Trip to the kalahari

It started off like an average trip to the Kalahari! (Is there such a thing?) Well, after a short 14-hour drive that felt like 13 hours we arrived at the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana. It was just about sundown so the guards asked us (told us) to park overnight near the front gate and continue on in the morning. No problem. We were tired anyway. So a quick shower and a nights rest were easy to accept. We no sooner hit the sack than we heard the noise! Someone was trying to get into our vehicle. I grabbed my spot light and went out to investigate.

Honey Badgers!!

Rule number one: Never leave roasted chicken inside your Land Cruiser!

It is impossible to dissuade a honey badger from stealing roasted chicken. They do the impossible. Like climbing on top of your vehicle. In the end they got what they wanted. We handed over a portion of chicken (a bribe not unheard of in Africa) for a nights sleep. 

 After a quick snack they decided to look elsewhere and we retired for the night.


The following morning it was off to Sunday Pan. That is a camping area near the Sunday waterhole. Nice view. Clean. Well organized. Well, what could possibly go wrong here!

LIONS that's what!!!!

It was about 3 AM when we heard another noise. What was that?? Somethings trying to get into our tent. No problem, I have my night vision goggles. I’ll check it out. I unzipped the corner of the tents window and shoved my night vision out of the opening. All I could see was a nose and two eyes. Too blurry to be exactly sure what it was but I knew it was a LION! I gave Pepi a quick look. She quickly commented, “There are two lions out there”. Then it started. Chairs being knocked over. Dishes falling of the table. We were under attack!

There goes the rest of my chicken, as well as Pepi’s coffee pot. Our friends that raise lions told us lions will not eat cooked food. WRONG!! They also drink coffee!

They started running around snarling and snapping and carrying on like a bunch of lions. I stuck my night vision out the hole in the window again and started counting. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 lions running by my window. I had no idea at the time they were running around our tent and I was counting the same lions twice. Well what do you expect from a foreigner!

We decided to slip down inside our sleeping bag and wait for daybreak. About 30 minutes before day break everything went silent. Maybe they thought we were armed, or maybe after seeing those night vision goggles they thought we were military.

WRONG!
They just fell asleep alongside our tent. 

It turned out they were just cubs having a fun night at the neighbors house. When I stood up in the tent the male started to stalk me. I shouted at him to stop and lay down. He obviously was never spoken to like that before. 

He stopped, looked at me with this sorrowful look on his face and walked away. I obviously ruined a perfectly good hunt.

Except for a few Gemsbok and other plains animals the rest of the trip was rather uneventful.

The game in the Kalahari are rather easy to approach. This grouse approached us and refused to leave without a snack.

The worst you can expect is a sand trap. This photo was taken in Linyanti a part of the Okovango. This was one a several times we had to dig ourselves out.   

So much for Botswana. We leave next for Zambia. I’ll write more soon. Take care.