Travels with Gunther and Kara

On to Botswana Day 8 which was the final game drive in the Okavango Delta followed by a bush flight back to Kasane on the Chobe River, transfer to the Pangolin houseboat for the final portion of the trip and an afternoon boat drive looking for critters.

First though…catching up on happenings here in SW FL since may last post. It’s remained mostly much cooler than normal with lows in the 40s and highs mostly in the 60s although it will be 77 today according to the weather guessers. We’ve had a busy week since then albeit not as bad as last week was. 

Connie needed to attend the Elks Quarterly meeting up in Umatilla at the youth camp on Friday…she was originally going to go up by herself on Thursday for her meetings on Friday and then come back Saturday morning. However…with her car Li’l Red in the shop to get the rear hatch water leak fixed (it’s been there 3 weeks as of yesterday) she wasn’t comfortable heading out with Neil’s car since he would be stuck at home for 3 days and she wouldn’t have him available to rescue her should it be needed…so he went up with her. They drove up Thursday and checked in to the Hampton Inn in Mount Dora nearby and had a pretty decent dinner at this Mexican place she found…not quite as good as our now closed Mexico Mexican place here in town but way better than any of the Americanized Mexican places that are far more common then Mexican Mexican places. They kept leftovers and he had some of them Friday for lunch with the rest brought home for lunch on Saturday. 

Friday morning they had breakfast at the hotel and then he dropped her off at the youth camp for the day and headed down to the Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive to see what critters might be out. He didn’t hold out a lot of hope as it was pretty cold and it’s kinda early for breeding season; but while it wasn’t a spectacular outing it was far from a bust and he did get some shots which he’ll process for me once he does the last couple of days of the Botswana trip and I’ve harassed him to get those done a bit more quickly than he has been. He was back at the hotel before lunch and spent the remainder of the time until his scheduled 1500 departure to pick her up at the youth camp reading and having lunch. He arrived back at the camp and parked in a nice sunny location outside the main building to wait on her to finish up her meeting. That was done a bit after 1600 and they headed off to her second pick for Date Night…a place called “The Troff” which was a word play on the word trough and that was based on the fact that it was an oyster place with a trough behind the bar where they shucked the bivalves for either raw, steamed, or otherwise preparation. In addition…it was a Dive Bar sort of place and neither of them had ever been in an oyster dive bar…she was in a dress and heels since she was (a) having lunch with the nationwide Grand Exalted Ruler’s wife and (b) well, it was Date Night and dress and heels are de rigueur for that evolution. However…she was extremely overdressed for the place but ya know sometimes that happens. They had some wine and split a dozen oysters in their combo platter…Rockefeller which were mediocre, Cajun, Cheese, and Jalapeño Bacon and all broiled. After that she had a bowl of clam chowder and he had some pretty decent smoked fish dip with again leftover dip they had for lunch later on. Then it was back to the hotel, up early on Saturday and they got back home before noon.

This week we’re having breakfast out at the Stamatis Family Restaurant on Thursday (they won a $10 gift certificate at Trivia Night), dinner for Valentine’s day Friday at Ristorante Fabio (high end Italian place they like), the 50th anniversary mass (an annual thing) on Saturday and then a concert up in Sarasota with dinner at Longhorn’s on the way home Sunday. So all in all…another busy week and we’ll likely need to pick up her car sometime this week as well whenever they get around to finishing it up. The work is being done by Crash Champions…and we’re unlikely to use them for anything in the future as they’re extremely slow getting anything done and don’t do keeping the customer informed at all. Their work might be good…dunno yet…but customer service is pretty bad.

Ok, enough of that…let’s get to it. As I said above we had an early game drive with a scheduled 1100 flight back to Kasane. 

First up…I hadn’t put up a shot of their ‘tent’ accommodation at Camp Kanana before so here’s one he grabbed as they were packing up early.

After breakfast…they loaded into the vehicles and once again he was really glad they provided blankets and hot water bottles for your lap in the no top vehicles as it was quite chilly and he was once again in the tallest rear row so he got the wind. Once they got out of the camp and started seeking critters…his elevated position enabled him to see a flock of vultures in a tree a half mile or so away and since a flock of them usually means a meal is in the offing the driver headed over there. They found the lion pride once again…at least part of it, there were only 2 males, 2 females and no cubs so the remaining female and cub were elsewhere. They had to negotiate a rather marshy area to get close and he personally thought that heading next to the pride at 0730 or so in a spot that might get the vehicle stuck with no way to get a tow until the lions left with a 1000 deadline to get back to camp for the 1100 flight was a poor choice but the driver decided he could make it and they got close to this guy licking his chops.

Turns out the reason he was doing that was that the pride had taken down a Cape Buffalo overnight and as the alpha male he was getting his share first. Sorry about the raw meat but nature is…well…nature.

The lioness nearby was waiting her turn.

As were the White Backed Vultures in the nearby trees.

The alpha male heading off to get a drink…from his belly distended like that he probably chowed down on 50 pounds or more of the kill.

And that was it for the morning. His vehicle moved on to seek other wildlife so the other vehicle could come and take the one decent spot overlooking the scene but they found nothing more and got back to camp on time to load up camera gear and head to the camp’s airstrip. Here is the plane coming in to land.

And an over view of another camp’s airstrip and the general appearance of the Delta area. I don’t think I posted one of the latter yet but the area around Camp Kanana is pretty similar.

On arrival back at Kasane they stopped by the Pangolin Lodge for lunch and then boarded the same boat they would eventually be shooting photos from for the trip to the houseboat. On the way they passed these local guys out fishing I guess…that’s a pretty small craft to be on in a river full of big crocodiles and hippos that might take exception to them being there.

This is the Pangolin houseboat…they were just the third workshop that used it. It’s a vast improvement in luxury compared to the older one that they visited for a bathroom break on one of their boat rides later on…and they also got a tour of the yet to be used at that point completely electric photo boat. The houseboat itself is also completely solar powered although I’m sure it has a generator for cloudy days. It has a total of 4 outboard motors, two at each end and all four are used when the boat is underway. Eating and lounging area on the upper deck, the staterooms are all on the lower dec with entry on the opposite side with the stateroom windows visible. The crew totaled probably 6 or 8 and the pilot house is the glassed in area on the bow on the lower level. Pretty darned nice digs.

After settling in and more lunch…they headed off for a game ride; they used the same boat as previously used for the rides out of the Pangolin lodge that I posted a photo of earlier.

Squacco Heron.

Purple Heron with dinner.

African Spoonbill.

Black Skimmer skimming.

Juvenile African Jacana; they have really big feet and can almost walk on water or at least the floating grass and lillypads without sinking.

Little Egret…basically the same as the Snowy Egret here in the USA but they only have it and the Great Egret which is basically the same as our Great Egret including the name.

This is what giraffes have to do to drink which goes to show why they carefully look around before drinking and one of the group is almost always fully erect and keeping watch for predators before taking it’s turn. From fully erect to down for drinking too 15 seconds and perhaps half that to get vertical again but they can get up faster if they need to run away.

Cormorant…basically the same as the Double Breasted Cormorant in the US. He missed the takeoff shot…looking the wrong way.

Cape buffalo.

Gray Hooded Gull.

This may be the same individual that they spotted the first night as it was in pretty much the same area. It was obviously stalking the den of the two Black Backed Jackals in the hopes of a meal but they chased it off. Pretty surprising that a couple of 30 or 40 pound jackals could intimidate a cat that outweighed the both of them by probably a factor of at least 2…but they did.

And the quintessential Chobe River shot…they just had to get this one.

Arriving back at the houseboat for dinner.

Looking head to day 9…a morning boat ride followed by a cruse upriver 15 miles or so…well past the area where they saw the leopard which was the fastest upriver so far…then an afternoon boat drive after mooring again to the bank on the Zambia side of the Chobe.

Cyas.

Well…it’s been a pretty interesting Week so let’s dive in.

New Years Day was excellent food wise with ham, sweet potato medley, pineapple topped with sugar and caramelized with the cook’s torch Connie bought him for Christmas accompanied by a nice bottle of wine. The only drawback was that there was too much sweet involved between the pineapple, sweet potatoes and the mustard/brown sugar sauce from his childhood on the ham. 

In the evening we moved onto the second quarterfinal in the College Football Playoffs…Miami beat Ohio State on the evening before to advance to the semifinals and Alabama went up against the top seed Indiana. As he expected…Alabama continued to display zip in the running game department and at this level you simply aren’t going to win without a running game to keep the defense honest unless you have a brilliant quarterback and a stable of NFL draft choice receivers…and while they have a better than average passing game it’s not spectacular. The defense played pretty well but wore down in the second half as Indiana continued to run the ball primarily. Neil never thought he would see the day when the Tide simply couldn’t run and the defense wore down late in the game…it’s always been the opposite case but not the past couple of years. The jury is still out on the new coach…he hasn’t learned that you simply have to run to get to a championship and clearly they have not worked sufficiently on that task. They continued to try to run on 3rd and long to medium despite limited success and never really threw downfield to try and open up some running lanes…Indiana packed the defensive line and as a result of that and their own running success won the game handily. Still though…advancing to the quarterfinals in his second season is an improvement but the man really needs to get a running game and a more mobile quarterback in order to continue the expected ‘we are in the championship game’ that their fans demand. But…we were all spoiled by how good Nick Saban was at building and continuing a dynasty and they’re just not back there yet.

Then there was the seizing of the president of Venezuela and we’re not sure how we feel about that. Sure…he’s an unelected dictator (well, there was an election but it was clearly rigged as opposed to the US one in 2020) but the country does have a constitution and under it he was the duly elected president. The White House claim that he runs a narco terrorist organization seems like a lot of invention of facts to support what they want to do. Like the attacks against the supposed drug smuggling boats over the past couple of months…it seems more of a convenient method of justifying what they want to do rather than actually following both US and international law. And then the claim that the US will run the country for the indefinite future…well, that just ain’t happening unless we put a whole passle of troops on the ground and that seems like it would be an act of war. The country absolutely does not need to be involved in another nation building attempt that will be opposed by significant rebel opposition…we been there in Afghanistan and just don’t need to go there again.

And just yesterday we seized a Russian flagged tanker in the open ocean…and again that seems to be across the line of legality. However…might makes right to a great extent and we’re pretty sure that all of it will be upheld in court.

Let’s see…what else is going on?

Connie’s off at a Ladies of Elks planning meeting this morning and they’ve got to make some decisions on what to do with the Ladies group. As both merger attempts of our lodge with another have failed…the board decided to just keep on going without a lodge…and we had made the decision if that happened we would dimit over to the North Fort Myers lodge and we mailed in our paperwork this week. The Ladies is a separate 501c3 corporation from the Fort Myers lodge and with no lodge they can’t hold any fund raising events to support the charities they want to support. Hence…the planning meeting and they’ll figure out what they want to do.

Neil’s off to a good start biking in the new year…don’t know if he’ll beat out last year’s mileage but he’s gonna work on it. He likes his new schedule…instead of every other day he’s shifted to Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday to keep from needing to go on Sunday’s as with concerts, Mass, and the heat in summer afternoons made that seem a smarter idea. If he keeps to the schedule he’ll get 8 days every 2 weeks instead of 7 so he might just beat last year but it’s really way too early to even guess on that.

That’s about it…so let’s get on to more images from Botswana last August.

This is the vehicle (well, 1 of 2) that he used at Camp Kanana. They had 3 clients in each one at 1 per row so that shooting out of either side was easy along with a driver and Steve/Rose who alternated in the front seats. The clients rotated forward for each game drive and the front one rotated to the back in order to give everybody the advantage of all the seats as they are progressively higher going to the back. Diesel and in 4WD most of the time with only occasional shifts to the 4WD Low mode. The mornings were quite chilly ad you can see here but there was a nice hot water bottle and blanket for everyone to stay toasty as we drove around.

Sunrise taken about 3 minutes after the shot above.

First stop was this elephant in the woods pulling leaves down from the trees for breakfast.

Next  stop was the local lion pride…2 males, 3 females, and 9 cubs…of which there are 6 or 7 in this shot.

Mom looking out at something but we couldn’t figure out what.

This hartebeest might have been what the second female above looking toward the vehicles was checking out…but as you can see both of the females have pretty full bellies so it wasn’t worth the effort to go after it.

Shortly after leaving the pride they happened across this bull elephant…and he clearly resented the vehicle’s presence. Our driver stopped and revved the engine and sounded the horn to try and get him to turn away…but he started towards the vehicle like it was the beginning of a charge so the driver stomped on the gas and sped past. He was only 50 feet or so off of the road they were driving on.

Neil was in the back seat that morning and spotted this Lilac Breasted Roller about 20 feet maximum from the road off to his right.

It looked like it was getting ready to fly so they all switched camera modes to pre-capture to get the takeoff/flight sequence and through the magic of pre-capture and 20 frames per second got a nice sequence. These are all sequential frames so less than a second for the sequence before he was no longer able to keep the bird in the frame but then it was going away and any more would have mostly been roller butt.

That’s enough for today and pretty much wrapped up the morning…I’ll finish up with the afternoon drive next time.

Interesting things found on the net.

I said no pictures…seems apropos for an Africa safari post.

We keep seeing the progressives demanding that the rich pay their fair share of taxes…so who really pays them? Yes…rich people can take advantage of tax loopholes to reduce the amount they pay…but as you can see from this they still pay the lion’s share of the total tax dollars. This is based on official IRS data. Of particular note…the top 0.01% of taxpayers paid 25% of the total dollars and the top 4% paid about 67% or 2/3. The trouble with progressive socialists is that sooner of later you run out of other people’s money. 

We’re still waiting to see what the new NYC mayor does…he’s moving from his rent controlled apartment to the mansion but has said he’s keeping his apartment for after his term. He appointed a woman even more radical than he is to head the rent control office…and she has said in the past that “home ownership is white supremacy” despite the fact that she is a white woman and her mother owns a $1.5M home in Knoxville according to one of the local newspapers in the city. When questioned about this…the woman ran away in tears from the journalist who asked the question according to the local paper.

Mandami has promised free buses, a freeze on rent increases in rent controlled properties, and 4 city owned grocery stores to lower the cost of food…but unfortunately has announce no plans on how he intends to actually pay for all of those giveaway programs. We understand that NYC is expensive and prices are going up…but that’s the same everywhere these days. I don’t know what the answer is but clearly Mr. Mayor doesn’t know either.

And finally…in a really strange coincidence…back during the Civil War the First Battle of Bull Run was mostly fought on the farm owned by a fellow named Wilmer McLean. After the battle was over he wanted to move far away from that site so he built himself a new house further west and became a successful merchant during the remainder of the war. Turns out that his new home was the Appomattox Courthouse where Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses Grant literally in McLean’s living room.

Strange things happen. 

Cyas.

OK, Ima gonna call a bit of an audible here. We just got back from a 6 day trip up in NC/VA…after Connie’s brutal summer of breast cancer, doctors, surgery, and radiation she needed a vacation. We’ve toyed with going up to New England for leaf season…but then everybody goes there so she decided that a little further south would be a better idea. I’ll put in some more details later on…but we basically went to the southern end of the Blue Ridge Parkway near Asheville, NC and drove almost to the northern end north of Roanoke, VA before heading back south.

Anyway…the audible is that after today’s post on day 4 of the Botswana trip he’s going to process the images from our leaf peeping trip and I’ll put those up in the next post or two before getting back to Africa.

So…we left town Sunday a week back after Mass and drove north stopping near Valdosta, GA for the night. Monday we continued north and did the first 40 or so mile of the parkway before stopping at Asheville for the evening…and I’ll update more of the trip when I put those photos back.

We arrived back home Saturday evening after a long 10+ hour day of driving from Belmont, NC. Fortunately…we had decided ahead of time to just get a frozen pizza from Publix on the way home from the freeway and that’s what we did.

Anyways…back to Botswana.

As I reported last time…we had an early morning boat ride but it was a bit short since we had to get back to the Pangolin Lodge, check out, have lunch, and get to the airport for our flight. On arrival back at the Kasane airport we boarded our bush plane from Mack Air…the pilot looked like he was about 12 to Neil…and headed 150 miles or so southwest to the Okavango Delta. The Okavango River flows southeast from Angola into Botswana and then spreads out into a large delta area which is composed of a mix of swamp, grassland, and woodlands. There are dozens of safari companies in the area…each has leased a section of land from the Botswana government and they have exclusive rights to run tours in that area Due to the swampy nature…pretty much every camp has it’s own airstrip for landing and we saw a couple of dozen airstrips as we headed to our destination at Kanana Camp.

Here is a general map of the area…you can see Kasane at the upper right and the red circle is the approximate location of Kanana Camp…the island to it’s northeast is Chiefs Island and he has no idea where that name came from. Although the Kanana concession has some wet spots and while they didn’t go everywhere in the concession…his estimate is that the swampy, can’t drive the trucks there percentage is maybe 5-7% of the area with the remaining being about 60% grassland and the rest woodlands.

Here’s a look at our plane after landing.

It’s a small 12 seat plane and they stopped at another camp to pick up several people who were ending their trip before heading to Kanana…then the plane was continuing on to Maun a bit more south so those people could go wherever they were headed to next. Their vehicles are in the background on the right side but I’ll have better images and descriptions of those in the next Africa post. It was just a short ride to the camp where we had a brief orientation in the main building before heading to the tent accommodation.

And this is their tent…yeah, right. Neil has to say that Kanana was not only the best bush camp he’s ever been to but it is also about the best overall lodging and meal combination he’s ever had anyplace. As you can see…they were really roughing it at the camp. Strangely enough…although there was pretty good wifi in the tents…there was none in the main lodge building because the staff/management wants people to socialize there and not bury their faces into their phone. The staff was extraordinarily good…and by the second night they had memorized both your name and what your cocktail of choice was and it just showed up. The food…breakfast, lunch, tea before the afternoon game drive, and dinner afterwards were all spectacular. Neil’s roommate had requested a gluten free menu and not only was this taken care of it was plentiful and varied…but over on the table right of center there was a canister of cookies…and on their arrival at the tent there were both regular and gluten free available. Guests were free to walk back and forth between the tent and lodge during the day…they were in tent 9 (of 10) about a quarter mile from the lodge…but after dark the staff escorted guests to and from the tents because…wild animals ya know.

After a quick checkin they headed back up to the lodge for afternoon tea followed by a short game drive.

Wattled Crane. These are about the size of a Sandhill Crane here…bigger than a Great Blue Heron and more of less the same size as a Wood Stork.

An elephant munching on grass…a relatively small one perhaps 7 or 8 feet to the shoulder.

Glossy Ibis…same bird as we have in the US.

Lilac Breasted Roller…same bird as he saw up in Tanzania the year before…first perched about 10 feet from the truck and then as it flew off.

Next stop…a hyena family. The adults were all of hunting but the cubs were left behind in the company of one of the teenagers to watch over the kids. While adult hyenas are not all that attractive to look at…the cubs, like all baby animals…are pretty cute. This guy was about a foot high and pretty fearless as he walked over to the truck to see what the heck these strange things were.

Here’s big brother keeping an eye on both the kids and the truck.

As you can see from the shot of big brother…it was almost sunset so they headed back to the camp but did spot one last critter on the way back.

Despite the fact that they are in the tree…these are Southern Ground-Hornbills…he has no idea why they’re up in the tree but his guess is that they roost there overnight to keep away from predators. Although it looks from the sky in these shots that it was daylight…in reality it was at or just past sunset but still before full dark and the birds were just silhouettes until Neil did his magic Lightroom tricks to bring the birds back.

From there it was back to the camp…Kanana has a concession about 30 miles by 30 miles which is crisscrossed by roads but they probably never got more than 4 or 5 miles from the camp as it just takes too much time to get out and back that could be better spent seeing critters. Overall…the roads were a lot better than those in the Serengeti last year he says.

After dinner…here’s a shot of the last bit of orange in the sky at sunset taken from the lodge. Tent 9 is off to the left side…basically directly across past the first torch light on the left but in the trees in the background. Dinner was kudu…which was excellent…with some side dishes and a custard thing for dessert with a very nice port to go along with it.

And that ends day 4. As I said…he’ll process the images from the leaf peeping trip next and I’ll do a post (or 2 or 3) on that before getting back to days 5-10 of the Botswana trip.

Interesting things found on the net.

An interesting astronomical fact for ya.

While we all know the universe is composed of galaxies with a lot of free space in between them…occasionally there are sections of it that are basically empty. The best known and among the larges of these is the Boötes void which is located near the constellation Boötes of course. It is about 330 million light years in size and roughly spherical…normal galaxy distribution would have about 2,000 galaxies in it but it has just 60…this is what it looks like when obsessed from earth.

Cyas.