This article appeared
in Volume 20: No. 4 of the Orient
Express magazine.
Botswana Diary
HRH Princess Michael of Kent goes on safari in Botswana, a country
rich with wildlife, and is entranced by its beauty.
During a recent visit to the three Orient-Express safari camps in
Botswana, HRH Princess Michael of Kent kept a notebook by her side
to record her experiences - which she now shares with readers
of Orient-Express Magazine.
SAVUTE ELEPHANT CAMP
From Botswana's capital, Maun, we flew north in a small plane
to land at Savute Elephant Camp in Chobe National Park. Within minutes
of touching down, we drove on a road of fine, deep Kalahari sand
towards the first tree on the horizon. It stood beside a watering
hole, surrounded by elephants. There has been a drought in South
Africa for some years and this, like many other watering holes, could
only offer a little cooling mud.
Still, the elephants looked well and one stood sleeping under the
tree, resting his trunk on a termite mound. Heavy things, trunks.
Our guide, Onx, explained that a local pride of 13 lions had killed
a 10-year-old elephant the previous week. It seems they grab hold
of the elephant's trunk to shut off the air supply and pull
it to the ground. Once down, the elephant cannot get up, and suffocates.
We were met by the staff singing a welcome and were installed in
our cabana. Baboons were on the deck, one merrily swinging another
in our hammock. The camp's dining terrace overlooked the pool
and below that, a busy Piccadilly Circus of a watering hole. There
was a constant stream of arriving and departing elephants, young,
old, small, large, single and, occasionally, with calves. We were
fortunate to see cows with pink calves only a few days old. The pecking
order to reach the best spot was fascinating and has nothing to do
with height, might or tusk size. It is all a question of "attitude",
explained Onx, and we saw how a tuskless, medium-sized beast lorded
it over much larger ones, ordering them off his spot.
When we had all gone to bed, leopards came to drink at the lodge's
fountain and, as I undressed, I heard them outside my tent. In the
morning, Onx showed me their tracks. That evening we were taken on
a surprise drive to a huge bonfire in the bush, with telescopes.
The Milky Way seemed near enough to touch and the stars appeared
to hang in the sky from transparent threads. The African full moon
was the largest and lowest I have ever seen. There was no sound except
the crackle of the fire, a hyena cry and the occasional trumpet of
an elephant.
The daily wake-up call was at six for an early game drive - no
need, the lions were already roaring. We drove across Savute Marsh
on a deep sand track straight into the rising sun. We took morning
tea at another dry waterhole. An elephant came very near us and we
learned they have bad eyesight. Onx had to clap his hands to make
him aware of us, and with an irritated headshake he moved away. Giraffes
arrived, walking with footfalls as careful as camels, then running
like horses in elegant slow-motion. On the plain, wildebeest and
zebra always follow the lead of the giraffes, as only they are tall
enough to see stalking lions.
In the late afternoon, we drove to see rock paintings by Bushmen,
discovered in 1851 by David Livingstone. On the way, several dazzling
crimson-breasted shrike and boobies flew around us.
We climbed the eastern face of the rock to see the paintings. The
drawings were open to the elements yet had not faded nor changed
since discovered, nor possibly in the last 500 years. The pigment
used to draw them is unknown. There was a linear drawing of an elephant,
a dappled giraffe and, underneath, a sable antelope and two wavy
lines indicating a river.
Spotted a fork-tailed drongo - a small, black bird with a long,
grey forked tail. He is known as the "King of Birds" as
he is without fear and will take on an eagle. I found him a rather
dull-looking bird. Saw some tiny blue waxbills, with stunning kingfisher-blue
undersides.
Next day we flew to KHWAI RIVER LODGE. Landed to see crowned hornbills
on the runway. On the way to the lodge, red lechwe antelope stood
by the side of the track, alongside impala. Larger than impala, and
a glorious reddish colour, lechwe are only found north of the Kalahari
and are unknown in South or East Africa.
Khwai is a flat flood plain with tall trees, mainly leadwood, lots
of shrubs, feverberry (said to cure malaria) and wild "silky" sage.
All much greener than the desert landscape of Savute. From the air,
we saw sheets of shallow water, reeds, and crocodiles - strangely
leopard-patterned, black patches on yellowish green, showing teeth
and smiling benignly... We caught our first sighting of the lilac-breasted
roller, a beautiful bird of many colours - lilac, green and blue.
These birds tumble and roll to please and impress - and not to
outwit the enemy. We also saw the wattled crane, many sacred ibis
and saddle-billed storks.
Driving to the camp, we saw two hippos run across the plain towards
water; a galloping hippo is a rare (and wobbly) sight. They joined
others and we noticed the many scars and wounds on their skins - evidence
of fights using their lethal, sharp, long teeth.
Under a shrub out of the sun we found a pair of mating lions, resting
after their exertions. During the lioness' oestrus, which lasts
only four days, the lion will mate with her constantly. At first,
she demands attention and teases him into action and then when he
is in the swing of it, the four days are up and she loses interest
and rejects him.
Moved on to a village of River Bushmen, relations of the Kalahari
Bushmen. The Khwai village consisted of circular, thatched, mud huts
made of the cement from termite mounds, walls neatly studded with
Coke and other cans, rusted ends flush and facing out.
We heard loud trumpeting and water sounds so headed for the Khwai
river to see an astonishing sight. Between three and four hundred
head of elephant - a breeding herd - crossing and re-crossing
the river with their calves. Some were as young as a month and still
pink. They were too small to walk across with their mothers and did
so underwater with their trunks pointed out of the water taking in
air, as if through a snorkel. It was overwhelming. I saw a baby about
one year old with only half a trunk, still feeding from its mother.
He must have lost the other half to a crocodile while drinking. When
he grows older, he will have a problem reaching leaves or digging
for tubers. On another part of the river, there were 20-30 hippos,
another breeding group of mothers and young. Hippos are said to be
Africa's best killing machine, responsible for more human fatalities
than any other animal.
We heard on the radio that a pair of cheetahs had been spotted:
two young males in their prime, both from the same litter, who hunted
and lived together. Had their litter contained a female, she would
have left once she was ready to breed. Cheetah females bring up their
young alone and when the female cubs leave her, they lead a solitary
existence, except at mating time.
On the way home we came upon an elephant standing under an acacia
tree and Onx said to watch as he would surely shake it to get at
the pods. After about five minutes, this he did by gently laying
his trunk vertically up the tree, carefully testing his balance on
all four legs, and then with rapid, almost rutting, movements, pushed
the tree vigourously though not violently. A rain of pods descended
all about him. Other trees would be pushed down to the ground, but
not the acacia, as he will want to come back next year when the tree
is again in fruit. Acacia pods are caviar to an elephant.
We drove miles to see Botswana's largest baobab tree, with
a girth that needed the spread arms of 12 men to encompass it. It
was worth it, an amazing, almost extraterrestrial sight, said to
be 2,000 years old. Baobab are often called "upside down trees" and
have no leaves in winter.
It was our last morning and we prayed for that special sight of
the nocturnal leopard. Impalas coughed and squirrels made their warning
sounds. We had been following tracks for some time when, suddenly,
a female leopard walked out of the undergrowth in the clearing about
20ft away, saw and ignored us, walking right in front of our vehicle.
She stopped, turned, and with an uninterested look, walked slowly
on and into deep bush. We rushed around to the other side of the
wood, hoping she would make for the water. Sadly not, but that sight
of her gazing into my eyes, will never leave me.
EAGLE ISLAND
After about a 20-minute flight over the delta, we moved on to our
third lodge in the Orient-Express group and entered quite a different
landscape - water everywhere and all was green. We explored by
mokoro - the local dugout boats, pushed with a pole over very
shallow water. As we took our sundowner at the Fish Eagle bar on
the bank, we watched hippos mating in the water. The male mounted
and almost drowned the female, leaving only the tip of her nose showing
above the water. Anxiously we monitored the situation, expecting
love to kill, while a fruit bat slept through the drama, hanging
from the jackalberry tree above.
Eagle Island is a paradise for birdwatchers and the prize of them
all is the Pel's fishing owl. Next morning, we set out in our
mokoro to find one and saw a squacco heron instead - beige-brown
on the ground and showing just white when flying. We saw African
open-billed storks flying in a large formation looking for snails,
and white-faced whistling ducks swim by. The male African fish eagle
is much smaller than the female and eats small crocodiles, monitor
lizards and fish. The mokoro slid past a huge crocodile on the bank.
Crocodiles feed each other's young when they are newly born.
The females drop them in the water - they have sensitive skin
and need water rapidly after birth - and leave them to fend for
themselves. Locals dry their guts and crush them into a powder to
make a strong poison. One needs to know these things.
Next morning, we headed by motor boat for the Baboon Research Camp
on the Bora river, which runs down from the Panhandle. To me it all
looked like a great marsh and I could not make out a river within,
but it was there, and changes its name as it flows through different
countries.
The Okavango camp is often visited by an elephant called Charlie
by the staff, who came in while we were there, swatting chairs to
left and right as he ambled through. He climbed up into the dining
area, stood in the campfire (open and round), and wandered off down
the path to the cabanas, visiting marula and jackalberry trees on
the way. We watched him shake two date palms with his trunk and continue
to a third. At the jetty, we saw a chameleon slowly climbing a black,
carved, wooden eagle - a strange bouncy yet very slow way of
walking. A fully-grown chameleon, about 10in long, can kill a snake
by choking it. Its eye swivelled 360??q (as I watched) and had a
pin-head-sized opening. Again we boarded the mokoro and passed hippos
in the water grunting and snorting. They can travel up to 30km in
a single night to feed and can run at 45kph.
On our last morning, I stayed to pack while my husband went out
for the last time on the delta. The fabled Pel's fishing owl
had so far eluded us and he was determined to try again to find him.
At seven in the morning, Michael met Charlie the elephant on the
path to the main camp, who he said gave him an old-fashioned, early-morning,
hail-fellow-well-met look and went on shaking his jackalberry tree.
He saw Goliath heron, an African darter, reed cormorant, African
marsh harrier, a 10ft crocodile and three of those strangely named
wattle cranes. But no Pel's fishing owl.
As we flew over the shimmering Okavango Delta, I knew I would return - my
shoes were covered in Kalahari dust and, before flying home, I would
wash Africa out of my hair, for a while.
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