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Ten Things I Know About Africa After Camping At Chobe River, Savuti, Khwai and Xakanaxa, Botswana.
1. The Kalahari is full of sand. Well, duh, you might say, it's a desert. But it's not the Tatooine-style, rolling sand dune kind of desert where you're ready for sand. There are trees, there are bushes, there's grass: it's just that it's all on sand. The road cut through the middle is sand. Fine, soft sand; sand just like you get on the beach. Sandy sandy sandy sand.
2. Whatever the cutest thing is you've seen in your life, it's not even a trillionth as cute as two baby elephants playing together.
3. Beware of the squirrels. Sure, they're not as carnivorous as the lions, but on the other hand the lions won't pinch your soap.
4. Beware of the hyenas. They also will pinch your soap, plus your shoes, your chair, your cooking pot, and your face should you be so unwise as to fall asleep in front of the campfire. Also your sleeping companion, should you leave your tent and neglect to zip them in. (Ten seconds to dismemberment is the current record.) You're safe if you meet one while you're standing up, though. More or less.
5. Elephants can also be extremely dangerous, but who cares when a herd of them crashes gently through the trees in your camp by moonlight. Or when an annoyed bull charges you and swerves around you at the last minute, trumpeting at you for getting in his way. Or when your vehicle stops in the middle of a feeding herd and they look at you from a couple of feet away and you look back.
6. The lions, on the other hand, are pussycats. They're not interested in you when they have a juicy warthog to chomp on. Not even when you're FIVE FEET AWAY IN AN OPEN VEHICLE.
7. The weather actually means something other than whether you should take your umbrella. Savuti is subzero at night in the winter and Chobe River isn't, because the water makes it warmer. Wind makes the animals more restless, because they think the rustling leaves might be a predator. And drops of rain when it should be several months till the wet season means the planet's stuffed.
8. It all fits together. They're all that colour because Africa is that colour. (You wouldn't think giraffes would be hard to see, but they are. Especially when they retreat behind a bush and peer around it at you.) You can see impalas and baboons in the zoo, but you can't see that even though baboons sometimes eat impalas, impala herds follow baboon troupes as they feed because baboons knock leaves and fruit out of the trees.
9. If you're flying out of the bush, remember to shoo the impalas off the runway.
10. They say Africa steals your heart. I didn't think it would. It did. I'm going back.
2. Whatever the cutest thing is you've seen in your life, it's not even a trillionth as cute as two baby elephants playing together.
3. Beware of the squirrels. Sure, they're not as carnivorous as the lions, but on the other hand the lions won't pinch your soap.
4. Beware of the hyenas. They also will pinch your soap, plus your shoes, your chair, your cooking pot, and your face should you be so unwise as to fall asleep in front of the campfire. Also your sleeping companion, should you leave your tent and neglect to zip them in. (Ten seconds to dismemberment is the current record.) You're safe if you meet one while you're standing up, though. More or less.
5. Elephants can also be extremely dangerous, but who cares when a herd of them crashes gently through the trees in your camp by moonlight. Or when an annoyed bull charges you and swerves around you at the last minute, trumpeting at you for getting in his way. Or when your vehicle stops in the middle of a feeding herd and they look at you from a couple of feet away and you look back.
6. The lions, on the other hand, are pussycats. They're not interested in you when they have a juicy warthog to chomp on. Not even when you're FIVE FEET AWAY IN AN OPEN VEHICLE.
7. The weather actually means something other than whether you should take your umbrella. Savuti is subzero at night in the winter and Chobe River isn't, because the water makes it warmer. Wind makes the animals more restless, because they think the rustling leaves might be a predator. And drops of rain when it should be several months till the wet season means the planet's stuffed.
8. It all fits together. They're all that colour because Africa is that colour. (You wouldn't think giraffes would be hard to see, but they are. Especially when they retreat behind a bush and peer around it at you.) You can see impalas and baboons in the zoo, but you can't see that even though baboons sometimes eat impalas, impala herds follow baboon troupes as they feed because baboons knock leaves and fruit out of the trees.
9. If you're flying out of the bush, remember to shoo the impalas off the runway.
10. They say Africa steals your heart. I didn't think it would. It did. I'm going back.
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