RICK BACK IN THE BUSH

Most of my guests at the lodge ask me the same kind of questions: where are you from, are you living here with your family, is your daughter already going to school, will you stay in Zambia for long. Every day, every week, every month. With about 2 to 5 briefings per day I can assure you that you get enough about your own story. Not only my own story, but also my own jokes, my own voice. Fortunately the guests still seem to appreciate it. But if one reaches this point, only one thing remains: to get away from the lodge en to go back to the bush. Anyway, that is the best medicine for me...

So there goes Rick, 6 days without his girls, back into the bush. Botswana is just around the corner so I was looking at 2 days in the Okavango Delta and 4 days in Moremi National Park. For the experienced safaris go-ers this means a great combi. For those of you who don‘t know what I am talking about: shame on you, get a book and read about Africa.

After one hour in the bus I am at the border post of Kazangula. Pure chaos as ever and hordes of Zambians are trying to sell me the one trillion Zimbabwe dollar notes as a souvenir. I pull out my own wallet and take out a bundle of one trillion Zimbabwe dollars. How much you pay for these, I ask the suprised Zambian guy? Ewe, I am Zambian, try the real tourists, I tell him after which he turns to the German girl who came with the same bus. I cross the Zambezi and go to Kasane Airport where I wait for my flight. I fly with Moremi Air, that‘s all I know.

After one hour I see a determined blond young lady coming into the terminal looking for passengers. Ah, that would be the stewardess, I presume. The lady approaches me and asks if I fly with Moremi Air. Yes I do, I reply very enthusiastic. Well, that‘s going to be a pleasant flight! We are with 5 passengers in total and we make our way to our very very small airplane. The other passengers have to go to Maun, I will be dropped on the way in no-mans land called Kwara. One hour flight, so they tell me. The others have to stay in our little coffin for about 2 hours. But then our stewardess is told that another plane is about to leave for Maun without a stop-over. The other passengers like that very much. Which means it will be just me and the blond stewardess. The story is only getting better...

I can take any seat I want (there are only 5 seats) and I ask myself where the pilot is. The blonde takes a seat in the front. Strange seat for a stewardess, I think. But after the blonde starts the engine of the coffin I realise she is going to be my private pilot. Can it get any better than this? She may be blond but she sure knows how to fly. Which is very fortunate since this little coffin is sensitive to any little bit of wind. For one hour I ask myself if I should start a conversation with the blonde. I am on holiday, right? Down on the ground the landscape changes from dry to wet, from Chobe to Okavango. The Kwara airstrip is a small piece of sand right in the bush. The blonde lands our coffin with deadly precision and a tough 4x4 is already waiting for me. I get out, the blonde hands over my bag and without a word she takes off again. Quite disillusioned I get into the car.

Kwara Camp is right in the middle of the Okavango Delta, one of the most unique wetlands in the world. It is also located in one of the most stable and economically strong countries of southern Africa, being Botswana. Which is very fortunate, because the Okavango is quite fragile. The Delta is actually formed by the Okavango river coming from Angola. The river ends here in the Kalahari desert which results in one of the most unique natural reserves in the world. We human beings only know this for some decades, but the animals know this for quite some time. Which is why the area is teeming with wildlife. And that‘s exactly the reason I came here for.

Armed with my cameras, dusted off and fully charged, I went out twice a day on a gamedrive to look for lions, leopards, buffaloes and elephants. The other guests come from the UK, France and Japan. I can only have a decent conversation with the English; the French refuse to speak anything else than french and the Japanese are only able to speak Japanese.

Kwara Camp is owned by Kwando Safaris and they use an unique type of gamedrive vehicle: the Uri. This car comes from South Africa and is actually an army vehicle. Gee, this is like a tank. Unstoppable. It does not have any problem with 1.5m deep water, loose sand in which we sink for a meter or mud in which we sink slowly, the Uri is our hero. Apparently the guides think the same because they go through everything they want. No way they use the established roads, they just make new ones! It is clear that Kwando does not stick much to the unwritten law that you don‘t go off the tracks in the African bush. True, it is a lot of fun to drive the Uri through a 1.5m deep lake and the water flows over the bonnet just in order to find a leopard, but nature is the victim. Flabbergasted I am sitting in the Uri. And we never found the leopard.

But we did find the tracks. We found them that same morning just outside my tent-on-a-platform while I was snorring the night away. It was obvious that the lady leopard came to check the snorring out, probably thinking it was a muscular male leopard husband. But tracks was all we found.

Lions we found. But I am not such a lion-man. Sure, I am spoiled, but then again, lions sleep about 20hrs a day so chances are big one will find them in this state. Lions become interesting when they start to hunt, but they prefer to do that at a time of day that we humans prefer to sleep. Which was exactly the case with the Kwara lions. We always found them sleeping with fat bellies from their nightly dinner.

All in all the wildlife at Kwara was a bit disappointing. The grass was very high after the rains and the water level was still rising so the animals were heading for the dryer areas. And Kwara was not in such an area. Maybe the next camp? That camp has the impossible name Xakanaxa. Fonetically it becomes Kakanaka stressing the 2nd syllable. The transfer from Kwara to Xakanaxa was by boat. On a speedboat we speeded over one of the natural channels of the Okavango towards Moremi National Park.

There was no reception at Xakanaxa. For the simple reason that they did not expect me. If I had a voucher. Sure I had. Oops, we forgot about you. I was glad they still had a tent available but it still needed to be prepared. Could I relax in the lounge for a while? No problem. After one hour however I checked what was going on. Oops, they forgot me again. TIA. This Is Africa...

Xakanaxa is a very nice camp with lots of eye to detail. My compliments. Gamedrives were not in Uri‘s but in oldfanshioned landrovers and nothing wrong with that. My guide was named Metzi. And my fellow safaris go-ers were from Australia, USA en Spain. And it was such a nice group.

Our time at Xakanaxa was not defined by wildlife but by Barcelona. On the 27th of May the finals of the Champions League between Manchester United and Barcelona took place. Our Spanish friends were hardcore Barca fans and only because this was their honeymoon they weren‘t in Rome to attend the game. Juan is a walking encyclopedia and knows everything about Barca. I enjoy good football as well so I did not mind. The Australians did not know too much about football but played along enthusiastically. And also the Americans had fun, probably because they were based in Sudan so everything must be better than their home base.

Guide Metzi was our hero. Not so much because he is such a good guide but because his name resembles very much that of Lionel Messi, best player in the world and playing for Barcelona. While we were on a gamedrive and enjoyed Tsessebes and African Wild Dogs we discussed the game. It may sound ridiculous but it was really funny.

Just like Lionel Messi did Metzi have a good acceleration. What a football means for Messi means the sighting of a cat for Metzi. He says "hold on" and there he goes. I have seen and experienced quite a lot in the bush but this is something else. At the back of the car we are bouncing all directions. At about 80km an hour Metzi races through the bush in order to get to the leopard. Max the Australian nearly bounces off the car. And when Metzi hits a tree trunk I get catapulted into the roof of the car and smash my head against a metal bar. Stars all over and when we finally get to the leopard I seem to see three instead of one. Metzi my boy, I will remember this for a long time. I was lucky not to have a more serious injury, because it might have been just like that.

Moremi has become a bit busier after I was there last. The leopard Metzi found after his formula 1 drive we enjoyed in the company of another 11 (!!!) cars. It did take away the charme of it all. Traffic jam in the bush. And also in Moremi the game was a bit scarce. We did see lions, one leopard and once some vague wild dogs running away from us in the bush, but it wasn‘t abundant. Spoiled little boy, you might think. Maybe. But of course I am able to compare a bit by now.

Metzi meant well but for me he lost his credibility already on his first drive. He managed to tell us that hippos usually stay under water for 5 minutes (which is just about right) but that if they really wanted they could stay under for at least 1.5 hour! Metzi, what a rubbish! I told him when he dropped me off at the Xakanaxa airstrip. No no, it was really true, he hunted hippos when it was still allowed and they would go under water and not pop up for at least 1.5hr. I gave up. And I stepped into my second coffin for the week for the flight back home. And the pilot was not a blonde but a short Swede gentleman...