Okavango: the rhythm of the untamed wilderness (part 2)

“Groooaaahh! Groowwll! Sshllgrrr… Bbrrllgg…”
“ Peter, wake up! Listen, what can this be?”
“ Hey, no! It’s not me, I want to sleep!”
“ Wake up you silly, I hear very strange noises!”

It’s the middle of the night; we’re sitting upright in our bed and hear frightening, strange sounds. The growling and roaring alternates with the sticky, mushy sound of moist body parts that get unglued. The noises don’t make any sense to us; we listen for almost half an hour to the animal sounds. Later, in the early morning we wake up by the sounds of crying hyenas, barking baboons and the alarming sounds of the red-billed francolin. Ras explains that this night we have all been ear-witness of two mating hippo’s, that had a wonderful night together. Oh, yeah!

It’s only half past six, and cold, when we leave for our second game walk. A herd of impala, a steenbok and a large male kudu sharpen our senses right away. Strolling through the rough wilderness, Ras teaches us about the knowledge of nature. Especially the lesson of ‘recognising dung’ is more interesting than we thought in advance. The easiest one to recognise is of course the football of the elephant; also the dented table-tennis-balls of the giraffes are not difficult to remember, just like the flat buffalo-pies and the hairy, carrot-shaped droppings of the hyena. By the way, after opening an elephant dropping with your fingers, you will smell the lovely scent of hay and wilderness.
The lesson gets a little nasty with the introduction of the antelope-dung, like that of reedbuck, duiker and impala, all small liquorice sweets of a slightly different size. The next step is the difference between male and female excrements of the impala: the male droppings are a little further apart from each other because he does it standing up. The female squats a bit, so hers lay neatly on a nice heap.
At the hole of a porcupine (with four entrances, and so four escape routes) we see bones scattered everywhere, gathered by the prickly animal to sharpen its teeth and to serve as extra source in this arid land for its calcium need.
We cross some dry creeks and head for a forest, in which we discover seven bateleur, a tawny eagle and a European marsh harrier. Within a couple of weeks the creeks and fields will be filled with water: rainwater that has fallen in the high mountains of Angola this summer. Here, a thousand kilometres further and four months later, it fills the delta of the Okavango in the dry winter months.
Two bat-eared foxes and a black-backed jackal flee into the safe bushes when they smell us coming through the high grass. There we find the dry, peeled off skin of a black spitting cobra and the skull of a baboon, in which long, sharp hook-teeth are reminiscent of an aggressive past.

We talk with Ras about his love-life. Since one year he lives with his eighteen-year-old girlfriend Kebalebetse Sarefo. They both want to marry, but Keba doesn’t want Ras to pay the high dowry of 15.000 Pula (more than 2.500 Euro). In the fairly modern Botswana society living together is an accepted way of life in this situation. Even having children without being married is accepted, though the child will always bear the mothers name.
We are startled by an alarmed kori-bustard, the heaviest flying bird on earth; he lifts himself into the air using all his powers. A fascinating effort.
A second lesson follows: from dung to tracks. Without any effort Ras shows the spoors of several mammals: again the elephant-print, an oval shape of about fifty centimetres, is the easiest one to recognise. The buffalo makes a smaller print in the sand, almost round in shape; the giraffe makes a deep two-toed hoof print, parallel and straight. The lion: a very big cat footprint; the leopard a little smaller cat footprint in the shape of a flower. The aardvark deviates completely: three, long shaped toes with the size of half a human foot (size ten). They look fresh and sharply printed in the sand.

Fresh? Yes, that’s the next lesson we get right away: the freshness of a spoor. We could have thought of it ourselves: the sharper the print, without dirt or crumbled edges, the fresher it is. Is the print filled with dirt (leaves, sand, and pieces of straw) then the animal has been gone for a while. But: don’t ask us about the age of a print, one doesn’t become a guide so easily.
During a short break we discover a very tiny ‘leave-insect’, one of the insects that has specialised in African camouflage-techniques. On the way back to camp we stroll by a termite-mound with big, smooth prints in the sandy hill. Ras explains that an elephant has slept here; with its head always in a higher place than its legs, so it’s easier to stand up again and at the same time better for digesting food. Actually, they only sleep every other night. We end the six hours walk by watching to gigantic giraffes.

Three hours later we are back on the campsite of the Sedia Hotel, our own private bird-paradise. Dazed by all impressions of the last two days we look around us from the terrace and it is still not over: warblers, grey loeries, bulbuls, hornbills, starlings, thrushes, babblers, shrikes and even a fish-eagle make our day. It can’t get better and more beautiful than this, it is time to stop travelling.

So we can study biology.

For a nice and relaxed stay close to one of the world’s most beautiful nature areas, and an unforgettable safari in the Okavango-delta (or other trips), look and book:

Sedia Hotel
E-mailaddress: sedia@info.bw
Website Sedia Hotel: www.sedia-hotel.com
Website Afrotrek: www.afrotrek.com