Rhinos and a Tuli Wilderness Adventure

We needed to find the real Botswana before we got bogged down in health issues, Henry issues and the economic woes in the UK affecting our property over there. Life seemed to be closing in on us and I was all too aware that the joy and excitement that our nomadic lives normally provide had somehow been lacking for a few weeks. I didn´t remember the last time I looked up at the huge African night sky and smiled, or did my morning training under a canopy of trees and felt at peace with the world.

We left Gaborone behind us without a backward glance and headed north to the Khama Rhino Sanctuary – a place we had visited in 2018 and celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary. I remembered a quiet reserve in the middle of nowhere but with very few rhinos. We were to find quite a different experience this time round on both counts.

As we entered the Sanctuary and drove to reception it all suddenly looked very familiar – a memory came flooding back of excitedly arriving on the second day of our trip and being confused as to how to check in. This time seemed different, more seasoned travellers possibly, but it didn´t seem quite so remote nor so confusing. In a way it made me sad to think that things like this had become so normal for us now.

With the paperwork done we headed to our pitch. It was large and private but the ablutions block was a long walk away annoying me rather more than James. And I could hear a low rumble of traffic from the main road outside the Park. So that evening the fog still hadn´t lifted from our moods even after burgers on the braai for dinner. And even after we used our new, environmentally friendly fire lighters made from – believe it or not – rhino poo!

James had found them in the supermarket in Gaborone and bought them as they were so appropriate!

But there was plenty of interesting bird life to keep us company

And that evening we made a fire and settled in as the sun set around us

We were driving out of the campsite into the Park before 7:30am the next morning and just as we came to the first bend in the trail I saw the shadow of what I assumed was another vehicle in front of us. But as we rounded the bend we both jumped out of our skins to see it was, in fact, a large Black Rhino standing in the middle of the road! Rhino of any type is a rare sighting in most national parks, a Black Rhino is the rarest. He eyed us for a split second then ambled away into the bush.

With such a great start to our day we had high hopes and they were not disappointed. Over the course of the next few hours we saw giraffe, waterbuck, wildebeest, impala, kudu and wart hog.

As well as an astonishing number of birds flocking on the meadows

And Egyptian Geese wading in the waterholes

We also came across more Dung Beetles than I have ever seen and when you see them up close in such numbers there is something rather unsettling about them

They were working very hard – cutting the dung into balls bigger than themselves and rolling them away with their back legs.

We headed back to our campsite for late morning and spent the hottest part of the day relaxing – as always, I was doing the blog and James was looking after Henry.

Our afternoon game drive was a full-on rhino fest! The first curious thing we saw was a rhino lying on the ground a little way from us with a guide vehicle full of tourists next to it.

We couldn´t work out what was going on from where we were so, despite the waterhole being full of the elusive and huge Eland, after a few quick snaps to prove we´d seen them we decided to circle round and try to find a road that would take us closer to the rhino action.

An hour or more and many decreasing circles later we concluded that there was no road anywhere near the strangely horizontal rhino, the official guide vehicles are probably able to go places where self-drive tourists cannot. So we gave up our search and headed into the rest of the park never knowing what the story had been.

The park was, as everything here at the moment, green and lush

With a familiar English country meadow look about it

There was no shortage of animals to see

And we saw so many rhino everywhere we looked…

It started to become a case of ´oh look, another Rhino´…´hmmm….´!

It couldn´t have been any more different from the last time we were here – I reckon they might have been making babies over the last 8 years!

When we returned to our camp we were joined by a beautiful bird perched on our braai. If anyone knows what he was we´d love to hear. James took these photos

And by the time I´d grabbed my camera he had flown into the trees

We were starting to settle into Botswana a little better now and our next destination promised even greater things. We were heading east to the Tuli Wilderness area. Whilst the Rhino Sanctuary had been at the beginning of our 2018 trip, Tuli was right at the very end and had been a fabulous finale. Wild, remote, packed full of animals that didn´t know what vehicles were and so charged them quite frequently! Back then we had been charged by a grumpy lion and two or three elephants within the space of two days. If we couldn´t find the real Botswana here this time then there was no hope for us!

We had struggled to find a campsite here, most of the accommodation was high-end, expensive lodges. The place where we had stayed before had had to close their campsite during COVID and now only offered chalets. But they did have a self-catering option that was within our budget if we bundled together a whole month´s allowance of activities and meals out. So we pushed the boat out for one night in the chalet and really, really hoped it would be nice. Given the usual price point of most of Botswana´s lodges, however, I warned James not to expect too much.

We needn´t have worried. As we drove up to the lodge we could see it was well kept and smart. We were greeted very professionally and courteously and then guided through the lounge and bar area to our chalet.

We walked past a lovely tented chalet and I was disappointed when it wasn´t ours. We walked past another and another. By now we were glancing at each knowing what was going to happen – we were walking past the beautiful fully-serviced chalets whose occupiers would be treated to breakfast, lunch and dinner every day and treated like royalty. No doubt the poor people who chose the self-catering option would be housed somewhere in the back end of the grounds in a rather more shabby affair.

How wrong we were! How often do you get walked past all the nice accommodation and presented the keys to best chalet in the whole place??!!

It was made of stone and wood and had a gorgeous bedroom

A separate kitchen

And a lovely outdoor bathroom. All three of us made ourselves at home!

There was even air-conditioning. We couldn´t contain our excitement and decided the budget could go out the window – we were moving in permanently!

The price included two game drives, one that afternoon and the second at 5:30am the next morning.

After lounging around in our palace for a couple of hours our afternoon guide was ready and waiting for us and we set off into the reserve to see what we could find.

We saw plenty of the usual suspects

And herds of elephants

After a couple of hours we saw a small herd with a baby elephant and then, on closer inspection, we realised there was another, even smaller one with it

This baby cannot have been more than a few weeks old. It´s rare to see such a tiny elephant and for good reason. An adult elephant has few predators to worry about, even a pride of lions will stay well clear. But a baby this small is a very easy target for a large reward

The reason why you don´t see them is two-fold. With an adult female giving birth to one baby every three years at most there are few of them around. And those that are around are very, very closely guarded

This was Mum and Grandma. As soon as we arrived they started walking side by side all the time without fail and the baby was sandwiched between them

Other members of the herd helped with the protection detail. This family were taking no chances with their most vulnerable member

But they allowed us surprisingly close, munching calmly on their grasses

Someone was posted to watch us wherever we went but there was no foot stomping, trumpeting or any other sign that they wanted us to leave. It was a magical experience to be so close to these creatures – so calm, quiet, at peace with the world.

At the beginning of the drive our guide had asked where our interests lay. Of course I said lions – I´m nothing if not predictable! But then I put in a special request – I have become increasingly interested in the shy Bat Eared Fox and so far not seen any despite spending some time in Etosha searching for them. It was a joke, putting in a request for any particular animal is like putting in a request for a sunny day on your wedding. So we were all thrilled and very surprised when suddenly, half an hour after our baby elephant sighting, our guide slowed to a halt, pointed into the bush and declared ´there´s your foxes´!!

We looked round and saw a fleeting back-end disappearing into the bush. But then two faces poked out the other side and gazed at us before running off.

Five minutes later a family of three foxes appeared and stared at us just long enough for me to get my camera pointed at them but not long enough to focus properly!

Then they too vanished.

In all we saw maybe eight or so foxes. Step one – I´ve seen them! I now need to move on to step two and get a good photo of one. Sadly, that will have to wait for another day.

The whole drive was spectacularly beautiful

Following the Limpopo River

And watching the sun slowly set over the landscape

We returned to our lovely chalet late that evening tired but happy. And imagine our surprise when we found not only had the staff been in to light our fire but had also put out a table and chairs with table cloth, serviettes, plates, cutlery and wine glasses

We had not lived like this for a very long time! We cooked ourselves sausage and mash for dinner, maybe a little ironic, but made up for it by cracking open the rather lovely bottle of champagne we had bought at Otavi vineyard to celebrate

I was up at 5am the next day ready for the 5:30am game drive. James decided he had done game drives for a while so had a lie-in. I´m not sure who made the right decision. My game drive consisted of three and a half uncomfortable hours of seeing about three animals then fifteen minutes where we saw three more fleeting Bat Eared Foxes

And then, to my astonishment, a leopard ran out across the track into a bush, sat for a minute then strode out in clear view, into another bush and vanished. It all happened far to quickly to take a photo.

Were our leopard and foxes worth the early start and long drive? Maybe, but it is telling that when I returned to James we decided not to stay another night as we couldn´t face another two long game drives in a very uncomfortable Land Cruiser!

So instead we headed for the Limpopo river and the only campsite we could find in this area. It had been recommended by the people at our lodge and we were very grateful to them. When we arrived we were a little disappointed by a run-down reception area and rather perfunctory welcome. But once we got to our pitch we decided we didn´t need all the fancy frills of self-catering chalets and large comfortable beds! We had Henry, we had a gorgeous view and we had peace and quiet…

Apart from a few Hornbills and some very strange but quite sweet parachuting caterpillars who fell out of the trees and landed on everything, including us, all hours of the day and night. By the end of our two nights there my hair was constantly itchy from finding a stream of tiny creatures wriggling their way through it having mis-calculated their landing and missed the sand!

On our first night we were just getting ready for bed when, at the very edge of the light cast by James´ headtorch we saw a dark shadow running along by our feet. He shined the light directly on it and at first I thought it was a Dung Beetle – although what that would have been doing here would have been anyone´s guess. On closer inspection, we both suddenly jumped away from it as we realised it was no beetle – it was a large scorpion with it´s tail curled tightly over its back.

We are always aware that our outdoor lifestyles make us firmly guests in other creature´s homes. Whether those creatures be mammals, insects, flying caterpillars, birds, even my phobia – spiders – we try our best to live alongside them, learn about them, even admire them but as far as possible, leave them alone. And so we tried with this scorpion.

We watched it for a while hoping it was just passing through and would disappear into the bush. But it didn´t. It kept running round us, under Henry, back out again, round our feet, backwards and forwards. Clearly this was its home and it intended to stay around for the rest of the night. We couldn´t risk coming across it by accident in the dark so with heavy hearts we disposed of it. We were both very sad and sorry for the rest of the night but nature is all about survival of the fittest and even we have to take that seriously

Over our two day stay we drove around the Limpopo Reserve for a while but saw little – the grasses were too high, the ground too wet, all the animals were well dispersed and hidden. With so few larger animals around I turned my attention to smaller creatures – of which there were rather too many for my liking! Stretched across and alongside all the trails at about head height were hundreds and hundreds of large, intricate webs each carrying at least one occupant patiently waiting for an unsuspecting victim to stray into its path.

They were beautiful from a distance – and whilst we were safely tucked up inside Henry – but I didn´t fancy doing any hikes around here!

My Botswana itinerary had us leaving Tuli and heading north to the Central Kalahari and then further north to the Okavango Delta and Chobe. But there were other things going on in the background that changed all this.

We needed to take Henry´s aches and pains seriously. Since James bolted his side back together at Epupa Falls some weeks ago he had never been entirely straight. His diesel leak had been ongoing for nine months, even before the accident, and was slowly but surely getting quite a lot worse. He had had a steering wobble since before we started on our trip and we thought we had it under control but that also was getting worse. And finally, we had been trying to get two new aluminium boxes made to replace the Peli case on the side and the dry bag on the back.

We had plans for the boxes to be made by someone in Windhoek. They were expensive and it was now a three day drive back to Namibia. But when Gaborone flooded I was musing on the fact that Johannesburg was also flooding and wondered how close the two were. When I checked on Google Maps I discovered that, rather than a three day drive to Windhoek, we were actually only four hours away from Johannesburg and with it – Pretoria. The place where Henry had been rebuilt, the place where we had already had two aluminium boxes made and the place that, let´s face it, offers almost everything you could want in terms of vehicle parts, camping gear, 4×4 gear…and good restaurants!

So we made contact with Andrew Robertson, Landrover re-builder extraordinaire, to see whether he could help with the wobbly side panel; with British 4×4 to see whether they could help with the diesel leak; with Big Country to see whether they would make us two more boxes; and with Ingrid at the guesthouse where we had stayed during the rebuild to see whether she and Chris would like some surprise visitors. They all said yes and so a new adventure was heading our way.

Botswana was put on hold for a short time, not a bad thing as the north was still flooding and the rains would not slow for another month or so yet. We set our sat nav for the most unexpected of places. In a strange quirk of fate, and with no little trepidation, we turned Henry south instead of north and headed back into the beautiful but troubled land of South Africa….!