An elephant on a bicycle

After a fantastic week in Maun it’s time to get back to work. Monday May 23rd we cycle to Botswana’s east over the three hundred kilometres tar road to Nata that leads through the Kalahari and the nature reserves of the Makgadikgadi and Nxai Pans. The arid landscape looks pretty much the same as the thousand kilometres our tires already have devoured in Botswana. The vastness of the semi-desert is hard to express in words. With our gaze fixed on the endless horizon we cycle in our familiar train, head over head to conquer the strong headwind together.
For the first time of our lives we see an aardvark from up close, hit by a car in the middle of the night whilst crossing the road. Three porcupines didn’t make the crossover as well. Strange really, that those animals managed to get hit here; during the day there is almost no traffic, at night there is virtually none.
While the termite mounds, that completely encapsulate trees and shrubs, seem to grow higher and higher, we see our first clouds in Botswana since we entered the country a month ago. At Motopi village we get extra water for the night and the following morning. In the evening a stick insect makes somersaults on our tent, which we pitched in a dry saltpan just within the borders of the Makgadikgadi National Park.

At six a.m. a hyena howls us awake, while the sun with its rays warms the new day on earth.
After a few kilometres we arrive in Phuduhudu, where the villagers point us the tap with borehole water.

A bit further groups of ostrich run with big elegant strides into the bushes when we pass. A solitaire male oryx looks at us from a distance. In Gweta, Tony, the owner of the new Gweta Lodge, invites us to sleep in a rondavel at a much reduced price. Our first ‘real’ bed since Gaborone.

On our way to Nata we pass the most beautiful baobabs we’ve seen in a long time, in the traditional shape of upside down vases. Nata consists of nothing more than three gas stations and a small shop. Eighteen kilometres further to the south (wrong direction) lays the Nata Bird Sanctuary, a nature reserve with a campsite run by local people. It’s dead quiet here, besides us there is only a South-African couple staying. My sleep is disturbed a few times; once by desert rats that are so hungry they chew our plastic things to pieces. The second time by a number of thirsty horses that manage to open a tap by force.
We spend a day in Nata and cycle onto the salt plain of the Makgadikgadi. This plain a long time ago was the largest lake in southern Africa of an estimated ten thousand square kilometres, which dried up thousands of years ago. Every year, water from the Nata-river fills the pans, after the summer rains in Zimbabwe, and millions of water birds nestle and breed here. The salt creaks under our tires and shoes when we reach the pan. A pink glow of flamingos stretches as far as our eyes can see; when we come to close to their liking an alarm signal sounds and they withdraw en masse. The campsite also is a bird paradise: even when Peter walks to the toilet he carries his camera with.

The road to Kasane in Botswana’s north is no more than a very straight three hundred kilometres tar road with only one village at two thirds of the distance: Pandamatenga. With extra stock in our bags we hit the road for this three day tour. Everywhere people warned us for this stretch: we’re going to meet hundreds of animals on the road, especially elephants, but possibly also cheetahs and lions. It’s a good thing we don’t have to be scared of them anymore, since we were taught how to tame them in the Okavango.
The first animal we meet immediately steals our hearts: a stick insect of over 25 centimetres. Never before did we see a professional camouflage artist of this size. The animal perfected his resemblance with his surroundings with a few sharp thorns on his grey brown body, and his legs look exactly like little twigs. Unfortunately he is wounded; with pain in our hearts we place him in the bushes and resume our way.

Kilometres on end we cycle through a green landscape of leafy trees and acacias. Everywhere are elephant traces: droppings and large urine marks on the road, torn down trees and fences, car wrecks young and old and a lot of ruined road signs. Some of these traces are very fresh and we ogle at the shrubs and bushes until our eyes hurt. But, no elephants.
The staring rewards us with something else though: six giraffes look alarmed in our direction and flee for the cycling harmless enemy. Steenbok and mongoose also run into the bushes when they discover us. After 123 kilometres we encounter a road camp which existence was unknown to us; so Peter rode about fifty kilometres with an extra of 25 kilos of water unnecessary.

The second day to Kasane is plain disappointing: apart from a white eagle, three antelope and thousands of flies, of which the last prefer to make our ears their home, there is no animal in sight. There is a widened stretch of road that at times serves as a landing strip for small airplanes.

The third and last day has to be it. An army base is followed by a sudden agricultural explosion of sunflowers and cotton. In the Kazuma Forest Reserve we find a brown spotted hyena that has been hit by a car some time ago, five big vultures and a troop of baboons that crosses the road under the supervising eye of the largest male. Twenty kilometres before Kazangula, at the crossroads of Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Namibia, we give up looking for elephants. Two reedbuck duck away on our last kilometres from bush to civilisation. Then the amount of elephant muck dramatically increases and we smell the special zoo odour. After six days and over six hundred kilometres it’s hard to keep up the visual concentration. Though, instinctively we know that there are animals close by, we feel it and smell it.
Our train riding slows down from intercity to steam train in the last hour. Tired and happy we cycle next to each other, when we are startled by noises in the bushes. We look to our left and right… and see elephants everywhere. Ever so quiet we are sitting on our bicycles and witness how mother elephants protect their young from these strange road users by flapping their ears. One or two of them continue eating, until the trumpeting signal sounds that two cyclists have arrived. Two cyclists, who are overjoyed with happiness, full of respect and with tears in their eyes, rotate their pedals as slow as possible.

Suddenly the whole world is more beautiful: the grass greener, the light brighter and tastes sweeter. Finally: beautiful big gracious grey gigantic African elephants…