Southern Africa - Day 20

Saturday, 1 February 2020 - Botswana 

I can’t believe Southern Africa is coming to an end soon. All things stress related happens at home, the most pressing right now being finding a job. I am not looking forward to going home because it will be back to reality, and reality really bites 😭.

Today we head to the town of Nata, towards the North of Botswana. We had an option of driving out to the Makgadikgadi Pans in the afternoon. This is a vast salt pan just like the Etosha Pan (but smaller) and the breeding ground for myriads or birds such as the pelicans and flamingoes. But according to Clever it is not the breeding season now so maybe there will not be many birds there and what is left is just the salt pan. With that, none of us opted to go, with the result that we could sleep in and have a rather relaxing day.

We left at about 9 a.m. On the way we stopped to have lunch under a baobab tree. These trees can live up to 3,000 years and become really huge. The one we saw is medium sized. The seeds of the flowers can be eaten. Clever says that if you hug a baobab tree and make a wish it would come true. I did it of course. I’ll take any luck I can get. We’ll see whether it comes true. I did a bushy-bushy again as there were no toilets around. 

Then on to our home for the night, a place called Elephant Sands. It is a place where elephants come to drink water at a waterhole, and there are tents and chalets all around so that sometimes an elephant may walk right past your home to go get a drink. However when we got there, we were informed that since it had been raining the elephants have gone on vacation because now there are other places where they can find water to drink. What a blow! But I was still hopeful.

I sat outside my room with an eagle eye over the waterhole. And then he came! A lone male elephant. Coming to drink at the waterhole, about 20 m away! 😍😍😍 Many pictures and videos. Then I went to the bar area because from there it was even nearer to the elephants. The rest, including Clever, were there so I hung out there the whole afternoon drinking beer and watching the elephants. I saw 3 altogether. There was another guide there, Duncan from South Africa and I introduced myself as Sheila from Namibia and that I was Clever’s assistant and he actually believed me! 😂😂😂 Clever was laughing away.

Then dinner, and more elephants! I saw 4 elephants, all male, together at night and they were doing some kind of elephant dance. One takes 2 steps forward, another takes 2 steps back; then the other 2 do the same, and on and on 😁. It was really quite magical to see. I love elephants.

There are about 70,000 elephants in Botswana. It is now over-populated; thus hunting elephants has been allowed again under strict regulations, as they do cause a lot of damage to farms and plantations. I told Clever maybe instead of hunting, they could export some to Malaysia because back home, elephants are a protected species as their numbers are small and dwindling. If that ever happens, I think in a long, long time, they will evolve to become Asian elephants 😬. How fun to study evolution in action! 

At dinner Clever told me he told Duncan the truth. No wonder he was giving me the evil eye. Anyway I apologised and luckily it was accepted. Duncan says he will be in Johannesburg when I will be there and he offered to take me around for free. I’m not sure about this because nothing really is for free but I am worried about Johannesburg so we’ll see.

Still no sign of the missing sunglasses. I’m on its trail.