After 3 nights camping on the Chobe
Riverfront we returned to the main city in the area, Kasane, and
flew in a small plane (4 passengers) to Gunn's
Camp, in the middle of the Okavanga Delta. Gunn's had 6 tented platforms
and a reception/dining area, on a series of small islands in the
marshes formed by the Okavanga River spreading out and evaporating,
leaving practically no water to flow south into the Kalihari Desert. For the 6 tent/cabins, so 12 "clients" there were 24 staff on site; it was delicious to be pampered – clean sheets on real beds, good
meals served on china, spectacular dawns and sunsets over the marsh.
(Did you notice in that top picture, fine South African white wine with lunch! Ohhh, I could get used to this!) The wildlife
wasn't nearly as abundant as at Chobe, but the guides were more
sophisticated, and made it very interesting for us, and you know, 3
or 4 elephants can be as interesting as 100.
For instance, who knew that the male
impala servicing a breeding herd always poop in a pile in the same place,
time after time, while females poop around anywhere. When a rival
male comes and poops on the other male's pile, the 2 have to fight
and often the male with the herd loses, having lost weight and
strength attending to 2 or 3 dozen does. Don't you hate it when that
happens? But our guides held out hope – often the defeated male,
driven out and disconsolate, rests, eats and gains weight, and wins
back his place with the herd. I'm eating all I can. Really.
Bird
of the Day: Wattled Crane
The Wattled
Crane is a big bird (seeing a pattern here?): 4' high, with a gray
back, white belly and neck, yellow bill with a red base, and long
white wattles hanging from its chin! (Urine samples have been demanded from the design committee submitting this one; wattles? Red
base to the bill? Really?!) Our Bird Book describes it as
“vulnerable . . . uncommon and localized,” with only 8,000
globally, 2,000 in Africa!
At Gunn's
our guides could identify birds by their call, and could call them
in, and tell the different kinds of nests. They also babied us,
insisting on coming to our cabin/tents to get us for dinner, after
dark. But seeing 18” elephant footprints in the sand outside our
tent one morning did make us appreciate the attendants' attentions.
On a walk our guide pointed out lion prints in the sand, going the
opposite direction from ours. A few steps on he pointed out that the
lion had then gone back the other direction, so the lion was now
apparently ahead of us. I noticed after that the guests all walked
close together.
One of the
pleasures of our trip was the people we'd spend a few intense days
with and then move on. Here are clever handsome Belgian newly-weds who had
been self-driving 3,000 miles, camping through Namibia and then
Bots, having adventures nearly getting stuck fording rivers, and who now stayed 2 nights at Gunn's. The first night at Gunn's
they chose to camp on a nearby island – with 4 attendants!
Segolene had never camped before she'd met Benjamin 8 years ago.
He'll start with Boston Consulting Group in Brussels when they return.
Giorgio, a
courtly and witty old-world widower, 81,who was from northern Italy and had an old-world grace,
carried a well-thumbed copy of Birds of Southern Africa,
stained and wrinkled in some places, many of the pages kind of curled. That told
us all we needed to know about him. He reminded me a little of Katherine's Dad, but from Parma. His wife, an avid birder, had
died, and he was there with Eleanor, a new acquaintance only a little younger than he, who had no English, the
lingua franca of southern Africa, nor, as far as I could tell,
any interest in birds. . He was, of course, charmed with Katherine.
We carried
everything we needed for 2 weeks in our backpacks, and had to pack
with care. I'd pulled up weather forecasts for Vic and Bots before we left and
noted a hot spell while we were in Chobe, followed by a cooler patch,
but had not focused as much on the implications of a day/night
temperature swing of around 48ºF.
At the last minute Katherine chose to jettison an insulated jacket,
and it became clear that presented a challenge. We borrowed a fleece
jacket from our organizer before we left for the Chobe Waterfront,
but at Gunn's she was really cold. She is very hardy. Not that she
doesn't notice the cold (and other afflictions from living in
southern Africa), but she doesn't let it get her down. Here she is
one morning, on our porch at Gunn's, catching the dawn over the marsh
BotD:
Meyers Parrot and Bennett's Woodpecker
This has to be
a tie between 2 fine “life birds” for us. Our plane out was a
late one – 3 PM, so after lunch, with no activity planned (yes,
it's a little like summer camp), we set chairs in the middle of our small
island behind our cabin/tent and studied the jackelberry tree above
us, which was full of life. Guides had pointed out both the Meyer's
Parrott and Bennett's Woodpecker on our walks, but we've got our
standards, and had seen neither with sufficient clarity to claim a
sighting. But here we nailed 'em both. Meyer's Parrot with green
belly, blue vent and yellow shoulders and an improbable yellow crown.
Bennett's Woodpecker with a red crown and mustachial stripe, brown
and white barred wings, and speckled belly. Ahhh.
No pix of
either – these guys are tough to catch.
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