The Bush House in Madikwe game reserve. It's just over the border in South Africa. Would have taken us 45 minutes to get there if we didn't have to stop at the border (took about 20min to get passport stamped to leave Botswana, then about the same to get stamped into SA). The park was created in 1987 and many of the animals that were moved there at that time are doing quite well. In fact, the elephant population, as in many parks, is almost too high for the environment to sustain.
On our evening game drive we saw a couple elephants, a giraffe, many birds (and the guide was a bird lover, so he knew soooo many species - that was a treat for us!), zebras, impala, wildebeest, klipspringer and even a couple ostriches greeted us at our 'sundowner' site - the location where we got out of the landrover for a drink and a snack right at sundown. It was pretty quiet as we drove back in the dark. The guide shone his spotlight in the trees and brush but nothing. Then a genet sprinted across the road in front of us, but unfortunately only the driver saw him. Awhile later we saw 2 eyes shining back at us up the road. As we approached we realized it was a brown hyena (quite a rare sight to see), and then we realized why he wasn't running away. He was looking at a leopard on the other side of the road right next to us! I saw the back 1/4 of him (some saw more, others saw less) as he dashed into the brush. We tried to spot him again but he melted into the night, avoiding the spotlight. But wow!!! Some people live in this part of the world for years and never see one!! We were so excited. In fact, I was so excited when I saw him that I exclaimed "yes!!" to which the guide immediately responded "please keep your voices down" (oops).
Back at The Bush House we cleaned up and had dinner by a bonfire, overlooking their lighted watering hole (there's a webcam on their watering hole, check it out on their website). As we were finishing up our delicious butternut squash soup, one of the staff pointed us to the watering hole. Three female lions were approaching with their cubs - a total of 8 cubs came spilling out of the darkness! Within minutes of this, 3 white rhino showed up from the other side of the watering hole! One of the rhinos and one of the lions had a bit of a standoff, and the lion decided to defer. So they shrank back in the brush while the rhinos drank. Within minutes of the rhinos leaving, the lions showed up again. The cubs were sooooo cute! Our hosts, Sue and Gordon, informed us that this was a pretty rare sight. Needless to say we ran to get our binoculars and cameras, but none of the pix turned out very well. How blessed were we to see 4 of the Big Five (lion, leopard, elephant, rhino, cape buffalo) in one day!
Up at 6am, ready to leave for our next game drive at 6:30, we got another treat at the watering hole as the sun began to rise. The lions were back. The camera still didn't do very well, but here's one of the better pix. The watering hole is about 100 yards from the Bush House lodge, but it is separated by a deep pit and an electric fence (which goes around their whole property so we don't have to worry about anything but snakes when we're on their grounds).
The highlights of the morning drive were a black backed jackal and sitting in the middle of about 20 elephants as they munched their breakfast on both sides of the road. One got a little testy (see pix below), but everything was fine after the driver backed up a bit. (Sharon, I'm happy to report that it didn't elevate to the situation you had in the Kalahari, but I was certainly thinking about that story!)
Stopped for some hot chocolate, coffee or tea. And we were introduced to adding Amarula to our coffee - yum, yum.
Saturday afternoon entertainment - about 40 elephants at one time at the Bush House watering hole.Saturday evening we enjoyed reminders of home. A shipment from Netgrocer.com just arrived, so we chowed down on the tortilla chips - made tacos, salsa and guacamole to go with them. Sunday morning we joined the Bird Life Botswana group on their monthly birdwalk. Drove about 30min outside of Gabs to a nice watering hole. About 20 people were on this trip (ranges from a handful to 30 we are told), so we had many "birders" help us identify more birds. It was so interesting to find out what had brought them to this part of the world (only 1 on the trip was from Botswana, rest were primarily from UK or US or South Africa).
Sunday afternoon was spent washing clothes and packing for our trip Monday morning - a week in northern Botswana. But that was after Cafe 43 opened its Botswana location! Complete with cheesy garlic grits, well, cheesy garlic pap that is. Pap is pronounced 'pop' and is a staple in this region. It's ground corn, but much finer than grits and usually the consistency of a thick paste. We added lots more water than we would have for grits and it turned out quite well.
One more thing before J&J sign off for about a week - please do submit comments (or feel free to email us at our normal email address). The blog comments don't post immediately because Mrs S 'moderates' them. She gets them via email then posts them and/or sends to our email address. Oh and Lynn and Terry, I have an old email address list in my web email; can you send us an email (to our normal email address) so we have your current email address? Thanks for the updates on our critters - hope Sadie hasn't eaten any of the koi!!
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