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The wrinkled eye of an elephant looks like bark on a tree. The rhomboid pattern on a giraffe looks like cracked, dry earth. A sunset flames like a bright red flower. A desiccated tree root is shaped like a wind-dried skull, the colours and shapes on the shell of a slow-moving tortoise are like those on a graceful giraffe and the speckles on three crowned lapwing eggs are similar to guinea fowl polka dots.
Nature recycles her good ideas.
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Mana Pools National park abounds with wildlife. After our first full day in the park we have already seen kudu, impala, baboons, vervet monkeys, waterbuck, warthog, zebra, crocodile, giant eagle owl, Meve’s starling, southern ground hornbill, barred owlet, red-billed firefinch, saddlebill stork, brown snake eagle, black-headed oriole and a tawny eagle with a monitor lizard in its mouth.
The charm of walking safaris is to be able to follow animal footprints, droppings and other clues. It is like a treasure hunt! One morning we walk straight up to a pride of lions with a fresh kudu kill. There are four adult female lions, a few teenagers and about six cubs sampling the bloody goods. The lions make eye contact with us and start flicking their tails angrily. I know from my domestic cat at home that a flicking tail means angry. We keep our distance and huddle behind a large fallen branch. A buffalo approaches the lion pride from the other side and stresses the lions even more, so we quietly move off and let them eat their breakfast in peace.
Another morning we find ourselves face to face with a grumpy elephant. We have just climbed out of the car, ready to go for a walk, when we spot the young male and he spots us. He is very close. He interrupts his breakfast of tree branches to start waving his trunk all over the place, trying to catch and identify our smell. Then the waving turns to an aggressive show of trunk, trumpeting and ear-flapping and he mock charges us. My heart beats like there is no tomorrow.
We scurry behind a termite mound while our brave guides Mike and Bernard act as decoys. They clap their hands to try and scare the elephant away. Meanwhile, another elephant comes running to see what all the fuss is about and perhaps to offer reinforcement. He is just a young whippersnapper. The first elephant is more confused by than appreciative of this sudden intrusion by the youthful elephant, which gives us a chance to back off and disappear in another direction.
I can get tetchy, too. Ever since we entered Mana Pools I have been inadvertently feeding the wildlife. Tsetse flies. They home in on my apparently delectable body and feed on it, sucking blood like horribly hungry mini-vampires. These little devils are the bane of Mana Pool life. The bite hurts but the worst part is the itch, which lasts for days. It is as though the itch extends to deep down into the muscle (well, fat, in my case) and cannot be satisfied by any amount of scratching. They are terrible little beasties that make me testy and tetchy, itchy and scratchy.
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From Victoria Falls we cover a lot of miles to get to Mana Pools National Park, following a rather circuitous route via Bulawayo, Harare and Chirundu. On the way to the park we see bush fires blazing with an orange light, making the night seem spooky. Sometimes the fire is so close to the road we can hear the flames crackling their way through the dry grass and we can feel the heat.
Mana Pools is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It nestles in the valley of the Zambezi Escarpment along the banks of the Zambezi River. The river, the woods and the pools of water create a variety of environments for abundant wildlife in this undisturbed haven.
It is one of the few, if not the only places in Zimbabwe where it is possible to go on walking safaris even though there are lots of predators about. I feel safe in the company of the weapon-bearing and experienced Mike and Bernard, but it gives a real buzz to be otherwise unprotected and on a foot level with lions, leopards, elephants and whatever else we meet up with. It hones your senses, raises your awareness and puts you in your place as a human. We are but mere cogs in the overall ecological cycle.
Our campsite is on the banks of the Zambezi River. We face a pod of hippos basking in the sun on a sand bar in the river. An elephant and her calf mosey past our camp on their way down to the river to drink, take a dust bath and douse themselves with water. A few hundred metres away from our tents a couple of buffalo graze quietly. Birds twitter and fly. It is like spending the days in a peaceful Eden.
At night the hippos lumber up from the water to graze on land. They are so close to my little tent that I can hear their chomping and breathing. In the distance lions roar to each other, hyenas whoop and titter, and baboons shout and bark. Early in the morning, I wake up to the loud splashes of belly flops as the hippos dump their plump bodies into the water ready for a new day of sunbathing and lolling about in the shallow river.
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We break camp once again and drive as close to Chobe National Park in Botswana as we can. Everything inside the park and in the Okavango Delta has been booked for months, so even though we started planning the trip six months ago there was nothing to find.
Instead, we check into a campsite close to the boring border town of Kasane and set up camp. The most exciting thing about this corner of the world is that you could, in theory, walk from Namibia to Botswana to Zambia to Zimbabwe and back again. In practical terms, though, it would mean queues, visas, permits, fees, rubber stamps, passports and all manner of red tape and bureaucracy.
After setting up our tents, Jørn, Birthe and I go on a game drive in Chobe with a local guide while Mike stays at camp to do whatever he does when he is not waiting on us hand and foot.
During the two hour game drive we see at least 120 elephants, about 20-30 giraffes, and buffalo, hippos, kudu, warthogs, impala, the lovely sable antelope, several stork species, including the ugly Maribou stork and the interesting open-billed stork and lots of other nifty birds.
Next day we hit the road once again and drive to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, arriving at our lodge (Yes, lodge! Not tents!) in the afternoon, just in time for a quick bout of sightseeing and shopping in town followed by a cruise on the Zambezi River.
We invite Mike for a luxury dinner buffet that includes ostrich, wild boar and crocodile. The food is scrumptious but the music so loud we can barely talk. There are goodbye hugs, thank yous and that sort of thing before we all head off to bed. Jørn and Birthe will spend a bit more time in Victoria Falls, viewing the waterfalls and so on, while Mike and I will continue onwards in Zimbabwe.
Next morning Mike picks me up at four a.m. sharp (that’s bloody early!) and we drive for five hours straight to get to his house in Bulawayo. Here he switches cars, gets new provisions and packs the car with the assistance of his guiding partner Bernard, whom I have also travelled with before. Meanwhile, I write tons of postcards, wash clothes, read, pick fresh oranges and lemons in Mike’s garden and generally feel quite useless in the midst of the flurry of male activity.
We have travelled 4,200 km. The temperature in my tent has ranged from 7C to 42C. I have had a very close call with a scorpion, heard a very noisy hippo mating and had great times with my friends, enjoying observing their first impressions of Africa. Now is a turning point. New adventures await in Zimbabwe. There will be new people to travel with, new places to see and new animals to meet. Stay tuned!
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On the way to our next campsite deep in the Caprivi Strip we drive through a pretty landscape of Kalahari woodland. The leaves on the mopane trees and the other trees are russet-coloured and dry, giving the woods an autumnal feel. We get stuck in the hot, loose sand and have to get out and push the car. Up to now the roads in Namibia have been amazingly good, so this is a new situation, at least for Birthe and Jørn who have never been to Africa before. On the road we spot a lovely leopard tortoise.
Later on, we meet another challenge. The road is flooded. There is no other way but straight ahead or back the way we came. We cannot see how deep the water is. Theoretically, it could swallow the car. We sit for a minute or two and ponder the situation. Mike gets that mischievous look on his face and I know this means we are not going to turn heel and head back the way we came. We are going through.
He is the driver, so I trust that he knows best. I have travelled with him a couple of times before and know that although he does get himself into scrapes he is also great at getting out of them again. So, here goes! Mike does some fancy gear shifting and we drive into the wet unknown. Deeper and deeper we go. A small wave crests along the car hood, breaking on the windshield. Jørn, in the back seat, gets wet feet. We screech with delight because this is kind of fun!
Just as I sit and hope we do not have to get out and push, the car starts to point upwards and we are once again home free. There are more ways than one to wash a car, it seems.
During the day we explore the sandy roads and see kudu, impala, bushbuck and Cape buffalo and several bird species, including purple heron, Bateleur eagle and amethyst sunbird. The driving is quite challenging for Mike, especially as the sand heats up and gets more loose.
Close to the campsite is a lookout tower where we spend the sunset and the sunrise hours watching lechwe antelope splashing about in the marsh. Lechwe are particularly suited for this environment because they have elongated hooves which prevent them from sinking in the mud. That way they can outrun their predators in the marsh. The herd we see is accompanied by a lone, furry bushbuck, who seems to be a wannabe lechwe.
The only sounds we hear are the splashing of the lechwe as they move about and the clanking of horns as two territorial male lechwe engage in a duel over a female who is not interested anyway. She still has a suckling calf. In the dawn and dusk light there is a kind of dreamy atmosphere.
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Safari life suits me. We usually get up at about 5:30, while it is still dark. I grope for my headlamp, dress quickly, arrange my sleeping bag and nightclothes so things look neat, and unzip the tent flap, ready to meet the day. Then I brush my hair and wander over to our kitchen area, where our guide, Mike, has already got water boiling for tea.
Shortly thereafter we either break camp and hit the road or spend the day exploring the area. If we are at camp we spend midday lolling about, snoozing, reading, talking, writing in our journals, washing clothes or washing ourselves.
The evenings are special in their own way. We are often treated to a magnificent sunset while drinking a relaxing sundowner. Meanwhile, Mike slaves away in the kitchen area, concocting amazing campfire meals with meat, fish or chicken, lots of fresh veggies and either rice, pasta or beans. White wine, red wine, beer, gin and tonic, coffee, tea, chips, cookies, popcorn, apples, bananas…there seems to be nothing that he has forgotten. We sit on the small camp stools, balancing the hot tin plates on our knees, warming our toes by the campfire.
After dinner we sit around the campfire and talk. We speak in low voices, staring as if hypnotized into the fire, exchanging bits and pieces of life stories. We share anecdotes and jokes, dreams and schemes. We bounce ideas back and forth, discuss philosophies and politics, re-live the day’s wildlife experiences. We talk about books, movies, music, Africa, Denmark and family.
A lion roars in the distance and our talk is arrested as we listen eagerly for more. Another night, the trumpeting sound of an elephant breaks the silence. The deeply black night sky is punctuated by glittering stars and the streak of the Milky Way. It is such a rarity and privilege to see this sight in our overly electrically lit up modern world.
The sun sets at about six and by nine p.m. we start heading for bed. Wearing our headlamps we look like miners in the dark as we fumble our way to a toilet before tucking into our sleeping bags. In my tent I read for a while before turning out the light. Then I am ready for the night’s sound show. This is when the action is! Lions hunting, hyenas drooling, elephants on the move, hippos grazing and bellowing and all manner of rustling, roaring, barking, whooping, tittering and grumping.
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During the night I hear a horrendous, blood-curdling, roaring scream. It reverberates and echoes all up and down the Kavango River, where we are now camping. It is a hippopotamus. She sounds like she is angry or terrified or in excruciating pain. I feel terrible for her. I have never experienced anything like this before. It goes on and on for about ten minutes. I am sure she has woken up half of the Caprivi Strip with her agonized bellows.
In the morning Mike tells us it was a mating. It sounded more like rape than consensual sex to me, but I suppose that is nature’s way. Amazingly, my friends Jørn and Birthe slept through it all.
The Kavango River is in the Caprivi Strip, a narrow slice of Namibia that seems to poke its finger in between Botswana and Angola. The tip of the finger grazes Zambia and Zimbabwe. Needless to say, with so many borders so close to each other, the situation here has sometimes been a bit touchy. Not that many years ago it was necessary for tourists to drive in armed convoys into the area. Now it is nice and peaceful. Except for mating hippos.
It is magical to sit by the river in the blush of dawn and listen and watch as the world awakens to a new day. Doves coo, kingfishers dart about busily, hippos – who have moved from their nocturnal grazing on land back to their riparian day environment – bellow noisily to each other, and an owl flies by with a silent feathery whoosh. As the sun rises and colours the sky pink, the morning mist also rises, hiding the river in a mystical cloak.
It is quite a contrast to sit by a flowing river midst lush greenery after the arid landscapes that we have hitherto passed through. We go for a drive in the Mahango (Bwabata) National Park. Strangely enough, the only hippo we see is one lying in a wooded area, snoozing so soundly we think at first glance that it is dead. One rape and one death in one day, can it be so? Nature is so harsh! In actual fact it was one run-of-the-mill mating and one very sleepy hippo.
On our drive we see a wealth of wildlife, including a herd of bachelor elephants, vervet monkey, warthog, ostrich, a yellow-billed stork, reedbuck, kudu, crocodile, sable antelope, roan antelope, zebra, and over 20 bird species. The next day we take a slow cruise on the river with an admirably knowledgeable local guide. He shows us no less than an incredible 29 different species within the space of a couple of hours, including the shy and extremely well-hidden black-crowned night heron.
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The best way to view animals in the wild is to be in the right place at the right time. Hanging around water holes, especially at sunrise or sunset, is one good option.
On our afternoon game drive in Etosha we see a herd of zebra sipping daintily from a water hole, while they keep a wary eye out for predators. They are joined by a herd of graceful gemsbok who wade right into the water for a good, long slurp. A lone springbok also wanders into the water until it is wet up to its white belly.
At sunset we head out to another watering hole in Etosha. As the sky turns orange and then darkens we see greater kudu and a herd of elephants. Bats fly around soundlessly, hunting for insects, a large flock of black-banded sand grouse mill busily about on the ground and a hare hops by for a silent visit. Just before the sun goes down and we can barely see any more, two rhinoceros lumber down to the water for a drink. It is too dark to take a proper picture, but I get a snapshot of the silhouetted reflection of one of the mighty beasts.
We head back to camp to find that another good way to see animals is to leave garbage lying about. We did not do that, but a honey badger managed to upturn and empty the garbage can so we have a cleanup job to do before starting dinner. The upside is that we see the honey badger which is not a common sight.
The next day we continue our journey and drive eastwards, leaving Etosha behind us. The park is very popular so there are a lot of people and we cannot stay at our campsite for more than one night. Anyhow, we are itching to move on to a somewhat less humanly populated area, so we continue our nomadic existence and move onwards and eastwards towards the more lush and green area in the Caprivi Strip.
