July 6

July 6
ROGER:
As usual the gang got a bit of a late start. I could go into a detailed explanation of how much of one’s life is wasted by lying in bed for sooooo many hours every morning. Missing the sunrise is only a small portion of what is lost, but this gang can sleep for umpteen hours a night, and then have to take a nap after driving a short while. The main reason they have to nap so quickly is because of the fatigue of sleeping so long, but that is another subject.

Anyway I did get the fire ready for them and the tea water hot (my usual morning job), and after a while there was rustling in the tent, which is a always an encouraging sound. We decided to pack up and head toward Savuti (instead of doing a morning game drive) where we planned on staying the next night. We considered Linyanti as well, but decided not to take another day to head into that part of the swamps – we just don’t have enough time to do everything. On the way we saw tons of wildlife, as usual. It is good to see the wildlife is still plentiful in Botswana. We saw hundreds and hundreds of elephants, although we didn’t see as many as we used to in the Chobe area. We also saw lots of giraffes, zebra, hippos, birds of all sorts, and of course many different kinds of antelope. We also saw a herd of about 20 sable amongst a group of elephants. They are one of my favorite antelope, and I’ve never seen a herd like that together before. That was ONE of my highlights. I always love watching the game – a favorite part of Botswana for me. When we got to Savuti we discovered most of the water holes were dried up, and someone told us the wildlife was not as prolific there. We decided to head on down toward Third Bridge in Moremi, where we used to often go when we lived in Maun. I count that as one of my favorite places on earth. On the way we saw a Civet (a large cat, but smaller than a leopard or Cheetah). It was sitting smack in the middle of the road, and I’m sure I could have gotten closer to it by watching it’s reaction and driving closer, but everybody got so excited and yelled loudly for me to stop. Of course as soon as I stopped he got up and ambled away, but we did get a pretty good look at him. A little later we saw a big male lion sitting right along the road. We drove up beside him and admired him for a while. He was only about 8 feet from our vehicle, and just sat and watched us. I did open my door a little to see him get up, and he walked about 20 feet back and sat down again. It must be nice to be King in the jungle, and not have to be afraid of anything.

I knew they used to leave the gate open at the park entrance years ago, but we weren’t sure what they did these days, and we were going to get to the gate after dark. There was a chain there which we could open, and we went outside the park about 500 meters and found a place to set up camp in the bush. In this part of the world there are no cattle posts or people, and the area is as wild as the park. The park is not fenced. We built a fire right away to keep the lions at bay and make supper – much to Jolene’s dismay we didn’t make camp until after dark. The days are so short since it’s the middle of winter here and we don’t have long enough days to get much done.

We had heard something in he suspension that did not sound right the last part of the trip, and after checking underneath I found the one shock mount broken. One advantage to this vehicle was the dual shocks, since I knew we would be way overloaded with 7 people and all our gear. The broken portion would rub the wheel when we went over big bumps – we decided to deal with it the next day. After eating we hit the sack and listened to all the normal bush night sounds - roars, grunts, howls, yelps, shrieks, belches, etc – they are always fun to listen to. Off to a blissful noisy nights sleep.
Roger