At the predator/livestock workshop I attended a few days ago, I met a 25 yr old Swiss guy named Gabriel who lives in Botswana and is researching leopards for his Masters degree project. We got to talking at the workshop and within just a couple days, decided to make a journey together up to the Okavango Delta. We got on well, had similar interests, and I just felt a good vibe from this cat. So we planned a trip for a week and made some campsite reservations in both Moremi Game Reserve and Chobe Nat’l Park. Four days before the trip, his back wheel fell off entirely. This event coincided with his only actual leopard sighting of his 4 month project and rather than track his study species, he sat there helpless on his tripod of a truck while the cat pounced into the bush. Two days later, he fixed it with a new wheel bearing. In hindsight, this was the ominous automotive sign we should have heeded more closely.
He owns a 4x4 pickup truck that we loaded down with gear: 30 gallons of drinking water, 20 gallons of washing water, 25 gallons of spare fuel, a tent, food supplies, propane stove, maps, binoculars, cameras, chocolate, a field guide book on mammal & bird species identification and a bottle of whiskey. It’s an open bed truck so we covered it with a tarp and hoped for the best. Afterall, we were heading into the delta, a maize of rutted dirt roads, deep sand tracks, floodplains, and thick mud, in the wet season. We knew it would be tough going with the rains and the roads but we’d have the wildlife to ourselves. The parks are much greener during the wet and thankfully empty of tourists during the low season.
We were actually packed and the truck was loaded last night so we could get an early start to the 10 hour drive to Maun, in northern Botswana. But while we were driving in the reserve at Mokolodi yesterday evening, the car lost power and died. Not a good way to start the trip. Thabo with his trusty Mustard Beast came to tow us back home. This morning, the mechanic here at Mokolodi, looked under the hood and discovered the alternator was not delivering current back to the battery so the battery could not keep the motor going. The car could only run on battery juice, which is good for about 3 hours. In addition, the universal joint on the rear axle was shot and so the entire drive shaft needed to be taken off. While Gabriel was calling around shops looking for an alternator and a UJ, I was calling the Dept of Nat’l Parks to delay our campsite reservations. We spent all day looking for the alternator and couldn’t find one. Our only option was to wait a week for it to be shipped from South Africa. So we hired an electrician to come and jerry rig our existing alternator. He sautered a few wires and jimmy jacked this thing and somehow got it running. The rear axle was fixed overnight and we were finally able to hit the road at 1pm the following day (March 16th).
The first 3 hours of the drive was boring, a flat featureless landscape. It got interesting once we got off the main highway and onto the small backwoods road through endless villages. It became a road rally obstacle course of maneuvering around donkeys, goats, sheep, & cattle. Shepherds with their barefoot children in tow waved at us while herding their livestock. The pavement deteriorated in to a badly pocked warzone of potholes. Eventually, it gave way to hardpacked dirt. The signage progressed from horrible to non-existent. We were fairly sure we were lost when we ended up in a diamond mine with soldiers wielding AK-47’s asking us for our entry permits. Eventually, we picked up our track again and were headed in the right direction but not after sitting by the side of the road waiting for our GPS unit to download a satellite reading. Night had fallen and the drive was becoming a video game gauntlet. We were slamming the brakes and narrowly missing animals crossing the road (or just lying on the road) every 15 minutes. It was a matter of when, not if, we were going to collide with some farmers’ pride & joy. We pulled off the road at 10pm and pitched our tent in the pitch black. We were only 90 minutes from Maun, the gateway to the delta, but we figured we could make up the lost time at first light. We went to bed hoping we didn’t setup camp in the middle of a buffalo breeding ground.
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