know that elephant and buffalo are fairly rare sightings at Kanana! We then had sundowners (cocktails and snacks at sunset) by a hippo pool, where all the hippos were constantly grunting at us and sticking their heads out of the pool and watching us and "yawning" at us. They don't come out until nightfall though, when it's cooler outside.
This is a bridge in Botswana:
Baobab trees:
And below is a termite mound, which were *everywhere*. After awhile I stopped noticing them so much, but when we first arrived they were really impressive. Our guide Shakapira told us that if you catch a bunch of termites and fry them up and eat them, you won't be hungry for the next day because they are so filling. Good to know, when you need to survive on your own in the middle of Botswana. Fortunately, these were all dormant while we were there.
After sunset, we continued our game drive with a large spotlight. After dark, you follow the spotlight around until you see a pair of eyes reflecting the light. That's how you spot critters. Some of the cutest things in Africa are nocturnal, like genets and springhares. We even spotted some hippos.
Kanana had the most activities of any of the camps. The next morning we went on a mokoro (traditional canoe) ride. We didn't see much wildlife but it was a new experience. You ride around through lots of tall grass that is filled with spiderwebs and you basically just get covered with it all. We saw a very tiny frog though. And on the boatride to the mokoros we saw a bunch of hippos ... which we got quite close to but thankfully they didn't feel like charging us that day.
That night, we went on a boat ride to the heronry, which is a place out in the Delta where many large birds come to mate in September and October. They nest in trees in the middle of the water because they're safe from predators there. We came at the right time of year to see it! So many birds, and all so big - storks, herons, egrets, pelicans. 50-100 of them in each tree. Absolutely amazing. Then we had sundowners on the water while the sun set. Gorgeous. The sunsets in Africa are beautiful every single night. Blood red, due to all the dust and sand in the air. Unfortunately we did not learn how to fully capture sunsets on our new camera before we left for the honeymoon so we never got a sunset shot that accurately depicted the colors.
This is a pic of our Spanish friends, Angel and Victor, in their mokoro wearing their lily pad hats the guides made for us.
That night the two of us were taken off for a romantic candlelit dinner. We sat at a table for two under the stars by the pool, and we were surrounded by candles and tealights floating in the pool. With our own personal waiter, of course, who was really just there as a guard to make sure no lions or hippos ran out from the woods and ate us. Our travel agent was pretty spectacular to get us this special treatment for our honeymoon. We were told by some friends before we left to tell everybody we met that we were on our honeymoon to see how much special treatment it got us ... and we weren't disappointed. Although we tried it at the airport to get an upgrade to first class and just got a "congratulations" instead. Worth a try!
And the next morning, we went for a bush walk. So many activities to do here!! The walk was exciting because it felt dangerous. You're just out on your feet with your guide who has a big gun "just in case". He gives you this advice before you start:
If you see a lion, stand still.
If you see a buffalo, run, find a tree, and climb it.
If you see an elephant, run to the nearest termite mound and gather around it.
Then you're off on your walk with all those wonderful things to think about. Thankfully on our walk we only saw giraffe and warthogs. We saw an imprint where a hippo had slept the night before but thankfully no big things charging at us. But we walked through a lot of tall grass where you could just picture a lion hiding, ready to pounce on you.
Our last night in Kanana we were loaded into cars and driven into the bush for a traditional African dinner around a big fire. With a full bar, of course. There were lanterns lit all around this open meadow, and a table set filled with candlelight, and dinner was cooking over the fire. We sat around the fire and the staff sang to us, then we danced a bit and then had dinner. Not even sure what we ate that night ... although what they do with maize is quite delectable. We tried many new dishes in Africa, and were not disappointed in any of them.
The staff at this camp worked so hard. They had to drive all of the things for our dinner - tables, chairs, booze, food, dishes, lanterns, etc. out into the bush so we could have that different experience. No other camp did that.
Cape Town
8/29/09
We arrived in Cape Town 3 days ago; we flew in from Newark via Amsterdam which gave us a total flight time of 21 hours ... plus a 3-hour layover in Amsterdam. And those 12 hours that you spend flying over the entire continent of Africa from north to south seem to drag on forever. Every time you check the flight status map the plane looks like it's still in the same place as it was the last time you checked. It was all worthwhile though because our hotel in Cape Town was very nice and we were greeted there with a nice chilled bottle of champagne in our room to help us shake our jet lag.
Our tours of Cape Town were quite thorough. On Thursday morning, bright and early at 9am (no sleeping in on this honeymoon!), our private tour guide Colin picked us up at our hotel in a mercedes. He drove us down the western coast of the Cape and we stopped at a few beaches along the way and a little market where we had some coffee and bought a wall hanging to give to Jeff and a hippo carved out of some sort of stone. Cathy asked the woman selling it what it was made out of and she said "stone." Right but what type? "Stone." Okey doke.
Then we went to the Botanical Gardens, which were by far the best Botanical Gardens we’ve ever been to. They covered something like 500 acres of land – you could spend an entire week exploring it. There were many classes of schoolchildren there; it seemed like a great place to take a field trip to. There were some large spiders there though.
Our guide Colin:
For lunch we went to a restaurant with huge windows all along one of its walls overlooking the water in the bay below. There was a seal or sealion playing around in the kelp the entire time we ate lunch. We each got a 3-course lunch, which included a generous dessert, and we managed not to be hungry for the rest of the day.
We spent the afternoon traveling down the western coast of the Bay (don’t remember the name of it but I think it was False Bay because explorers thought it was the other side of Africa but it was just a bay on the way). We saw African penguins and a baboon sitting on the hood of some tourist’s car and a few ostrich grazing by the ocean. We took some pics by the sign for the southwesternmost point of the African continent and then climbed up to the Cape of Good Hope lighthouse. It was pretty chilly and windy by the shore. Nice to be in winter weather for a bit though, as we had left hot and humid weather back home.
I was sick by now with a cold so we ordered some room service for dinner. We weren’t really all that hungry after our huge lunch anyway.
The second day in Cape Town we headed out to Stellenbosch to start the morning off right with a wine tasting at the Waterford winery. Here we tasted several white wines and then a few reds, and then we got to try 3 red wines paired with different chocolates. One of the chocolates had rock salt in it, which was interesting. However, it was a new experience to sip wine, bite chocolate, and then sip wine again and note how the flavors changed with different types of chocolate. This winery also does some sort of fun bike tour where you bike up to the winery (quite hilly) and then you sit and drink (complementary champagne, winery tour, and then your tasting), and then you bike back to wherever you started from. Can't imagine that drunken bike ride home!
After our first tasting we went to the Cheetah preserve to pet some cheetahs. You can only pet them at 10am because that's right after they get fed so they're fat and lazy and unlikely to eat you. An employee still has to supervise your cheetah petting, while he holds the cheetah on a leash so it can't suddenly decide to eat you. We got to pet a male cheetah named Enigma ($15 each to pet an adult, more to pet a cub) who purred and purred and purred. Cheetahs purr very loudly, and their fur is very coarse and close to their bodies. They are not fluffy or soft animals at all. Cheetahs are on the brink of extinction and this preserve was not breeding cheetahs to attempt to repopulate the species, but was instead breeding dogs. Apparently many cheetahs are killed by farmers who are trying to save their herds of sheep from an attacking cheetah. However if instead a farmer gets a special dog that thinks it's a sheep or a goat (because it was born and raised with sheep or goats) then it will protect the herd by scaring off attacking cheetahs without killing them. Neat.
And then, of course, lunch!!! We ate at a french restaurant, La Petite Ferme (http://www.lapetiteferme.co.za/), overlooking the Franschhoek valley. The food was amazing - another 3-course lunch including enormous desserts and copious amounts of wine. It's hard to believe we stayed awake afterwards. But, we rolled back into our mercedes and we were driven to more wine tasting! This time at the Anura winery, which is on the border between Paarl and Franschhoek I believe. Anura's mascot is an enormous frog. Fun. Here we got to taste wine paired with different cheeses and jams, all home made right there on the farm where they grew their grapes. And, as with many wine tastings, they just kept bringing us more and more wines even though we were only supposed to taste 5.
We decided we couldn't order room service on both of our nights in Cape Town so we manned up and ... ate dinner in the restaurant in our hotel. I was still quite sick and it was pretty cold outside and we were both exhausted after all of our eating and wine tasting. Martin had an amazing dish with a cream sauce, bacon, and kudu in it. Kudu is an amazingly delicious meat, and also a beautiful animal should you ever see one - especially the males with their big twisty horns:
Saturday morning we got up at 4am and were driven to the Cape Town airport to catch our 6am flight to Jo'burg, then on to Maun, then on to our first safari camp. We were met by an airport guide with bottled waters at every stop. Ker and Downey tours must be designed for retarded Americans who get lost and confused easily in foreign airports. We managed to use our guide in the Jo'burg airport to locate a pharmacy so we could buy more Sudafed. We also found and bought bug repellent that is 80% Deet. Can’t find that in the USA. The Jo'burg airport, by the way, is an enormous and beautiful airport, newly redone for the World Cup in 2010. There were actually several pharmacies and like an entire mall in that airport.
One thing that really struck us that we did not manage to get any pictures of were all of the shanty towns in the Cape Town area. This is where all of the black people live who are searching for employment in South Africa. Here, they are guaranteed shelter, water, and electricity, albeit in the form of sheets of tin on top of glorified cardboard boxes, all leaning into each other in rows. SA is apparently going to replace these towns with better housing, but it seems like they need to find more space in order to upgrade the housing of so many people.
We arrived in Cape Town 3 days ago; we flew in from Newark via Amsterdam which gave us a total flight time of 21 hours ... plus a 3-hour layover in Amsterdam. And those 12 hours that you spend flying over the entire continent of Africa from north to south seem to drag on forever. Every time you check the flight status map the plane looks like it's still in the same place as it was the last time you checked. It was all worthwhile though because our hotel in Cape Town was very nice and we were greeted there with a nice chilled bottle of champagne in our room to help us shake our jet lag.
Our tours of Cape Town were quite thorough. On Thursday morning, bright and early at 9am (no sleeping in on this honeymoon!), our private tour guide Colin picked us up at our hotel in a mercedes. He drove us down the western coast of the Cape and we stopped at a few beaches along the way and a little market where we had some coffee and bought a wall hanging to give to Jeff and a hippo carved out of some sort of stone. Cathy asked the woman selling it what it was made out of and she said "stone." Right but what type? "Stone." Okey doke.
Then we went to the Botanical Gardens, which were by far the best Botanical Gardens we’ve ever been to. They covered something like 500 acres of land – you could spend an entire week exploring it. There were many classes of schoolchildren there; it seemed like a great place to take a field trip to. There were some large spiders there though.
Our guide Colin:
For lunch we went to a restaurant with huge windows all along one of its walls overlooking the water in the bay below. There was a seal or sealion playing around in the kelp the entire time we ate lunch. We each got a 3-course lunch, which included a generous dessert, and we managed not to be hungry for the rest of the day.
We spent the afternoon traveling down the western coast of the Bay (don’t remember the name of it but I think it was False Bay because explorers thought it was the other side of Africa but it was just a bay on the way). We saw African penguins and a baboon sitting on the hood of some tourist’s car and a few ostrich grazing by the ocean. We took some pics by the sign for the southwesternmost point of the African continent and then climbed up to the Cape of Good Hope lighthouse. It was pretty chilly and windy by the shore. Nice to be in winter weather for a bit though, as we had left hot and humid weather back home.
I was sick by now with a cold so we ordered some room service for dinner. We weren’t really all that hungry after our huge lunch anyway.
The second day in Cape Town we headed out to Stellenbosch to start the morning off right with a wine tasting at the Waterford winery. Here we tasted several white wines and then a few reds, and then we got to try 3 red wines paired with different chocolates. One of the chocolates had rock salt in it, which was interesting. However, it was a new experience to sip wine, bite chocolate, and then sip wine again and note how the flavors changed with different types of chocolate. This winery also does some sort of fun bike tour where you bike up to the winery (quite hilly) and then you sit and drink (complementary champagne, winery tour, and then your tasting), and then you bike back to wherever you started from. Can't imagine that drunken bike ride home!
After our first tasting we went to the Cheetah preserve to pet some cheetahs. You can only pet them at 10am because that's right after they get fed so they're fat and lazy and unlikely to eat you. An employee still has to supervise your cheetah petting, while he holds the cheetah on a leash so it can't suddenly decide to eat you. We got to pet a male cheetah named Enigma ($15 each to pet an adult, more to pet a cub) who purred and purred and purred. Cheetahs purr very loudly, and their fur is very coarse and close to their bodies. They are not fluffy or soft animals at all. Cheetahs are on the brink of extinction and this preserve was not breeding cheetahs to attempt to repopulate the species, but was instead breeding dogs. Apparently many cheetahs are killed by farmers who are trying to save their herds of sheep from an attacking cheetah. However if instead a farmer gets a special dog that thinks it's a sheep or a goat (because it was born and raised with sheep or goats) then it will protect the herd by scaring off attacking cheetahs without killing them. Neat.
And then, of course, lunch!!! We ate at a french restaurant, La Petite Ferme (http://www.lapetiteferme.co.za/), overlooking the Franschhoek valley. The food was amazing - another 3-course lunch including enormous desserts and copious amounts of wine. It's hard to believe we stayed awake afterwards. But, we rolled back into our mercedes and we were driven to more wine tasting! This time at the Anura winery, which is on the border between Paarl and Franschhoek I believe. Anura's mascot is an enormous frog. Fun. Here we got to taste wine paired with different cheeses and jams, all home made right there on the farm where they grew their grapes. And, as with many wine tastings, they just kept bringing us more and more wines even though we were only supposed to taste 5.
We decided we couldn't order room service on both of our nights in Cape Town so we manned up and ... ate dinner in the restaurant in our hotel. I was still quite sick and it was pretty cold outside and we were both exhausted after all of our eating and wine tasting. Martin had an amazing dish with a cream sauce, bacon, and kudu in it. Kudu is an amazingly delicious meat, and also a beautiful animal should you ever see one - especially the males with their big twisty horns:
Saturday morning we got up at 4am and were driven to the Cape Town airport to catch our 6am flight to Jo'burg, then on to Maun, then on to our first safari camp. We were met by an airport guide with bottled waters at every stop. Ker and Downey tours must be designed for retarded Americans who get lost and confused easily in foreign airports. We managed to use our guide in the Jo'burg airport to locate a pharmacy so we could buy more Sudafed. We also found and bought bug repellent that is 80% Deet. Can’t find that in the USA. The Jo'burg airport, by the way, is an enormous and beautiful airport, newly redone for the World Cup in 2010. There were actually several pharmacies and like an entire mall in that airport.
One thing that really struck us that we did not manage to get any pictures of were all of the shanty towns in the Cape Town area. This is where all of the black people live who are searching for employment in South Africa. Here, they are guaranteed shelter, water, and electricity, albeit in the form of sheets of tin on top of glorified cardboard boxes, all leaning into each other in rows. SA is apparently going to replace these towns with better housing, but it seems like they need to find more space in order to upgrade the housing of so many people.
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