Leopards!

LEOPARDS!

            Schools are on holiday for 5 ½ weeks during the coldest part of the year, so volunteers assigned to schools schedule their vacations now. We took a week to make a grand circle tour of Botswana, courtesy of a Peace Corps (Kenya) friend of Stephanie’s now living in Gaborone. We piled into his SUV along with another volunteer, and off we went.

            Our first stop was a six-hour drive north and east to the Tuli Block, in a part of Botswana bordering both South Africa and Zimbabwe. We had reservations for four nights at the tented camp of Mashatu Game Reserve, www.mashatu.com.  We were not disappointed. Unlike most game reserves in Botswana and other African countries that are licensees within national parks, Mashatu is located on its own private property. That means there are fewer restrictions in operating procedures.

            We stayed in a large luxury tent, with a concrete floor, twin beds, lighting, screened windows and wooden doors. Out the back doors is a private seating area leading to an outdoor bathroom, complete with shower, sink and toilet. There are only eight such tents in the camp. The camp has its own small swimming pool. The main building is an open thatched roof structure with comfortable chairs for sitting, a bar and tables for breakfast and lunch. Dinners are taken at outdoor tables under the stars by a campfire, with a view across a riverbed to a lit area frequented by animals.

            Of course the big attraction is the animals. There were two game drives per day, one at 6:30 AM, the other at 3:30 PM.  For each drive, the four of us shared an open top Toyota Land Cruiser driven by our ranger, with a spotter perched in the rear. For each drive, the ranger mounted a rifle onto brackets atop his dashboard. I never asked why, but you can imagine. Since it is winter, it got quite cold riding about in the open air at dawn and dusk. We huddled under blankets, aided by hot water bottles.

We're smiling because our tracker is pouring us morning coffee.

Leopards are too cool for words. 

Here come the elephants, parading up a dry riverbed toward a woodland to chill out during the heat of the day.

            What did we see? Our ranger knew all corners of the reserve as well as the favorite hangouts for various animal species. Impala were omnipresent, grazing in herds. Less common but still well represented were other grazers, including eland, kudu, waterbuck and steenbok. There were samplings of zebra, giraffe, wildebeest, hyena and jackal. Our ranger had to search on and off road, up and down dry riverbeds, until he found a pride of 11 lions (mothers and cubs) as well a mother leopard and her two cubs. Leopards are nocturnal and solitary, and are very hard to spot. Stephanie had never seen any leopards during her two years in Kenya, so this sighting was particularly rewarding.  In subsequent drives, we again came across these same lions and leopards.

            But let’s not forget the elephants. It seems that Mashatu is famous for its great number of elephants . Day after day, we watched large herds of elephants parading from one feeding area to another. After counting more than 100 elephants walk past our Land Cruiser one morning, I gave up. For their great size, the elephants moved almost silently. Except for the occasional trumpeting, the only noise came when an elephant decided to grab a small tree branch with its trunk, yank it free and strip off the leaves to eat.  There were many youngsters, of various sizes, running to keep up with their mothers as the herd moved forward. We learned that the herds are lead by a matriarch, who communicates directions to the elephants by making low frequency sounds. The matriarch kicks out unruly adolescent males from the herd, and they end up as part of bachelor groups. The adult males then join herds only for mating activities.

            No doubt we will return to Mashatu at some point in the future. Our children will come for a visit in November, and we will take them on safari as well.