Safari

I apologize on the delay of this, but I did not have internet access while on my 3 day safari.  On Friday, we flew up to Maun, Botswana and drove from there to a game reserve in the Okavango Delta.  Before I get into that, a quick update on Thursday's events.

Thursday, we were determined to finish the bike.  Zee, Andrew, Mallory and I took it to the engineering campus where we hoped to make a quick stand.  Zee and Andrew are mechanical engineering majors and are familiar with welding and such, and Mallory is our bike expert.  I was there for moral support I guess. When we spoke with the head of the machine shop, he said he would do the work, but wanted us to give him drawings.  We only had notebook paper with us and had to measure everything.  After trying our best with what we had, the head of the machine shop was still not satisfied, so we returned to main campus and Andrew created the drawing in AutoCad.  Unfortunately, we weren't able to finish it before the weekend.

In the evening, the researchers gave progress report presentations and had some Debonair's pizza.  It was really interesting to see how everyone's projects are going.  After the presentations, some of the researchers and ENGR students went out on the town, which may have been a questionable decision considering we had to be up and out the door by 5:30am the next morning.

Friday, we headed out early for the Gaborone airport and flew to Maun.  The airport and airplane were pretty small so very unlike the majority of the airports in the US, we walked out to our plane with propeller engines.

After arriving in Maun, we hopped onto the African Excursions trucks and headed for the Moremi game reserve.  The first hour or so was on pavement.  And o how I would miss that pavement.  The next hour or so, we were on a dirt road. My truck was the last of the 3 and we had dust flying at us from the 2 others ahead of us.  When we lifted our sunglasses we had lines from the dirt on our face.  We eventually reached the gate which separates domesticated animals from wild animals.  Since we were going into the area, we just drove on in.  On the way out, the procedure was a bit different.  In order to keep bugs from migrating on us or on the trucks, we all had to get out of the truck, walk on some chemicals, and walk across the gate.  The truck was then sprayed down with a chemical.  This keeps the risk of malaria in this area of the country.

So we were still on a dirt road, in the wild animal zone, but hadn't entered the reserve yet.  That was another hour or so away.  (I'm giving rough times because I never actually checked a watch/phone for the time).  Once we arrived at the South Gate entrance, we had to sign in with our passport numbers and then continued driving to our campsite.  About 10 or 20 minutes into the park, we saw some impala (antelope like animals).  Everyone took some pictures, but we would very quickly learn that they are nothing special.  Soon after that we spotted a giraffe, and then another, and then a baby giraffe, and then realized the entire journey of giraffes (around 10 or so) was around us.  They were just off the road (which was now more a of a dirt/sand mix) and we got some great pictures.

We thought we were spoiled by the giraffes on the way in, but as we arrived to our campsite (~2 hours? later) and sat down for lunch, a herd of elephants came to greet us.  Our campsite had no protection from animals and was just a circle of tents, some tables and chairs, and some fire pits.  O let me not for get the tarped off hole in the ground for our toilet.  So the elephants just walked on by our campsite, grabbing branches and leaves nonchalantly as they swayed from side to side.  The baby elephant was adorable, but also still very large.

O before I forget to mention it, Dr. Sankaran, my boss at CWRU, joined the group at the campsite after getting an exciting ride on a 2 seater plane to the game reserve.

After lunch, we hopped back on the trucks and drove out for an afternoon/early evening game drive.  We were out until 6:30pm to avoid driving in the dark, which is not permitted in the park.  We saw some impala (shocking), a few dazzles of zebras, a lot of beautiful birds, and a herd of water buffalo.  The first zebras we saw were pretty far away and we could only see their rear ends.  It was kind of cool to see the scar on the back of one of them which was from surviving a previous attack.  The next dazzle had a young calf, which was running around with all sorts of energy.  When our truck got closer, the baby stopped running to our disappointment, but then it beginning nursing from its mother, which we decided was maybe just as good for pictures.  Interestingly, calves nurse until the mother has another calf.  This happens frequently and females never stop having babies.  When we approached the water buffalo, we saw a few lone ones first and were excited about those, but as we went over a slight incline, we drove into the middle of the herd.  We were surrounded by huge water buffalo with giant horns.  They all stared at us and it was a little intimidating.  Andrew decided it was a good idea to make "moo-ing" noises.

It was dark when we returned to camp, and we had dinner and sat around the camp fire for a while.  The stars were unbelievable.  I've never been able to see so many.  We could even see the Milky Way splashed across the night sky.  It's strange.  I didn't think about the fact that the constellations are different in the southern hemisphere.  The dippers are either hidden or on the horizons.  So there goes 2/3 of the constellations that I know.  I headed for my tent around 9pm or so, and bundled up (not quite enough) for the cold night ahead.

Our wake up call was a scratching on the tent.  It was just the guides messing with us, but it was kind of startling to wake up and think an animal was clawing at your tent.  We woke up at 5am so we could head out at 6am and be the first to follow the tracks the predator cats left the night before.  As we ate breakfast, we had another visitor join us.  One of the guides shined his light at the tents, saying "Look a leopard" and there was a leopard walking in and out of our circle of tents.  I don't think anyone was quick enough to grab a photo.

We started out on our morning game drive, and immediately found a jackal with a kill, but the guides said that the jackal probably just stole it from the leopard.  The guides know so much about all the animals.  There are certain animals that will defend their kills from thieves like hyenas and jackals, while others (leopard, cheetah) will just leave it and find something else.  We then found like footprints and tried to track it.  While in search for the lions, we spotted a lot of other animals.  Zebras, giraffes, wildebeests, impala, hippos, elephants.  We also ran into a Case Alum from the 50s.  Good thing some of us were wearing our school shirts.  We headed back to camp for a brunch before heading on our boat trip.

We were excited about the boat trip because we would also get to take showers in proper showers.  The group when separately (we usually split up the trucks too, I guess I should have mentioned that) and mine was first.  This was a very good decision on our part as we avoided sitting around and waiting for the boat to return from the previous group.  On our way, our guide Andy came to a very sudden stop and sounded kind of scared.  Hearing fear in your guide's voice is not reassuring.  I leaned out the side of the van to see what was in the road and saw a large black mamba slither into the bushes.  Our guide,Andy, made sure to stop before running over it, because black mambas will still attack as they get run over.  Andy had this happen and the snake snapped at him leaving venom as it struck his driver side window.

The boat tour was a lot of fun and relaxing, besides avoiding the grass reed attacks.  The day water lilies were wide open and our land guide (Andy) made us necklaces from the flowers.  Kameron rocked the look.  We were able to see some baby crocodiles and iguanas.  We also found the main animal crossing for this channel of the delta along with the areas where elephants had trudged through.  When we reached a larger portion of the channel, we made a U-turn.  I thought we'd be going out to the main channel, but that would have been another 2.5 hours. The entire boat trip was about an hour and a half, and then we went and enjoyed nice warm showers in the boat house.

Andy then took us on a game drive solely with the purpose of finding lions.  We mainly were looking for the herd of water buffalo because the pride of lions typically follows the herd.  On our drive, we found a large dazzle of zebras, a honey beaver, some elephants and eventually found the herd.  We didn't find the lions, but Maren, Leslie, and I had a great time in the roller coaster row, or the back seat of the Beast.  The bumps in the road are felt with increasing magnitude toward the back of the bus.

After dinner, Brian tried to lead me, Maren, Leslie, and Amber in a Zen exercise.  We wanted to do it under the beautiful night sky, but the noise of the campfire was very inviting.

Sunday, a group of students left at 6:30am for Maun with Dr. Lacks so he could catch his flight back to the US.  The rest of us went for a game drive at 7am as we slowly made our way back to the airport for a 7:30pm flight.  We were determined to find lions and about 5 minutes out, Andrew Sylvester (CWRU) spotted a lioness and her cub in the bushes.  We followed them for a good 20 or so minutes.  We then looked in another area for lions that had been spotted earlier that day.  As we got into are large open grassland, we found a bunch of other safari trucks racing there.  Guess everyone had heard the news.  We all tried to use the signs of the other animals and sounds of the lions to figure out the right direction.  When we saw that a few had gathered, we knew they had found them. Andy raced over, giving the roller coaster row quite a ride.  As we came to a quick stop, we found a male lion strolling along not minding the the 4 or 5 trucks with excited tourists clicking away.  We also saw some wild dogs, which were super cute and have giant ears.  Andy dd some off-roading so we could get better pictures.  Off-roading is not allowed, so we were very thankful he took the risk for us.

It was a very exciting end to a great weekend.

Monday, I spent most of the day trying to cost home solar systems that people can own instead of rent from a company.  I wanted to do laundry from the weekend, but fate was telling me that it wasn't the right day when three times I forgot something that I needed on the way there.  The third time I just gave up and kept working.

After dinner, Zee challenged me to a game of chess.  Skokes (UB) helped me out since I have no idea what sort of strategy to use in the game.  Skokes and I won, but didn't make Zee pay us money from the bet.  I gave them a few Oreos and Reese's peanut butter cups.  They enjoyed them especially since they were straight from the States.  Zee Unami, and I then watched Monsters vs. Aliens.  It was a nice, relaxing night and good start to what will be a very busy week.

There are a ton of pictures and videos that I'm still going through, so I may just have a picture post tomorrow.

Until then,
M.e.