Botswana - Gomoti Camp - Deborah Dishes

Our next camp in Botswana was a tad drier, and our safari vehicle was waiting for us by the airstrip. We met our driver/guide On, and he and Steve Lake grabbed our luggage and piled us in. Literally. Tall running boards, Steve’s bad knees and Jan’s short legs made for high comedy. Thankfully there was a step at the camp that we were able to use for all our entries and exits into and out of the vehicle.

This camp again welcomed us with song!

As usual we were right in time for lunch. All the camps had delicious, plentiful food. Pastry and coffee, tea, or cappuccino in the morning before game drives, brunch or lunch when we returned, tea at 3:30 and dinner at 7. Open bar all day. Nobody went hungry.

I excused myself to use the restroom and a family of warthogs were rooting around in the grass, completely unbothered by me. The rest rooms were tents with an “occupied” sign on a rope to be strung across the opening. But seriously nice on the inside!

After lunch we were shown to our rooms, ours next to Mark and Jan’s and we all realized at the same time there was an elephant just outside. Once again, we’d need to be accompanied by a staffer after dark. They did have walkie talkies in the room, but in case of a medical emergency they gave us an air horn to use. More on that later.

We now had a safari truck to go on game drives! We were on solid ground, albeit with a bumpier ride than a boat. That Kalahari sand makes for interesting driving, and these Toyota vehicles are made to go through deep water. More on THAT later. Impala, lechwe, hippos, zebra, baboons, cape buffalo, wildebeest, warthogs, and lots and lots of elephants. And the dangerous stuff was always on Jan’s side of the truck. At one point the matriarch of a memory (herd) of elephants nearby with a baby and youngsters around did a false charge, ear flapping and trumpeting, and we’re all clicking away on our cameras. I heard Jan say through clenched teeth, “STOP TAKING PICTURES!”. I saw Steve Lake’s camera with a HUGE lens paused momentarily and then he went right on ignoring her. I stopped taking pictures because I was laughing too hard.

Steve Lake said God had a sense of humor when he created hippos. They get sunburned so they have be submerged in water during the day but they can’t swim. Maybe His sense of humor extended to giraffes, too. Giraffes must spread their legs so their necks can reach water to drink. There is a small bird that picks ticks from giraffes, and we saw one giraffe attempting to drink with a bird in its ear. Distracting, to say the least.

The birds we saw were amazing. Lilac breasted rollers were common but uncommonly beautiful. Yellow billed hornbills, crimson breasted gonolek, francolin, weavers who make interesting nests, blacksmith lapwings, and ostrich to name a few.

After sundowners at the cape buffalo bar (a water hole with a cape buffalo skull) we drove back under the strawberry full moon.

Our Cocktail Bar in the Bush

A spotlight was shined through bush very quickly so as not to disturb a hunt or make it easier for an animal of prey to be spotted. We were looking for nocturnal animals and did spot some jackals, bush babies (the real ones) and genet, a really cool fluffy tailed cat. And that night after dinner we retired to our tents with beds heated by electric blankets.

The next morning after coffee before we were headed to the truck we all did a last-minute rest stop, only to find an elephant in the path. His neighborhood. And when we returned after the drive we realized we’d had a break in! Our tent zippers needed to all be connected by a carabiner clip so the baboons wouldn’t go in and make themselves at home. So instead they just pulled up the Velcro at the corner. They were like rock stars in a hotel room. Tossed our stuff all over the place, took my anti-malaria pills (which was okay – I never saw a mosquito), tipped over the safe, and opened the coffee supplies, took the cream and sugar packets and enjoyed them on the deck. And the air horn? They messed with it and I kept thinking how that could have gone really badly. Thankfully they were gone when we got there! The warthog in front of the tent claims he didn’t see a thing.

The warthog in front of the tent claims he didn’t see a thing.

An interesting thing we saw on one of the game drives was a termite mound that had been abandoned and taken over by a mob of mongooses. I looked it up, it’s not mongeese, though that would seem fitting. I loved seeing how interested in us they seemed. There were many around the camp and they drove the squirrels crazy. More on SQUIRRELS later.

The next day our game drive was on the way to the airstrip. Steve and On were hell bent on finding us some lions, and they did. A couple of bachelors lounging by the water. After we’d spent some time with them we headed right, and toward the air strip, coming across a large group of zebras, cape buffalo and wildebeest. Steve Lake’s parting words to them? Don’t go left!