Exploring Botsalano Game Reserve, South Africa

(Priscilla's narration)

The last few weeks we've stayed closer to home but have had some nice adventures nonetheless:  a couple of nice trips to survey mountain aloe near Molepolole; dinner theatre at the "No. 1 Ladies Opera House" where we saw "I, Claudia"; a night out at the movies to see "Eat, Pray, Love" and Ethiopian buffet afterward, walks to the Botswana Botanical gardens, and close encounters of the giraffe-kind at Mokolodi Game Reserve.  Despite these pleasures, the itch to leave Gaborone for lands further away was steadily mounting. So we decided to take our first camping trip out of the country to Botsalano Game Reserve in the Northwest State of South Africa.  We planned to leave on Friday morning and come back Sunday afternoon. As the week progressed our excitement grew and Thursday morning I set about putting things together for the trip. Unfortunately mid-afternoon I had a growing headache and felt nauseous. I thought if I took a nap it might just go away, but it seemed to get steadily worse and I was unable to sleep because of the headache. Jon finished packing for the trip as I writhed in bed or lay on the floor in an effort to feel the comforting coolness of the tiles.

By morning, after a night of vivid disturbing dreams, I was feeling only slightly better but decided to go ahead with the trip because I was so looking forward to a respite from Gaborone.  Because of my sluggishness, we didn't leave until about 7: 45AM just as traffic was reaching it's full peak of insanity, but luckily it is pretty easy to get on the A-1 and head south from our part of town.

We decided to cross the border at a small station near Lobatse, rather than at a bigger crossing to the south near Ramatlabama, because our guidebook said the views to the park were better from this direction. Bear in mind that I was still feeling very ill: I had the feeling that there was a water-filled glass sphere inside my skull that I was trying not to break, even the thought of sipping water made my stomach lurch, and I had the type of malaise that makes you feel as if nothing, absolutely nothing, matters.  As we approached the border crossing, it was obvious that we needed to stop and do something, but there was no directional signage and there were many small buildings and parking areas scattered about. The process of getting through the border is a muddled and confusing memory for me of going to and from various wrong offices several times, obtaining and giving up various pieces of stamped paper after showing our passports, temporary residence permits, car registration, and driver's permits to multiple people. There were 12-packs of condoms available for free on the outside of one of the buildings.  The clearest memory I have of the whole ordeal was the SA customs officer "suggesting" we buy him a cold beverage, which we did, and then we were on our way!

From the Botswana border we headed southeast into the Northwestern State in South Africa and passed a large wildfire moving up a canyon and along a ridge north of the road.  We could see thorn trees burst into flames as the front of the fire advanced. It was a cloudy day and we could see what appeared to be rain-bearing clouds building on horizon.  Upon reaching the small village of  Dinokana with its one tiny store and smattering of very modest habitations scattered about, we turned south and headed up an escarpment to a plateau with a purportedly stunning view of the broad valley below, but due to the cloudiness and growing haze, our view was limited. Along the roadside we could see scattered homes and farms of the very poor working class people of this region.

Thanks to the book "Guide to Greater Gaborone" by Alec Campbell and Mike Main, we were able to find the the Reserve easily, but it is worth mentioning that you must pass TWO incorrect signs indicating that you should turn to the left off the main road to get to the park. After about 23 km, we arrived at the correctly signed main entrance to the Reserve, which is located adjacent to the road on which we were driving.  Botsolano Game Reserve is just under 6,000 hectares of grasslands interspersed with bushveld and encompassing portions of one of the oldest volcanic craters in the world.  It is very inexpensive and seems to be an excellent choice for those hoping to avoid more expensive and luxurious venues.

Leopard tortoise

Upon reaching the park, I felt I just had to lay down somewhere so Jon quickly put up the tent and I climbed right in and slept fit-fully for several hours.  I woke about 2PM and then felt I could rally for a drive across the Reserve. The campground at Botsalano is pretty simple, but there are shady tentsites and there is a bathroom with running water that the monkeys like to frequent.  From the campground, there is a large network of very good roads from which to view wildlife.  Almost immediately, the beauty of the land captivated and cheered us both.  We were delighted to come across a leopard tortoise just minutes after leaving the campground. For those of you who don't know, I spent a good bit of time working with desert tortoise in Las Vegas, and, oddly enough, we fostered a lost pet leopard tortoise for several months in Fredonia several years ago. So I was delightful to see a wild leopard tortoise ambling though her native terrain.  For the rest of the three hour drive we were continually awed by the beauty of the landscape and the abundance of wildlife. Because it was overcast the colors of the grasses were brighter than usual and there were all shades of gold, russet, green and burgundy in the rich tapestry of numerous grass species.

We saw several antelope species we had not seen before: waterbuck, eland, gemsbok, and blesbok, as well as many herds of impala, springbok, and wildebeest, and scattered groups of zebra, kudu, warthogs,  and ostrich.  At the end of our loop, we stopped at a wildlife blind that was located on elevated posts above a waterhole. While we were there we saw several black-backed jackals (beautiful!) and a rhino with a baby came up to drink, along with many antelope. It was hard to tear ourselves away from this scenario, but we left just as it was getting almost too dark to negotiate the sloping ladder back to ground level.

As soon as we got back to the campground I felt that I had to rest straightaway and headed into the tent, leaving Jon to produce and enjoy dinner by himself. We were the only campers and it was wonderfully quiet.  I quickly fell asleep, only to wake up around midnight with a very full bladder.  I could hear an owl issuing three deep hoots periodically, and the sound of hooves, grunting and chewing.  I was wondering if the rhino mom and her babe, that we had seen at the waterhole and that Karin and Pat had seen near the campground several months ago, were grazing nearby. But it was mainly the thought of puff adders and spitting cobras along with 6 other venomous nocturnal snakes on the park wildlife list that had me procrastinating about my trip to the bathroom.  When I could wait no more, I unzipped the my door of the tent and turned on the headlamp to see if the rhino was in my intended path, and was greeted instead by four sturdy patchwork legs looming up into the darkness among the acacia trunks-a giraffe was in in the campground! :)

Storms rolled through intermittently the rest of the night, but none were very long-lasting or too severe. Dawn arrived bright and fragrant.  Upon emerging from the tent I walked out into a golden field nearby to look for rhino tracks and to see what the monkeys were up to.  I was a bit nervous, not wanting to startle a grouchy mommy rhino, so when I heard a sizzling sound and saw lightening stretch horizontally across the sky and end with a deafening kaboom, I nearly jumped out of my skin and found myself suddenly back by the tent watching Jon come laughing from the bathroom and saying "Wasn't that exciting?"  I was feeling much, much better after 12 hours of sleep interrupted only by more vivid dreams and our visiting giraffe, so we headed out right away.

Groovy of termite mounds

Hibiscus

Jon under a sociable weaver nest

This day was one of the most beautiful and enjoyable I have spent in a long time.  We saw five more leopard tortoise over the course of the day and, with small squalls moving through, the light and our views of the landscape changed almost every minute.  Looking across the landscape at one point we saw the most enormous nest in a camelthorn tree and felt we just had to check it out.  We traipsed across the grassland to the tree to discover it was a sociable weaver nest with hundreds of individual nests woven together. While there, we noticed some fresh dropping nearby and then realized they were full of dung beetles energetically cutting out little (well, not that little if you are a dung beetle!) balls of dung and rolling them away.

Dung beetles making dung balls

 When we first arrived at Botsalano, we realized that the low mounded rocks we had been seeing on our way to the park entrance were actually another type of termite mound that we had not seen before. Now we were seeing great groupings of these, which brought up the question "What do you call groupings of termite mounds?"  Such as a "murder" of ravens, or a "school" of fish, we decided it can only be called a "groovy" of termite mounds. If we are wrong about this, please do not enlighten us on this particular matter, because that is our story and we are sticking with it.  Later in the afternoon we stopped at a waterhole and were surprised to see a marsh terrapin emerge at the shallows, probably in wait for one of the African quailfinch to get careless while sipping water.  On

Waterbuck

Looking up at the sociable weaver nest

the way back to camp, we returned to the elevated hide, and saw enormous clouds blow in during the sunset.  Strong winds rocked the platform but it held, and the thatched roof protected us from the rain that suddenly came down like nails from the sky. As the rain subsided, a group of red hardebeests with two young came down for a drink.

Cape ground squirrel

Eland

We headed back to the campground looking forward to another night of peaceful slumber, but were greeted by a group of young people and the biggest tent I have ever seen. This tent had two side rooms and a porch.  I quickly whipped up a green thai curry over the campstove, and we dashed in the car to eat it just as another huge deluge hit.  We turned in early thinking we'd like to rise at dawn. Alas, that was not to be, primarily because our energetic campground buddies engaged in extremely loud and emphatic drinking games until, oh around 5AM.  Because they were speaking in Afrikkans we could not understand a lot of the hubub, but it culminated in one young man repeatedly screaming a fairly recognizable obscenity beginning with F as the other members of the party spoke in soothing voices.  When he reaped the full rewards of his efforts, he made a much bigger mess in both the women's and men's bathrooms than the monkeys ever did, rendering them unusable by the rest of us. I was gratified that there was no evidence that anyone in the crowd had a weapon. At least two members of his group (young ladies) were as unhappy with him as we were.

Biggest tent ever

On our last morning, we headed out on a small loop before heading home. Right away we came upon a group of eight giraffes right beside the road and spent a good bit of time watching two of the teen-aged males banging necks. I wish I could effectively explain how gracefully their movements are and how peacefully inquisitive they seem to be with their big soft eyelashes. They would stare at us for some moments and then start to chew while still calmly looking at us. I almost could not force myself to stop taking photos because each expression or pose seemed more appealing than the last.  We had some nice glimpses of new birds including a secretary bird, and a huge mixed flock of little birds that included two blackfaced waxbills that sat touching side by side for more than fifteen minutes as a big windstorm passed through. And even another leopard tortoise, bring the total to 7!! It was all we could do to force ourselves to leave the reserve at a reasonable hour for the trip home.

Youngster

When we left, we decided to make a very short side trip to the town of Makikeng so that we could get a taste of a small city in South Africa.  It was Sunday, but there was still a bit of traffic and the downtown is comprised of a bunch of one-way streets so it took a bit of driving around to find a place to safely park. We selected a fast-food restaurant in a strip mall beside a "Spar" grocery store. Though Spar is a chain grocer that is present in Gaborone, I thought I would check it out to see if items that are hard to come by in Botswana (like walnuts) might be available in South Africa. Unfortunately, it seems the grocery stores close at 1PM on Sundays, whereas the bars are open all day!  Jon ordered a small meal called a fish "swarma", which is something like fried fish strips in a pita with some cole slaw and I ordered a coffee, and we sat near the window to watch the street scene while we waited.  Right away, we noticed a serious of disagreements were taking place among a group of street gamblers (some kind of marble game that involves money?). They began slapping each other around and there were various disagreements involving shopping carts, which, I guess, must have to do with a deposit you get back when you return the cart, but this is only a guess.  The disagreement between two such individuals right in front of the window we were seated by escalated to the point at which one of them scrounged around in a garbage pail, found a bottle, broke off the neck, and began brandishing it as a weapon. When his opponent, ran across the street and returned with two big bricks, everyone in the restaurant including us, ran for the back of the restaurant. The manager went out and sort of monitored the situation without doing very much. It is unclear why, but eventually the weapons were tossed aside, and the discussions continued as Jon and I slipped out the door and down the shopping center to our car. Too bad these guys just can't bang necks and be done with it, eh?

The border crossing at Ramatlabama was still a bit confusing but much more efficient than the one near Lobatse.  In front of us was a small pick up truck with five elderly women with traditional figures and dressy clothes riding in the back.

Driving through the fire on A-1 in Botswana

On the route back to Gaborone we saw another fire; this one had crossed the A-1 and damaged many acres of cattle posts. A group of firefighters had apparently put out one advancing front but seemed to be ignoring others.

I never cease to be amazed at how much our lives and our impressions of life can change from day to day, hour to hour, even minute to minute. As we we pulled onto our street, we noticed that our entire street was parked up, including a line of cars totally blocking access to our house. We thought it must be a huge party or event of some kind at the Thapong Visual Art Center across the street from our place, and since we had a carload of camping gear to unload, we were concerned about access. A man who seemed to be directing party-goers approached our car and we asked how we could get into our driveway. He took down the licence numbers of the cars blocking our driveway, said he would ask them to move, but then walked into our neighbor's yard. Suddenly it struck me: this was NOT a party, but a memorial. We quickly called the man back and asked him to please forget the issue-we could just unload later-but he insisted and had people leave the gathering to move their cars. We could hear singing and spoken prayers next door as we unloaded our things.  As soon as Jon checked his email our worst suspicions were confirmed. Our neighbor, a UB professor who had just invited us to his daughter's graduation and 21st birthday celebration two weeks ago, had succumbed to an unnamed illness. He left behind a wife and four children: a son who just entered medical school in Ukraine, a daughter who just graduated from college, and another younger daughter and son. He befriended us from the start when we moved here, and our hearts are heavy with the sadness his family is burdened with at this time.  There is more to say, but is it too challenging for me at the moment.  With that, I hope that each and every person reading this tale will take a moment to remember what a gift each moment is, to the extent that you are able.  We miss you dear ones so take care!