Richard, Janet's brother, and his wife, Brenda, came to visit us for ten days starting 7 August. We picked them up at the Gaborone Airport, dropped off their baggage, and immediately took them to the Mosetlha Bush Camp in South Africa about an hour and half away from our house for a two-day safari experience.
The bush camp gave us a real feel of being out in the bush which we just loved while still having many comforts. It had accommodations for up to twenty people, but the most that were there while we were there was ten. We slept in open-air cabins. There was a dining room, game room, toilets, and showers.
To take a shower you pour a bucket of cold water into the "donkey" which would force hot water out the other side into another bucket. You mix the amount of hot and cold water to get the temperature of the shower you want. At the shower you use a rope and pulley to lower another bucket with a shower head and valve. You fill this bucket with your water and take a nice warm shower using about two and half gallons of water. The afternoon of the second day we were in camp we all took showers to make sure we had the complete experience.
The day we arrived it was unusually cold and windy, the coldest that the camp owner could remember in seventeen years. As soon as we were settled we went on our first game drive that afternoon. We wore our coats, hats, and gloves and wrapped up in a wind resistant blanket provided by the camp. It was still cold but worth it. Each night the staff placed hot water bottles in our beds for warmth which made them very comfy.
Each morning and afternoon we were there we went on game drives. We saw lots of animals and were amazed at how close we got to them. We would leave in the morning at sunrise and come back to camp three hours later when we would eat brunch. We would have afternoon tea. We would leave for the evening game drive at 3:30 pm and get back to camp about seven o'clock and have supper. On they way back to camp the guide always used a spotlight to search for animals and we saw many after dark.
We saw many different kinds of animals and birds. It was fun to have Richard with us because he is really interested in birds and there are lots of interesting and different birds to see. One of the most colorful birds we saw was the lilac breasted roller.
We saw hundreds of impala. They were described by our guide, Komotso, as the McDonald's of Southern Africa because they have an M on their rump, they are everywhere, and they are the fast food for all the predators.
We were lucky to see wild dogs which are endangered worldwide. Just after we saw them, three dogs killed and devoured an impala in six minutes.
We saw both spotted and brown hyenas. We saw a brown hyena carrying a bone from a kill that was as long the hyena was. Brown hyenas are threatened. We saw a solitary spotted hyena that was very pregnant. At one spot the hyenas had killed a full-size male kudu and were eating it when we drove up and scared them away. When we went back the next day the carcass was gone. We were lucky someone in our group saw a lion nearby. When we got close we saw that it was eating the kudu carcass we had seen the day before. We were so close we could hear the lion crunching the kudu bones. When it had fed enough, it moved the carcass to the shade of a bush to keep it out of the sun and took a nap nearby.
Once we came around a huge bush to find an elephant right next to the truck. It flared its ears and the driver immediately accelerated. Ten feet from a startled elephant is a little too close!
A fire started outside the park the day before we arrived. The staff set backfires around the camp to save it. About half of the reserve burned which made it easier to see game. We would watch the fire both day and night while we were on drives. We were able to see klipspringers, a very small antelope, because of the fire. Our guide told us they were wary and rarely seen.
During each game drive we took a break for a snack. For one snack we stopped by a group of blue wildebeests and ate our snack while they looked at us and we looked at them. The snack consisted of hot chocolate, rusks, peanuts, carrot sticks, crackers, and a dip made of cottage cheese and sweet chili sauce. We were always grateful for the hot chocolate.
Madikwe only allows limited access which meant we saw few other game drive trucks and the "almost-camping feeling" of the bush camp made for a real wilderness experience. The whole bush camp and game drive adventure was wonderful.
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