Botswana wrap up: Pelo and DumaTau

Sunday, July 28, 10:30

I’ve been bad about journaling. But the experiences have been so much about visual and aural stimuli that it’s so hard to translate them into words.

I’ll write a little about our routine, which is slightly different here at Pelo camp than it was at Qorokwe.

Morning

We wake up early. At Qorokwe, breakfast was at 06:00 and we set out on game drives at 06:30. Here at Pelo it’s a half hour later. And here there are different activities: drives, boat trips, and mokoro, which we haven’t done yet.

This morning we had a boat safari. We got back at around 10:00. The drives at Qorokwe lasted longer, and by the time we got back, it was nearly brunch time. This morning they are serving brunch at 11:00. Yesterday, since we didn’t arrive until later, they had lunch ready for us at 13:00.

This was the table they set up for our lunch after we arrived.

This little egret was out there in the water during our lunch yesterday.

Food

Meals have been excellent. For breakfast there are always cold options (cereal, fruit, muffins, yogurt, cheese) and eggs to order with meat. Lunch at Qorokwe varied. One day it was assemble-your-own-pizza; other days they served combinations of salads.

High tea is served each day at 15:30, just before we head out on our afternoon excursion. There are a few light snacks, both sweet and savory, and hot and cold drinks. At Qorokwe this was also time to select our dinner options: starter, main, and dessert.

Siesta

After lunch and before tea, we have a few hours for siesta. This is also that hottest time of day. (It hasn’t generally been too hot, although it did get into the lower 90s at Qorokwe.) Since morning drives start so early, the nap is much needed, but there’s also time for reading, sorting through photos, and journaling. (Though obviously the journaling part hasn’t been a high priority.)

Excursions

Whenever we depart on an excursion, members of the camp staff wave good-bye, and they are there to greet us on our return with damp towels to wipe our faces (hot or cool depending on time of day).

We normally take a break in the middle of each excursion to get out of the vehicle and stretch our legs. Our guide (Brave at Qorokwe, Chaps here at Pelo) serves a beverage and snack. Brave always timed our afternoon break right around sunset at a spot where the setting sun created a magnificent effect.

Did I mention the hot water bottles warming our seats and our blankets in the morning? Also in our beds at night.

Evening

When we return from our afternoon game drives, it’s just about dinnertime. At Qorokwe we ate at separate tables, so there was not so much interaction with other guests. Here at Pelo, we have communal dining, and I’m enjoying having wide-ranging conversations with the other guests. At Qorokwe there were several large groups and a few couples. (I previously mentioned Ann and Elliott, who we shared a couple of meals with.) Here there was a couple from California who departed this morning, a younger Chinese fellow traveling solo, and a family (husband, wife, and college-age son) from Switzerland.

Meals here are served buffet style. At Qorokwe, servers brought us our food.

It’s just about time for brunch. More later!

But first, here’s a video tour of Pelo Camp.

Wednesday, July 31, 14:20

Somehow journaling seems to be my lowest priority. Organizing photos, doing the Wordle and Spelling Bee, posting to Facebook, and sleeping or napping or just resting have all become more important. I can’t even remember where I left off.

Oh yeah, I was describing the routine. That was Sunday morning.

Sick

Monday was a bad day for me. I think I had too much to eat and drink on Sunday night. Or ate something bad. Or just caught a bug.

I woke up at 02:00 feeling sick to my stomach. I managed to sleep a little more, but finally woke up and puked. Thinking a cup of tea would help, I went to breakfast, but I couldn’t even get that down. I went back to our tent, skipped the morning game drive, and slept some more.

Then came the diarrhea.

I ate some crackers for lunch and felt good enough to go out on the afternoon boat ride. But I still had some diarrhea, plus I developed a cough (I think from the stomach acid burning my throat when I puked).

I slept with a towel stuffed into my shorts to avoid soiling my last clean pair of underwear…

Tuesday I woke up feeling much better.

Game drives

Going out for two game drives or water activities every day seems like it could get tedious or repetitive or ho-hum. But this is our eighth day, and I still look forward to each outing. Yes, we often see a lot of the same animals we’ve already seen, but there’s always something new, whether it’s an animal we see for the first time or a familiar animal exhibiting behaviors we haven’t observed before.

This morning, for instance, in addition to three or four first-time bird species, we saw hippos out of the water for the first time.

I was glad I was feeling well enough to go out on the boat ride Monday afternoon. We got to see two bull elephants playing a game of one-upmanship, bullying each other for dominance. And we saw one of the prettiest birds of the trip, a white-fronted bee-eater.

I didn’t get a lot of video footage, but here are the two bull elephants

Then on Monday night we had dinner around a firepit and got a pre-dinner show from the staff.

Here is the staff of Pelo Camp singing “Dumela” (which means “Hello”).

More singing and dancing. Our guide, Chaps, is the dancer out front. Sorry it’s hard to see in the dim light.

Duma Tau

We’re now at our third camp, DumaTau. This is a top-end camp, like Qorokwe. We originally booked into three more basic camps, but we got upgraded on two of them because the original camps were closing for maintenance during our visit. Was this every a stroke of good fortune! Our room at DumaTau is huge and beautifully appointed, with all the amenities you’d expect at a 5‑star hotel. The food is excellent, and everything is included.

Part One of my tour of DumaTau camp

And Part Two

Even at Pelo, the one camp where we didn’t get upgraded, the service was great, and there was a never-ending supply of food and drink.

Of course, maybe that was a contributing factor to my illness.

About this post

I didn’t blog during this trip, but I kept a journal. All my posts consist of journal entries I wrote during the trip and transcribed into this blog after I got home, with some editing and embellishing.

I got behind in my journaling at Pelo and DumaTau. What you see above is all I wrote while I was there. Not very much.

Below are more photos from my time at these two camps with some additional narrative to fill in the gaps.

Photos

Saturday, July 27

The half-hour flight from Qorokwe airstrip to Jao airstrip (Jao is the name of the concession that includes Pelo Camp and a few others in the vicinity) provided a revealing picture of the different water level as we headed farther north into the Okavango Delta.

I took this photo shortly after taking off from Qorokwe airstrip.

And this photo is from right before we landed at Jao airstrip.

On the way from the airstrip to camp, there was a lot to see.

Malachite kingfisher, one of my favorites!

Pelo Camp is on an island. This is the only way to get there.

Our tent at Pelo was by far the smallest of the three where we stayed in Botswana. And the bathroom is just beyond the bed, behind that gap in the bamboo curtain. Privacy was a bit tricky, as there was no door on the shower. But we managed. And you have to love the towel sculpture.

Sunday, July 28

This morning we went out on a boat safari.

I know I took a lot of elephant photos, but this is one of my favorites.

Nesting area with cormorants and spoonbills

African spoonbill, another of my favorite pics

Back at camp after our boat safari, one of the staff members is setting up our brunch buffet.

A pied kingfisher was also looking for his brunch.

This afternoon we went on mokoro outing. Here’s Chaps (our guide) getting everything ready.

From this angle the elephants look even bigger!

Mary Ann took this great photo of Chaps taking a break from poling the mokoro.

Monday, July 29

This was my sick day, so no photos from the morning. We did a boat safari in the afternoon.

Tuesday, July 30, morning

This was our sixth day in Botswana. We spent three days at Qorokwe looking for leopards, and three days at Pelo, and finally, on the way to the airstrip for our flight to DumaTau, we found one.

Then we flew about a half hour to Linyanti airstrip, where DumaTau Camp is located.

After we arrived at camp, we had lunch and met some of the local residents.

A caravan of elephants crossing the Linyanti River right behind our camp

Geography Lesson

DumaTau camp sits on the south bank of the Linyanti River, which is part of an extensive system of rivers and swamps. It starts in Angola as the Kwando River, which in rainy season is more like a swampy marsh and in dry season can disappear. The Kwando become the Linyanti, which becomes the Chobe, which either dissipates into the desert or flows into the Zambezi, depending on how much rain there is.

It’s easiest to describe this with a satellite photo from Wikipedia (Rexparry_sydney, CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons):

1 The Cuando (or Kwando) River; 2 Caprivi Strip (a narrow strip of land belonging to Namibia that gives the country access to the Zambezi River; 3 Mudumu National Park and Lianshulu Lodge, the end of the Linyanti Swamp; 4 Linyanti Swamp and Mamli National Park, where a ridge of Kalahari sand blocks flow to the south-east; 5 Okavango River and delta which sinks into the Kalahari sands; 6 Linyanti River; 7 Lake Liambezi (dry when photo was taken); 8 Chobe River; 9 Confluence of Chobe and Zambezi at Kazungula; 10 Zambezi and Caprivi Swamps were experiencing an extreme flood at the time of the photo.

DumaTau Camp sits roughly where the #4 is located on the map. Our previous camps (Pelo and Qorokwe) were in the Okavango Delta. Pelo was in the midst of the dark green area; Qorokwe was probably at or just below the bottom of the photo.

Here’s a clipping from Google Maps. The blue line I drew shows the approximate course of the Kwando/Linyanti/Chobe, starting in central Angola. The roughly triangular area I outlined in yellow is the Okavango Delta. Qorokwe is close to Maun, near the bottom of the Delta; Pelo is pretty much right smack in the middle.

In any case, while the land to the south of DumaTau Camp is dry, we were right on the edge of the river, so we could look out at scenes like the elephants above right from our cabin.

Tuesday, July 30, afternoon

We set out on our first Duma Tau game drive at 16:00. But first was high tea.

I was still recovering from being sick, so I couldn’t eat a bite.

Our first encounters were with birds.

Green-backed heron. Looks like he’s on a very important mission.

And before long, we came across this fellow.

Our second leopard of the day! This guy was sitting not far from the carcass of a red lechwe he had killed recently and was guarding for future meals.

I love the way this hippo reflects in the water.

Wednesday, July 31, morning

The leopard was still there this morning, still guarding his kill.

Here are the remains of the red lechwe the leopard was guarding.

Red-crested korhaan (female; only the males have a red crest)

Grey go-away bird. I wish I had video so you could hear its song. It is highly reminiscent of the whine of a sick or annoyed person who just wants to be left alone.

Egyptian geese. They mate for life and are almost always found in pairs.

Wednesday, July 31, afternoon

High tea. I still didn’t have enough appetite to eat anything.

This afternoon we went on a boat ride on the river.

Elephants crossing the Linyanti. You can see our camp on the far shore. And notice the baby almost completely submerged.

Goliath heron, the world’s largest heron

More wattled cranes. I know I already posted pics of these birds, but I love this photo of them running away. Like Egyptian geese, these birds mate for life and are always found together.

African fish eagle. I felt lucky to get this shot; I just wish I’d caught it completely in frame.

Wednesday, July 31, nighttime

First, dinner.

A curry dish with couscous. My appetite was returning.

And then a night drive. Again, it’s hard to get good photos at night.

Our same leopard is still guarding his kill.

On this drive we saw a lot of springhares (aka African kangaroos).

Thursday, August 1, morning

This morning’s game drive was interesting. The first two hours were kind of annoying, to be honest, but also impressive. And then I enjoyed one of the highlights of the entire safari experience.

Mary Ann was having some “digestive upset,” so I went alone with our guide, Tom. We started off heading away from the river after all our previous excursions at DumaTau were in or along the river. Soon we spotted this bird, one I hadn’t seen before:

Then Tom stopped the vehicle and pointed out a pair of lion tracks. And he suggested we follow them.

Lion hunt

Little did I know it would take nearly two hours. They took as back toward the river. We passed a dead hippo lying upside-down with its feet sticking up out of the water. And we passed the site of the red lechwe carcass, which was now gone, as was the leopard. Tom said most likely the lions chased away the leopard and finished off the meal.

And we passed this nice scene of hippos and impalas grazing on the riverbank.

Finally we found the lions, quite a ways downriver.

It was the same two lion brothers we’d seen yesterday, about 5 km away from their previous location.

I admit I was very impressed by Tom’s tracking skills. I thought for sure he’d lost the trail several times, but he kept picking it up again and it led right to them. But it was a long and mostly dull drive.

African wild dogs

However, it led to something very cool. Because not far away Tom caught sight of some vultures circling.

We headed in their direction and found them (along with a marabou stork) waiting in a tree.

They were waiting alongside a den of African wild dogs. Only the puppies were in the den along with one watchdog (Tom referred to him as the “babysitter.”)

Soon the pack returned from the hunt to the squealing of the puppies waiting to be fed. They also disgorge some meat for the “babysitter.” And this is what the lurking vultures are hoping to get a taste of.

The alpha female nurses the puppies. Tom explained that she and the alpha male are the only members of the pack to bear young.

Mother is done feeding the pups and walks away to lie down for a nap with the alpha male. The rest of the adult dogs take positions around the circumference of the den to keep the pups safe.

Watching this all unfold was one of the most interesting things I saw during the entire time in Botswana. So I forgave Tom for his relentless lion hunt.

On the way back to camp, we passed this unusual sight: hippos and crocodiles hanging out together on the riverbank.

Thursday, August 1, afternoon

This afternoon’s “drive” was a barge excursion on the river. And by “barge,” think more Cleopatra than cargo.

The goal wasn’t to see lots of wildlife, though I did capture first-time photos of some bird species.

Wire-tailed swallow. Several of these were hitching rides on our pontoons.

On our way back to camp after the cruise, our parking space had been taken:

He moved eventually, and I posed with Tom for a photo. Mary Ann took this and had a hard time getting us all in frame, which accounts for my slouching.

Friday, August 2, morning

Time to move on. But on our way back to the airstrip, we still had opportunities to see birds and animals we hadn’t seen before.

Sable antelopes. I couldn’t get a good focus because of all the brush.

Soon we were at the airstrip, and then on our way to Kasane International Airport, in the northeastern corner of Botswana.