Leo the ballsy Lion.

Because the road from third bridge to Chobe was awfully bad, by reputation, and we had not been granted a booking at the ‘forever fully booked’ campsites on the way, we had no other option but to drive back to Maun and head for Chobe via a longer alternative route.  However! On our way back to Maun, whilst gas bagging in the car, completely blasé towards the wildlife we driving past ‘bla bla bla, there goes some zebra, no its ok we don’t need to stop for them anymore, bla bla oh look another giraffe, bla bla careful of that elephant, Stuart’ we were completely unaware that we might see new animals.  And so what happened? We did see new animals. Lions.

 The 3 of us were enjoying conversations with a new member in the car, Clare, who was riding with us while her husband, Paul, followed a few hours behind, with their broken down rental Discovery being towed back to Maun. Suddenly, someone saw a lion walking down the same track that we were driving. The present conversation was suddenly drowned out by something like this:

 “And so, Clare”, (-lion) what (Lion!) do you d –“LION!!”

LION LION!

What?

LION!

WHERE?

THERE! (pointing by staring two gigantically enlarged eyeballs instead of hands makes spotting the animal tricky for the others on the safari you know, but you can’t help it! You are so frozen by the sight of the animal, that you can’t do anything else except yell ‘THERE!’ with both arms absolutely rigid and useless by your side)

‘WHERRRE?’

‘RIGHT THERE’ (eyeballing, stiff arms still not working) ‘ON THE ROAD!’

‘O SHIT HE’S RIGHT THERE!’ …

‘Wowwwwww.’  (Silence for a few seconds as we watch him strut his stuff down the Moremi catwalk).

‘OMYGOD, holy crap its walking right towards us. Ok, can you please wind up your windows now guys – (me).

He was fantastic, a real lion, right there, walking along the grass not even taking a second look at our foreign animal shaped… vehicle.  I have to tell you, seeing a picture of a lion is pretty impressive, but being able to take a photo of one out the window of your car is something else. Imagine actually being the person who got to take that photo of the lion. That was us!  

      

When ‘babs’ attacked

Bastard baboons. Bloody bugger bugger bastards!           

Another campsite note to remember: When you book a campsite and turn up only to find no one at the reception gate, no one appointing you to a specific site and no one giving you grief for parking in their spot, you should ask yourself this one simple question – “Why?” 

We thought we had found the best spot. Nice big trees surrounding us like a beautiful forest, the ground wasn’t too bad and we had all the space in the world. 

Then, we noticed it stank. Like shit.

 We didn’t ask ourselves “why”.  But we should have.

Once my tent was up, and we had our portable housing arranged accordingly, I sat in my ‘hotel room’ reading (lies, I was watching yet another addictive episode of 24) for only about15 minutes. This pungent smell was creeping into my nostrils more severely than before and I couldn’t handle it much longer.  Finally, I cracked. I headed outside and sniffed around my tent area, then branded our spot ‘The shit pit’.

 At the beginning we just thought the drastic smell was the result of that big pile of elephant waste by that tree over there, and didn’t really take any notice of the almost human-like droppings scattered all around the site.  

We soon found out we were the uninvited guests at the house of one of our long-distant cousins.  AKA, the baboon.

 Our first sighting of a cheeky looking babs scoping out our camp setup (fair enough, I would too and so would you) was amusing. Fiver and I were so impressed with our stealth tactics; hiding up in the roof tent, spying on the fowl little creature whilst cracking up at cunning and witty Facebook status ideas we could submit if we had data roaming. “Fiver is: stalking an unsuspecting baboon from the roof tent, Jack Bauer understudy here I come”.

“Merryl is: in the roof tent, rocks and sticks at the ready for any overconfident baboons.”

 

Things escalated rather quickly from there.

Dinner time was nearing, we were getting organisied for another great camp feast. I had a pile of heavy sticks and rocks within my reach, just in case, but had no idea we would need them so desperately. At first, two little ‘babs’ came at our site from different directions, so we threw some ammo at them, only to threaten them and keep them at bay. The intimidating stalkers barely flinched! They would follow the poorly aimed rock , super wide-eyed, then stare at it flat as it landed right in front of them, totally not phased. Then, just to really get on our nerves, they carried on sitting, watching and waiting.  Items have been thrown at these guys before that for sure, they really only moved if they were hit, and for anyone who knows my Waterpolo form, or cricket ball throwing for that matter, would know just how shit my aim is, and would also be able to imagine how rage-face I got at these stubbornly unresponsive baboons.

 Big dog alpha babs suddenly showed up.  Ooooo he was foul.  He freaked me out, the way he sat there and scratched his nose, just like I would scratch my nose. It was one of the hardest thing my brain has had to compute in a long time.  Gasp! He just sighed a long and heavy sigh, just like someone waiting in line at subway…He is NOT human! Shock Horror! He blinked and squinted his eyes at the blinding sun, just like you and I do at the beach…He is NOT human! My word! Now he’s sitting there in the dirt, just like a kid sits on the mat at school; legs stretched out front, back hunched over, fidgety fingers picking at the fraying carpet instead of paying attention – He is NOT human!

 

Then, things got a little outta hand.

I threw a thick stick at alpha-babs (missed of course), but this time it was a little closer than normal. In other words, I pissed him off.  Fiver and I were standing near the back of car when he lurched straight for us.  Worst mistake I ever made: flinching, slash yelping and bolting for safety. Fight or flight syndrome right? Rule number one, in fact, the only rule to remember when experiencing an encounter with a sticky fingered, ill-tempered, adamant baboon – do not show any sign of weakness. 

In other words, do not run, because he’ll run after you.

My cowardly actions showed alpha-babs who the weakest link was of us 3 – me. After that, Five and Stuart were hording him off with whatever weapons they could reach under the circumstances. Five was clutching at a camping chair attempting the ‘shoo’ method . Stuart sourced a glowing branch from the campfire, waving it around all Indiana Jones like.  Five and Stu put up quite the fight, and in the end it was the power of the torch that won us the match. Note to self, baboons do not like 1million candle power torchlight blasted into their retinas.  

What was my contribution to aiding Five and Stuart in the battle, you say? Well, lets just say that even though I may have been the one that started it all, I was forced to take cover in the car just in case alpha-babs came after me.. uh again.

I was in the front seat of the landy, sipping my ‘Savana’ cider anxiously (skulling nervously), watching the saga through the safety of the rearview mirrors.

The next day we met up with some other campers from third bridge during a morning game drive break, and got talking about the baboon issues. The people told Fiver and Stuart how they heard of two courageous people who were forced to fight off aggressive and vicious baboons with a camping chair. Five and Stuart will go down as heroes in Moremi wildlife reserve history… I will be the cub in the car drinking cider.

Here is an image of absolutely nothing to do with the Baboon attack, but is the sunrise of the next day.  This is what people do to blatantly show that they didn't get any footage of the real encounter, and then they put such a caption as this: 

A long awaited sunrise after that fateful night when the three brave campers were attacked by viciously rabid baboons just the previous dusk..

oooo

Moremi and Third bridge encounters.

Moremi Wildlife Reserve.  Very underrated – kicks Etosha’s butt and is only better than Mahangu because it is bigger. We had quite a bumpy drive to Third bridge campsite, the name comes from its location – the 3rd bridge crossing from Maun to Chobe. Well actually, we missed one of the bridge crossings completely because the roads change according to the weather. And, of course because we are talking delta here, these roads flood big time, which means last years tracks4africa road maps on the GPS were obsolete.  What happens is, when one road is completely submerged, a new and improved one slowly evolves around the sunken tracks, from all the detouring vehicles.  It works pretty well, but is a bit of a laugh when you come across a specific road made around a fallen tree - the tracks are so well set, you would think that tree had been there for years, not from some raging Elephant the week before.

We saw hippos (one walked to a waterhole 20 metres away from the car, Stuart got a great photo but walked back to the car pretty fast), a wattled crane, an egret, a family of warthogs (dam you Lion King!), lots of badly disguised giraffes, an elephant with boobs (excuse my immaturity but I bet you havn't seen one!) and more.

Finally, we made it to our site, absolutely oblivious to what was going to happen that evening – Whenever we retell the story to others, we call it “When ‘babs’ attacked”.

 

Hippo gas relief at night. My lovely Namibia-Botswana lullaby

For our last two days, we stayed at another awesome camp site (on par with Naukluft and Abiqua).  Mahangu/o camp was just outside the Namibia-Botswana border.  This border required you to venture through a small game drive in order to get there, how awesome is that? ‘What are you doing today?’ ‘Oh you know, just going to do the Mahango game drive on our way through to Botswana, might see an elephant croc or hippo. No biggy. What are you doing?’

 Mahangu/o camp was beautiful, right on the river, not facing Angola though, this time we had the privilege of seeing part of the Okavango and it’s inhabitants.  During our stay there we also saw the birth of the Merryl Peddie Hilton.  I have to say, as much as I was loving my sweet little pup tent from Fiver’s brother, Mark, the hobbit sized door had had it in for me since day one; I had experienced my fair share of temper tantrums whilst struggling to crawl out of it every single morning that it was time to change.  In order to get out of the tent required an enormous amount of skill you see.  I had to find the motivation every day to shimmy through the minute doorway and developed a technique for the days when I just couldn’t face it with strength. 

It was something like a hovering squat-walk.   Slash tripping over some string and tumbling out on top of my once clean but now dirty, dusted or damp pillow, sleeping bag and mattress.  Yeah yeah, I know- I could have just made 3 separate trips, taking each item out one at a time, but that would have been too productive, and I was trying to be efficient!  Anywho, this did get tiring after nearly 4weeks, so I have been temporarily  upgraded to what I like to call, the Merryl Peddie Hilton.  Actually, I should probably name it after the tent, ‘Coleman’s Hilton’, imported from NZ.  This was Five and Stuart’s ‘land tent’ for when we park up for a few days and they use instead of the roof tent, but since they like the roof tent so much more, I have been blessed with the big roomy dome – I can stand up in it and everything, what more could you want?

So easy to please… 

 My first night at the camp was a little bit restless.  For one I was far too excited about my fabric walled hotel that I couldn’t nod off as easily, I kept opening my eyes and seeing giant amounts of space around me, then I would smile and then attempt to fall asleep again. This was joined by another factor contributing to my interrupted sleep - the sounds of hippos at night.  Have you heard the noises they make? Good god, its loud!  I cannot type a bunch of random letters together that would even begin to give you an idea of what they sounded like, however it was kind of like (but nowhere near), a bunch of people who had serious flatulence issues, all letting rip at separate but consistent intervals on a megaphone, no wait… a delta sized sound system.  Whether or not that is what the hippos were doing, perhaps they were just cruising round on land making big whoppee cushion noises while they hung out, I’m not sure, but it was a very different noise to cars passing at night or a party going on down the road. 

I couldn’t help but lay there, in the early hours of the morning all wrapped up in my sleeping bag, and laugh.

Etosha salt pan and national wildlife reserve TOP 5, with Merryl Peddie.

My first rather large (absolute understatement) wildlife reserve experience; far too overwhelming, far too many animals and far too many photos, so I have decided to make a top 5.

 

Top animal encounter:

Watching a very brainless vehicle turn its engine off in the middle of the road to watch the ‘cute’ and ‘lovely’ elephants cross it.  The photo says it better than I ever could. O and I can’t wait to see the footage.

Top animal blooper:

Lions and the warthog. Watching two lions chilling out by the waterhole.  A warthog comes sprinting in for some water only thinking ‘one lion, ha, I can handle him, if it means I get a sip of water’.  We know he only saw one because soon enough he slammed on the brakes, skidded a metre or two and just bolted in the opposite direction. If you have seen a warthog run, you would be laughing right now.  Very short stick-like stumps for legs, running along the ground as fast as they can whilst trying to support a large log for a body, and a pathetically thin tail as stiff as 10 pieces of number 8 taped together; so bolt up-right in the air you could hang a surrender flag on it.  No disagreement there.

 

Top animal defence mechanism – denial of the Kudu

While we watched the male lions rule the waterhole with absolute ease and the warthog flocking about like a headless chook, we spotted a Kudu in the trees, which had also just spotted the two lions.  The only thing that gave this animal statue away was the sunlight hitting his horns – he would have been cursing those horns if we were game hunters you know.  While the warthog was creating his own doom, the Kudu was trying his absolute hardest to do the opposite – he just stood there, so dead still it was incredible.  All I could picture was this Kudu, talking between his teeth managing no lip movement what-so-ever telling himself, and us “you can’t see me. I swear, I am invisible….I am NOT here”.  It was like you had just been spotted in a game of spotlight and you’re trying to tell your friend ‘don’t you dare give me away you bastard’ without movement of any kind, it was classic.

 

Top animal pun:

Seeing a zebra crossing. The first time we saw one I think I took about a hundred photos. By the end of the day we had seen so many I wouldn’t even bother to reach for my camera. How spoilt.

 

Worst animal camouflage:

Giraffes, without a doubt hands down no arguments.  They look like a bloody skyscraper in a grassy 8-hectare paddock.  Or, a teacher standing at the side in a primary school class photo the equivalent height to three rows of staggered primary students. 

 

Hakuna Matata in my head for 1month straight now. I swear to god every time I see a warthog I want to short-circuit my brain