Is this real? I can’t believe we’re really here.

We were looking out on a line of elephants at a water hole on the edge of our camp – Nxai Pan, in the Kalahari Desert.  We had taken a very small propeller plane to get here—more than a little unnerving—with a landing on an airstrip in the middle of nowhere. After a jolting ride to the camp, we were greeted by friendly folks who gave us white wet wash cloths and cold drinks. It was four in the afternoon, so we had arrived just in time for “high tea” and the afternoon game drive.

There were only four guests in the camp, so the four of us went out with our guide/driver and a tracker—both of them incredibly experienced and knowledgeable.  There are no real roads, just sandy paths, which George, our guide-driver, could navigate with great skill. The vehicle is a Toyota Land Cruiser with a canvas roof and open sides and an ability to go just about anywhere.

Nxai Pan is flat and dry and dotted by termite mounds.  The termite mounds are a vital aspect of the land—the trees and bushes grow from these mounds. It’s spring – the rainy season, a time for babies. It’s also hot—about 90 degrees Fahrenheit when we arrived.

Being on a Botswana safari is, in part, visual—there is an incredible variety of animals to see. Nxai Pan is on the migration route for zebras—we saw hundreds of them. And giraffes—who peer at us with a look of curiosity, as if they’re wondering ‘who has come to our neighborhood.?’ Elephants, of course – in the watering hole at our camp, a young male elephant had died – probably he came between two fighting bull elephants. All of the elephants came over, singly or in small groups, to touch the body with their trunks and forelegs. It was an elephant funeral.

We saw so many animals—impalas, spring bucks, steenboks, wildebeest. etc. a vast variety of birds, with all kinds of colors and behaviours.  Also lions—in Nxai Pan we saw a small pride, with three females and four cubs.

We’ve learned so much as we came to different spots on our game drives. Just to give a small example, we had a series of talks about feces—the uses of elephant dung and how baby zebras, when they are in between nursing and eating grass, get nourishment from their mothers’ feces.

Nxai Pan is a large national park. The animals are free. But life is hard. The vegetarians (elephants, giraffes, zebras, various kinds of antelopes, etc.) have grass and leaves to eat, especially in the spring, but they are always on guard – they can easily become the dinner of a predator. And the predators are also at risk—they cannot survive unless they kill for their meat. And even, then, they might have to share with hyenas or others…

So, being in the bush is full of dangers—for us too. One afternoon, two huge male water buffaloes came to our Nxai Pan camp and even our guide was wary. He made noise to scare them off but had to hide so they wouldn’t see him and attack him.  We couldn’t go for a stroll here because of too many dangers.

One highlight of our stay at the Nxai Pan camp was a bush walk—led by our tracker who goes by the name Shoes.  It was not a long walk—we didn’t go out of camp—bur rather it was an education about the life of a bushman. Shoes showed us how he would identify where an animal had spent the night and what direction he went. He explained how sage can be used (by bushman as well as animals) to hide their scent. He demonstrated how to make a trap to catch guinea fowl. And he actually made fire by rubbing together two special kinds of sticks with a little kindling of dried elephant dung.

Coming to Nxai Pan has been thrilling – but it’s only our first stop in Botswana.  We’re visiting three camps run by a company called Kwando, with very different kinds of environments.

In my next newsletter, I’ll tell you more about Botswana. We have no phone or wifi in the camps, so I’ll be sending these out after we’ve left the camps.

Stay tuned!