Safari trip report (part 1)

After Johannesburg, I went on safari. When I first talked about going on holiday in South Africa, people recommended me to go to the Kruger National Park, but I didn't want to go to a malarial area. True, one can take prophylactic tablets, but that would interfere with my ability to give blood thereafter for a period, and in any case the advice to keep indoors at dawn and dusk, and sleep under mosquito netting, freaked me out. So, instead, I went to a game reserve called Madikwe on the Botswanan border.

(Indeed, it's only about twenty miles from the Botswanan capital, Gaborone, and at one point on safari, my mobile 'phone actually thought I was in Botswana, and sent me a text saying "You have travelled to a country where you will not be able to make calls from your mobile. You will still be able to receive calls (149ppm) and send texts (40p)"―which made even the roaming charges in South Africa seem reasonable.)

Lying alongside the border, Madikwe suffers the same problem as the Kruger, which is of people trying to infiltrate the border―South Africa, as the richest country in the region, is very attractive to refugees―and, after cutting through two chain-link fences (one of which was the reserve boundary) thinking they'd made it, and ploughing onwards, only to realise a mile or two later that they're inside a game reserve and surrounded by wild lions.

I can thoroughly recommend Madikwe to anyone who's contemplating going on safari in South Africa. All of the big five game animals are represented there. (They're called the big five not because they're the most impressive, but because they were the hardest to shoot, back in the day... which "day", to my astonishment, was still going on twenty years ago. But they didn't entirely coincide with the animals I was most interested in seeing, so I'll not bother listing them here.) The big difference from the Kruger National Park, however, is that in Madikwe they take measures to keep the animals from being overwhelmed by the tourists. In the Kruger, apparently, it's not unusual to see a lion being surrounded by ten jeeps. In Madikwe the cars radio between each other, and keep the number of jeeps down to just three at any time, or even just two for the more shy animals such as leopard.

I will also make a strong recommendation for the park ranger I had there, Jacques Neizel, who worked at Madikwe Safari Lodge (one of several different lodges in the reserve). An ex-army man, he is passionate about wildlife and how best to engage with it, not to mention capable of reversing at speed down a twisty unpaved path whilst being charged by an angry elephant (I'll come to that later).

snjstar's parents recommended me a different lodge in the park, where, they said, you could get the genuine bush experience: There is no running water, and you have to fetch it each day, and your accommodation is not much better than camping. That was a bit too basic for me, but unfortunately there was nothing in between that and the rather expensive luxurious, particularly if you're staying as a singleton. So, my accommodation cost me an arm and a leg, but I got a little cottage all to myself, including outdoor (as well as indoor) shower and outdoor plunge pool. The meals were similarly luxurious, the other guests all considerably older than me except for one woman who was there with her fifteen-year-older husband, and I felt rather out of my social league.

However, I was not allowed on my own at night: between dusk and dawn, I had to be accompanied between my room and the eating area, presumably because of the danger of snakes or scorpions on the path.

The safari day started with a wake-up call at 5:30am, followed by breakfast at 6. By 6:30 we'd be ready to leave for our first drive of the day, which would return mid-morning, thus avoiding the heat of the day. At 3:30 tea was served, followed by the afternoon safari starting at 4. We'd continue driving outwards until sunset, then return at night, with the ranger illuminating the way with a big lamp and the Milky Way and Large Magellanic Cloud in their glory overhead. (There was no light pollution at all, which was slightly surprising with a city the size of Edinburgh just twenty miles away; but evidently Gaborone is not well lit.)

A couple of hours after departing on the morning safari, and around sunset, our ranger would stop the jeep and serve us drinks, for which he'd get out table and tablecloth, and put out dishes of nibbles to boot. It was then that I was introduced to the pleasure of a shot of Amarula in my coffee. Amarula is a cream liqueur made from the marula fruit. The bottle says, "Africa's majestic elephants walk for miles to feast on the sun-ripened marula fruit which is indigenous to the region's vast subsequatorial plains." However, I can safely state that when I got charged by that elephant, it wasn't because I had a bottle of Amarula in my hand!

(I bought a bottle to come back with me; after I got back home, I was a little disappointed, on trying it out neat (rather than in coffee) to discover it tasted indistinguishable from Bailey's. It does have the advantage, though, of having no whiskey in it therefore being kosher for Pesach. :o))

I've split the post here, as it's a rather long one, and will post the second half tomorrow...