Safari

After a locally raucous weekend, some discussion about whether our safari hats should be worn on the plane, and one day of malaria pills, we took off in a rattling hired minibus to the airport. This same minibus would have its engine removed and sitting in the footspace of the first passenger row when we returned, only to be quickly dropped back into the floor before it drove us home.

The plane ride was very short, and we arrived in Maun in the evening with the slowly baking desert air to greet us. It felt much like the inner West except without cacti. Our camp housed us in tents, with a permanent bathroom with real hot showers, my first since Lesotho, which were open to the air and visiting birds. At night, these facilities turned quickly into a horror show - we realized that the pitched straw ceiling was completely covered with spiders, that bullfrogs lurked like gangstas in the toilet stalls, leaning over their ominous shadows, that huge hissing unknown creatures the size of birds divebombed your head, and that the trash cans in each toilet stall rattled and rustled mysteriously as you gingerly and jumpily tried to go about your business.

The next day a beast of a Land Rover pulled up to drive us out. We were going to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, then to Nxai Pan (N-tsk-i), for safari. We loaded in. Five million hours of driving later we stopped for lunch, five further million and we reached the gate of the reserve. Ruster, our guide, had the voice of Louis Armstrong and a huge scar across his face from when a leopard tried to eat him. "From here," he announced, "the roads get really bad." We considered lying prone on the roof. It started thunderstorming. Eventually we reached our camp.

That night, as we sat around the fire waiting for dinner, a lion roared nearby. 3 kilometers, said Ruster. We reapplied mosquito repellent and chilled. Roar. 1 kilometer, Ruster said. They are heading right towards us, the cook said. Probably on the road, Ruster said. They like the road at night because it's easier to walk on. Let's go find them.

We leaped aboard the Land Rover and it roared into action. We drove down the road a bit, around and then - LIONS! Two huge males, young still, one with a stunningly beautiful black mane, like the embodiment of night omnipotent. They weaved a direct line off and on the winding road, then short-cutted through our camp before we could reach it. Off into the dark.
When you wake up to go to the bathroom tonight, Ruster said, shine the flashlight around for eyes. If you see any go back in the tent.

The next few days were game drives, in Central Kalahari and then over to Nxai Pan. We saw a cheetah at thirty feet, unhappy but unfazed, our first morning; loads of antelope, jackals playing amongst the antelope. Giraffes. A puff adder (from the car hallelujah). Meercats which are significantly less cute once you've seen their tv show. Lots of huge storks and prehistoric birds. Some zebra and elephants in Nxai Pan. Then back to Maun.

Trip two was the one that my travelling compatriots have been freaking out about since a few two many runs through Google. Mokoros are low wooden (now plastic) canoes which are powered and maneuvered by pole, like Venicean gondolas. The passenger lies propped up on little cushions, face perhaps a foot above the water, watching reeds go by as the poler navigates down clear channels. The fear, of course, was that hippos can chomp your boat in half with a single bite, and crocs can flip it over with a tail whack. However, we stayed in narrow, shallow channels where neither of these creatures have friends to visit, so we were fine. We camped back from the water and grassy marsh a bit, hiked a little, goofed with the teenage polers, and got drenched entirely by rain. Luckily my safari wear was quickdry (holla, REI). Saw some elephants on the way back to land.

Our transport vehicle back to Maun was an open air safari Jeep, and from the back of it fell my program director's wallet, which he had unfortunately placed in a back pocket. This happened perhaps a minute into the drive but was realized 45 minutes later, requiring a painful backtracking. Nearly at the water's edge we found the wallets protective plastic bag, neatly placed atop a bush, with no wallet. Evidently someone had snatched it. Our drivers recalled polers from their village a minute away, and they were accompanied by every other available man (rra - sir, borra in aggregate), some of the women bringing five-gallon jugs of water back on their heads, and some older children. Borra CSI set in - footprints were analyzed, everyone's treads were compared. Darkness came and we began to get hungry. We snuck back to the cooler looking for Tennis Cookies but only found an empty apple bag listlessly floating - foiled! The tread analysis continued. An elder rra got extremely agitated, rightly fearing the impact this would have on their tourist flow, and lectured the lesser borra. None of their treads matched the supposed culprits. Footprints from no where near the crime scene were added to the mix. Our driver had his "goodness gracious" face on. Finally, we gave up, a bad taste left in our mouth after a pleasant outing.

We spent two more days in Maun, then headed home to Gaborone.