Village Visitors

Kasane is a town of about 15,000. It and Maun are the two biggest tour centers of Botswana. Still it has a small town feeling. Bill saw two wart hogs at the shopping center a few days ago and I heard a hyena outside the window last night. Today our visitors were male and female boomslang snakes in the trees above the house. The book says that they rarely bite but their venom can kill you in 1 to 3 days due to internal bleeding. Toff called in Mike Clemence local chief mechanic and snake catcher. Mike and his crew caught both snakes and put them in pillow cases provided by Toff. They measured 1.7 and 1.79 meters (5ft 8 inches and 6ft), a record for this area.

Can you have too many elephants?

The day after my birthday Toff drove us to a large grassy area near a section of the Chobe river where two elephants were taking a mud bath, rolling in it, throwing it onto their backs, going into the mud headfirst and butt up, lying on their sides and just swishing a trunk. It made for amazing fun photos. As we watched we became aware that there were other elephants about, lots of other elephants, more than a hundred other elephants. Slowly they passed by us moving on big grey legs without a sound just surrounding us and moving on. There were tiny babies that didn't reach to their mother's bellys and that could walk along right under their moms, there were youngsters running and playing with their tails in the air like wart hogs, there was one enormous male with the biggest tusks I've ever seen. He came in beside a big matriarch but his size made her look small. At one time we had over 125 elephants on all sides of us with more coming on. We had only two incidents that were a bit scary. One of the last families to pass had a matriarch with a floppy ear and a really bad temper. She was not happy with our being there and she hurried her little group in and back out and did not cross over to the grass on the other side as most had done. On the way back she came right at us and made threatening noises and postures. Then she moved her group off but one of her young males, maybe six or seven years old decided to posture to us and that made her think we had done something to him so back she came. We huddled silently in the open land cruiser, not a word, not a movement and finally she moved away behind us. The other incident came after we had driven away and then had to come back that way. Another female decided she was fed up with us being there and gone and then back again so she just plain charged us:ears out, trunk up trumpeting her anger and running. Fortunately we had passed her and were driving away so we were able to step on the gas and leave her. But she surely would have bashed the truck. A conservative guess would be that we have over 200 elephant photos. I'll try to select a few.

Botswana Birthday

I celebrated this year's birthday with a very special birthday cake made for me in camp by Dandy the cook. He baked it over an open fire in a cast iron pot and frosted it with peanut butter and wrote on it in jam. Peanut butter and jelly spice cake in a campsite that was breathtakingly beautiful, not a bad way to celebrate. But even more, on the drive in we spotted 16 different animals including the first sable we had ever seen. The list: elephant, hippo, lion, giraffe, buffalo, sable, kudu, impala, reedbuck, puku, mongoose, crocodile, water monitor, wart hog, baboon and vervet monkey, and birds too numerous to mention.

Shadows in the grasses

I've written here about how tall the grass was and how pleased we were to find the animals that we did while driving in Kruger. The animal posts above are to show just how well hidden the animals were. I'll also post a couple of photos of the country we were driving through and had all to ourselves. In the entire 9 hours of driving in the park we might have seen a dozen cars on those back roads. We felt like something in "Out of Africa" with the whole place to ourselves.

Monkeys on the Lawn

When I was growing up my father had a little ditty he used to sing. It began "Oh I wish I were a tumble bug in some manureous place..." He explained to me that a tumble bug or dung beetle rolls a neat ball of manure into which she places on egg. She then buries the whole thing and the manure protects the egg and keeps it moist. On our game drive we spied a tumble bug with its lovely round ball making its way across the road from a large pile of elephant dung. The ball picks up pieces of gravel as it rolls. You can plainly see this in the photo.
One morning while we had our coffee on the patio I looked about and commented that it looked a lot like Hawaii with the green lawns, the plumeria tree on one side and the hibiscus hedge on the other. "Yes," Bill replied, "except for those." And he pointed to a troupe of about two dozen monkeys frolicking on the lawn. There was on large dominant male and the rest were moms and babies. The babies would scamper about and then hang on for dear life under the moms while they climbed a tree or ran down the lawn. We knew they were about somewhere because on the day we moved in and put our groceries in the kitchen Bill went out to the car to get another load and on his return found a package of hamburger buns on the lawn. It had been torn open and one and a half buns were missing. They were our buns and we hadn't even seen the thief come in and steal them. You can believe we kept a close watch on open doorways after that and we always put our bread in the bread box.

Elephants large and small

Yesterday, the 21st, we took another game drive in Kruger. We were in the park for 8 hours driving slowly on back roads and spotting all sorts of African critters even though the grass is tall, like six feet tall along the roads, and there is plenty of water everywhere. Still we are patting ourselves on the back because we are having amazing experiences and are almost always completely alone in the back country. Our most amazing experiences yesterday were with elephants particularly a large bull that we happened upon. He was grazing beside the road and we stopped to watch him. Apparently he decided to move on and came out onto the road - where we were. The photo of his head with ears flared was taken at the moment. But he did not cross the road, he came straight at us. The road was narrow and dirt so we decided that the best course of action was to back up. We did. Second photo is of him coming. It is a bit hazy because it was taken through the windshield, in haste. We backed for what seemed like ten minutes and he just kept coming. We talked about turning around and fleeing but it would have taken more time than we had considering how fast he was moving (not running but just a steady pace). FINALLY he turned off and began eating. Whew!! Looking back he was probably just moving on; he certainly wasn't agressive. But he was so much bigger than our little car and we didn't want to take any chances. Later in the day we found a good-sized herd of moms and their babies. I'll put up a photo of them crossing the road so you can get an idea of the size of the tiny one who also turned and acted like he might come toward us. We could have handled him.

Seekers of Game

Yesteday, Jan. 19, we made our first drive into Kruger Park. We have been on over 50 game drives in the past 7 years but this is the first one we have done on our own. Kruger Park is enormous, so big that you can plan to visit only one small part each day. We happen to be near the greenest lushest part, the part with the most rain. And this is summer. So we were not very sure about being able to spot anything, what with the high grass and the heat. We were lucky. The day was overcast and unseasonably cool and - this is the offseason so there were few other visitors. We came upon a herd of impala just inside the park; at least we were not going to be skunked. We drove slowly (15 kilometers and hour) and scanned the grass and trees as we had watched our professional guides do. By the end of the day we had been able to stop and watch:a large bull elephant, a herd of elephant cows and calfs, two separate giraffes, a white rhino, a male kudu, hundreds of impala, monkeys, and at the very end, eight lions lying in the road soaking up the warmth of the tarmac. What a day!

Moving On

We have left Cape Town. We charted our course and actually drove right to the airport in about an hour. That gave us 2 more hours to put the car in public domestic parking and haul the luggage to check-in. Actually we have very little luggage. I checked in in Kodiak at under 30 pounds for our three month vacation. Bill had more because he took along his portable kayak which we stored in LA. I'm adding more weight with purchases, mainly books, which we plan to leave along the way as we read them. We left three in CT. Images above are a pair of Egyptian geese and their five babies that honk and parade past our braai area constantly and make lots of racket, the view from an upstairs bedroom balcony door and two of our neighboring chalets. Speaking of braai, we bought charcoal to do hamburgers the first night and it was real charcoal, not briquets but wood that had been burned down to black sticks. It lit much easier that the briquets and has a better smell.

Work Boats in Wonderland

The Cape Town waterfront is an amazing place. It is lined with with world class shops, delightful restaurants,and street entertainers ranging from jazz sax players to fire eating limbo dancers. In the harbor itself are all manner of boats and ships, from 40 foot longliners that would be at home in Kodiak to huge factory trawlers to even larger ocean liners. Above are some of my favorites. Bill

Shops and Sails

Today we drove into Cape Town, again. Like last time we parked near the waterfront and walked around. We planned to take another tour bus but one with a different route. Instead while walking the dock area we spied a nice-looking schooner offering an hour and a half tour. The price was the same as the bus and seemed like much more fun so we hopped aboard. We joked to each other about all the sails they had and how it was too bad they didn't use them as we could hear the big diesel motor purring below us. But to our surprise as soon as we cleared the second breakwater the sails went up: two jibs, a foresail and a mainsail. It was an extremely windy day so the big sails were raised only half way. Still the boat heeled way over and water washed through the skuppers and over the gunwales. (Sailing terms thanks to Bill's lessons last July) It was a thrilling ride way out into the bay and back. They even served us champagne - in plastic glasses. On our return we walked all around the enormous shopping area that covers much of the waterfront. We bought a few things and I had my hair cut and styled and we had a lovely lunch right on the water. We somehow managed to head home in the middle of rush hour traffic but that didn't bother us. We were too happy with our day. Photos above show Bill at lunch with Table Mountain and harbor as backdrop, one of the many troupes of street entertainers; notice the fire in the center of the limbo rod. The next time they lowered it to the tops of the coke bottles and he did it; Susan aboard the sailboat taken before haircut; the schooner; some of the shops and restaurants along the V & A waterfront; a child in a bubble - one of the many activities for children.