Even better, it has a brick shithouse and a shower, which is fed by borehole water! Needless to say, we all praise the Botswana government for a change.
With the tents set up, we all settle down for an evening drink and a view of the dry pan in front of our elevated position.
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There is a large clan of flat-tailed ground squirrels resident in the camp and their antics and begging brings out the raw peanuts that Rea had bought a few days earlier. Some of the squirrels even run away with loads of nuts stuffed in their cheeks, taking them back to their underground burrows, perhaps to feed pups.
Rea and Mariet get a couple of nipped fingers for not feeding some of the squirrels fast enough at times but it does not stop them carrying on, despite the protests of making beggars out of them from the ever-practical men-folk.
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The heat of the day brings on a thunderstorm and we think we are going to get hammered by it. The cumulonimbus clouds pack themselves into a thunderhead and there are lightning strikes in the distance. The sky, however, is not completely covered by the clouds and the sun shining through from the west lights up the sky in dramatic fashion.
Steph decides to make a lamb curry for dinner and the smell makes everyone hungry. It takes about two hours to prepare but is worth the wait and even Johan has some of it.
Because of the hyena experience the night before, we don’t want to leave cleaning up too late but still end up clearing everything away after dark. Tonight though, there are no hyenas, but the camp comes alive again at the lonely calling of a male lion. Attie, Johan and I immediately go into defensive mode, arming ourselves with strong-beamed torches, so that we can track its movements if the lion appears. The women, on the other hand, want to walk out into the bush to meet the fucking thing and go all ga-ga like they did with the hyenas.
The lion roars a couple of more times into the night, each time a little closer to our camp, but he does not make an appearance before we go to bed at about 10pm.
I lie awake for a while expecting to hear the lion padding around the lean-to but the only visit we have that night is from a jackal, scavenging for scraps. Remember that the only camp we stayed in during our entire visit to the park, which had a fence around it, was Twee Rivieren. The other camps had nothing more than a cleared area in front of them and, beyond that, virgin bush. We were roughing it big-time.
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It is cold when we get up and I’ve had another restless night. When I first drift off to sleep, the sleep is deep but then I wake about four hours later and toss and turn before drifting off again, this time with strange dreams. There is a cold mist over the pan but it soon burns off with the rising sun and we all crowd into the sun’s rays, rusks and steaming cups of coffee in cold hands. We pack up camp relatively slowly as we only have about 77km to travel that day.
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About 10km out of Mpayathutlwa Camp, Attie leading, he suddenly pulls half off the road and I see why. There is a solitary male lion walking down the road directly towards them.
I pull off to the left as well and motion Johan, behind me, to do the same but he stays in the road. This probably made the lion turn into the long grass and continue to walk past us, about 20m away. We’re all taking video and photos, trying to reverse at the same time, and not hit each other’s vehicles too. General chaos, for a while, brought on by the first sighting of a lion on the trip.
Johan has the wrong lens on his camera and later decides he should have pulled off so that we could have passed him to continue taking shots. I get some good video footage of the lion moving towards Attie’s car and into the bush, but only three side-on photos as Johan was trying to get into position himself. Attie has had no chance to take photos so I pull off to let him go past, but Johan blocks his way and he can go no further. All this jockeying for position is being done in reverse gear, using side view mirrors, and is not very easy to pull off, but we do and escape without and accidents.
Next, a Botswana ranger vehicle, which we had seen earlier down at the pan, pulls up behind Johan and blocks our progress further. The lion sees his chance and comes back onto the road, gives a short trot to get away and then carries on at a walk, heading for the pan we had just come from, as if he is relieved to be away from us. The rangers block the road completely, turn their vehicle around, then follow the lion further. We, on the other hand, have a long way to go for the day so we leave them to it.
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The 77km drive to Mosomane Camp drags out long and hot as there is nothing other than a few large, dry, pans to be seen. There are absolutely no animals to be seen along this entire stretch. Because of this, we cover the mileage very quickly and are able to chill out for a few hours in the afternoon sunshine.
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Mosomane Camp is one of the most picturesque we have visited, thanks to a pan which is brimming with water along most of its shoreline. We see a few Gemsbok and Red Hartbees on the west of the pan, but most interesting of all is the dead tree on the opposite side from us, full of white vultures. We also saw a pair of black-back vultures as we arrived at the pan earlier.
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Walking along the edge of the water, presumably hunting, I spot a juvenile Martial Eagle, resplendent in its spotted white livery. It later moves up onto the branch of a dead tree, most probably to avoid being hunted during the night itself.
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In the late afternoon, Attie and Johan download photos and videos onto their laptops and, when it is dark, we have a slide show of what we have taken so far. Between us, we have some amazing photos and video, all of which will be amalgamated into a single DVD, which we will all be copied on. There will probably be three versions of the DVD as Attie, Anna and I will all produce a version each. Each one will turn out to be very different from the next, I am sure, even though the same photos and video will form the raw footage to be used.
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The sunset over the pan is quite dramatic, as have been most of the sunsets so far. The colours are quite amazing and there are a number of photos snapped by all of us.
For once, we do not hear any animals at night, and the darkness screams silence at us. For the first time, there are Cicada beetles chirping in the trees, an indication that it’s quite warm and I end up sleeping in only a pair of shorts, with no blanket over the sleeping bag. Sleep, however, comes easily but I am still left staring at the tent roof a few hours later.
We are awake early as the drive to our next camp, Polentswa, is to be about 174km long. Coffee and rusks are taken quickly and camp is squared away into the vehicles with practiced expertise.
The road is quite driveable with not too many corrugations, but there is no interesting game to be seen. Attie and I talk at a leg-stretch stop and we decide we need to start pushing the convoy a little faster to get to Nossob, and then Polentswa, our next camp, before 6pm and dark respectively.
We stop briefly in Nossob for the refuelling then head back up the road to Polentswa. The road is in surprisingly good condition, except for the last eight kilometres, which is again corrugated. We make good time because of the initial stretch of the road.
Polentswa Camp is set up the same as Mosomoane Camp, except that the toilet is open air and there is no running borehole water for the shower or wash basin. Tent spots are quickly decided on and the camp goes up like a well-oiled machine.
“First drinks” are taken, even though we had had a couple of quick ones at Nossob after the long drive. The cost of those drinks, and the fuel, is ridiculous but the camp management have a captive audience, so can charge whatever they like. A litre of diesel, usually about ZAR8/litre at home, is ZAR9.07, and a can of Hunters Dry cider, about ZAR6 each, is ZAR10.50. What a rip-off. Needless to say, we need both so end up paying the mob their blood money.
We light a charcoal fire before dark as we have no more firewood and it takes a little longer to get going than usual but it gets done and we braai a mixture of lamb chops and tenderised steak. Anna, on the other hand, is a vegetarian and has a samp and soya mince TV dinner warmed next to the fire.
Again, we hear a lion grumble into the night on the other side of the pan and there’s excitement in the hope that he’ll come over this way. Again, we’re not that lucky and our lion viewings are still totalled at a grand “one”.
According to the Sightings Board in Nossob, Polentswa has had a number of lion encounters recently, but it appears we may not be too lucky though I may be tempting fate by writing this.
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The night is colder than usual perhaps because we are on a slight decline down to the pan. I feel the cold through the night and maybe that’s why I don’t sleep too well, but I can’t sleep with restrictive clothing inside a sleeping bag, or a beanie on my head.
The dawn chorus wakes early again, despite my please yesterday to be able to sleep late seeing as we are staying two nights at Polentswa and don’t need to move early. No such luck.
Hot coffee and rusks for breakfast again, but the coffee is the “good stuff” and goes down welcomingly warm.
The others make ready to go for a game drive-cum-water hunt, as we are running low on non-drinking water, primarily used for washing dishes, but Steph and I stay behind for a bush shower. We have not showered since Mpayathutlwa and the light sprinkling of warm water feels good to the touch.
Attie and Rea come back from their drive, waterless. The only water they had found was at an animal waterhole and it was chocolate brown, useless for anything other than drinking water for the beasts.
We all have a bacon and egg sandwich, with a beer, for brunch then Attie and I fix one of his camping chairs, which had broken the night before, with a piece of wire. Cheap Chinese crap chairs.
Attie puts the radiator seed net onto his vehicle, rather late than never. I put mine on before we left Twee Rivieren, just in case, and there’s been quite a bit of grass caught in it so I’m happy I did it back then.
I do some running repairs to the second battery system which had jumped loose of the locking blocks on some part of the bumpy roads we’d be on the day before. I also topped up the engine oil, which was a little lower than required.
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Suddenly, excitement returns with a bang…and a slither. A 1.5m Cape cobra was spotted climbing the tree in front of the lean-to we are sitting under. It is one of the deadliest snakes in the world and one of the main reasons why tent zips are always kept closed. Where it came from, we don’t know, as we only saw it moving up the tree as a bright yellow line. The tree mice and a lizard scatter in the opposite direction from the snake as it dips its head into a hole in the tree, presumably the mice nest. Whether there are any babies being eaten, we do not know, as we cannot see the snake’s crop bulging.
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A lot of video and photos later and we watch the snake move away from our camp. The mice are also watching from a branch as we are not their primary concern anymore. The snake eventually finds its way down to the ground, having tried a number of different routes. It crawls off into the bush and towards the next tree, probably following a feeding pattern it has grown accustomed to.
Steph and I take an early afternoon game drive back to the “Bedinkt” waterhole but the only interesting thing we see is a Tawny Eagle on a tree branch.
For dinner, Steph makes a Bobotie and everyone wants the recipe, but they can buy it on the back of the spices packet, which form the spicy base of the dish. Needless to say, it goes down a treat and is really tasty. It also makes a change from the usual braais we have.
The evening is cool and we pack most of the stuff back in the cars for an early departure the next morning.
I treat everyone to a Laphroaig scotch, my favourite, and a couple of lines about Scottish culture and the Douglas Clan, then we all head for bed around 10pm. I decide to keep my jersey on for the night for the first time on the trip but I find it restrictive and difficult to sleep in, though warm.
Thursday 13th May
Up at 06h30, thirty minutes later than planned, but nobody minds. Water is boiled for coffee and tents and sleepwear are packed away. We hear stories of lions calling into the night but the only things I had heard were jackals, and plenty of them, from opposing sides of the pan.
The drive to our next camp, Sesatswe, starts sedately, but I lift the pace when we don’t see and interesting creatures or lions where we had expected to see them from the callings of the previous night. Otherwise, we only see the “usuals”.
Coming over a hill, we suddenly come upon a pan, which is covered in an inch of water over the whole thing, and we decide to take a break. There are lots of what look like Shoveller Crabs at the edge of the water, all about 2cm in length.
We soon find out why the pan is called “Tweeling Rambuka” (Twin Rambuka) as there are two pans, separated by a narrow, muddy channel, which we have to drive through.
Without really thinking twice, or surveying the channel properly, I drop the gearbox into 4WD Low Range and head into the channel. Almost immediately I feel the back end sinking and I floor the accelerator. The front of the Mazda-rati starts sliding to the left a bit but eventually grips the harder bottom and we get through with a bit of mud sprayed up Steph’s side of the car.
The other two vehicles use my tracks, as is the norm with going through such obstructions, and I get some good DVD footage of Johan coming through the stinking mud.
The rest of the drive is boring but we bounce across a series of bumps that just about rearranges everything in the back, and the second battery slides back into the switch panel and pushes the live wire isolator out of the wooden panel, cracking the panel in the process. That’s the only damage though, so it’s not too bad.
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