Baby day
11 April
After the hoo hah with the lions and elephants a
couple of nights ago we set out in the morning to try to find the cats. After
driving around for a while we saw a tree in the distance chock-full of vultures
(anyone know what a group of them is called?). Given where they were, this was
very consistent with them being at the site of a successful lion kill, possibly
of an elephant the previous evening. Unfortunately there were no roads there
and driving off the tracks is not permitted in Botswana parks.) If it had only
been a couple of hundred yards we would have gone anyway but this was a
reasonable distance and over difficult
terrain.
I was speaking to one of the South African lads (they are very friendly actually) who was telling me how good their private reserves are: apparently you're assured to see all of the Big Five (lion, leopard, elephant, rhino, buffalo) in a single day. The reason that they can guarantee this is, so Alan tells me, is that they chip the animals so you can always find them with a GPS device. (Plus I guess there are no "keep to the tracks" directives, especially since they are so exclusive that erosion through over-driving is hardly an issue yet.) What do we think of this? I know it's not very Old School. There is a lot to be said for the business of driving around and, if only through force of circumstance, spending time appreciating the other animals or the birds, or even the astonishing landscape. (Today, for example, my favourite spot was probably a saddle-billed stork.) But if the animals had been chipped and you could just make a bee-line for them, would you? Is it very different from asking a San hunter, or a guide from the fancy lodge who passes you in a truck, where the big animals are? (I think it is different, but maybe I'm being like a Chesil beach SCUBA loser.)
Have you noticed how everything here seems so political? And not at all left-wing, come to that. Alan did a talk for the girls (and us) yesterday about ecology: the food pyramid, the cycle of nutrition and so forth. He put the carnivores at the top of his pyramid, of course, with the archetype being the lion. This is reflected in the way people round here talk: when we pass other groups on game drives if Alan speaks to the other driver he will say we're seen "nothing" if we haven't scored a cat or a buffalo, say (which, of course, we usually don't). I know it's how they speak but I feel slighted on behalf of the rest of the fauna; even the pleasure of driving through the fantastic landscape with the windows down and the scent of wild sage cutting through the African heat seems to be obliterated by the reductive word "nothing". It's so reductive. On the other hand, there's no contesting the mathematics of ecology. Then there's the whole dominant male gig (I think I gave the impala and elephant examples the other day), and I haven't even mentioned termite/ant societies. Then there's the South Africans with their black guys trailing around in tow to serve them, all survivors of the apartheid era. Then there's the actual governments in many of these countries, which seem more inspired by the image of the male ruling the herd until another guy muscles him out than to the vision of modern social democracy that is supposed to be sweeping all nations, ending "history". But we're in Botswana now, where there is a stable democratic government, little violence and supposedly a brotherly feeling of nationhood and no political prisoners.
We drove from Savute down to Moremi today, being the first people to leave Chobe at the southern exit (I asked the guys who work the checkpoint). From a wildlife perspective, the theme of the day was animal young: we saw young elephant, zebra, kudu, vervet monkeys, baboons, wildebeest, warthogs, hippopotamus and crocodile. Our new pitch is pretty, with marsh land to one side, in which we can hear hippos who will probably visit us tonight (ps - they did) and grassland to the other, being convenient for the lion that Alan has seen before here. The shower block is less spectacular, veering to the gulag end of institutional, with no warm water or lighting.
I was speaking to one of the South African lads (they are very friendly actually) who was telling me how good their private reserves are: apparently you're assured to see all of the Big Five (lion, leopard, elephant, rhino, buffalo) in a single day. The reason that they can guarantee this is, so Alan tells me, is that they chip the animals so you can always find them with a GPS device. (Plus I guess there are no "keep to the tracks" directives, especially since they are so exclusive that erosion through over-driving is hardly an issue yet.) What do we think of this? I know it's not very Old School. There is a lot to be said for the business of driving around and, if only through force of circumstance, spending time appreciating the other animals or the birds, or even the astonishing landscape. (Today, for example, my favourite spot was probably a saddle-billed stork.) But if the animals had been chipped and you could just make a bee-line for them, would you? Is it very different from asking a San hunter, or a guide from the fancy lodge who passes you in a truck, where the big animals are? (I think it is different, but maybe I'm being like a Chesil beach SCUBA loser.)
Have you noticed how everything here seems so political? And not at all left-wing, come to that. Alan did a talk for the girls (and us) yesterday about ecology: the food pyramid, the cycle of nutrition and so forth. He put the carnivores at the top of his pyramid, of course, with the archetype being the lion. This is reflected in the way people round here talk: when we pass other groups on game drives if Alan speaks to the other driver he will say we're seen "nothing" if we haven't scored a cat or a buffalo, say (which, of course, we usually don't). I know it's how they speak but I feel slighted on behalf of the rest of the fauna; even the pleasure of driving through the fantastic landscape with the windows down and the scent of wild sage cutting through the African heat seems to be obliterated by the reductive word "nothing". It's so reductive. On the other hand, there's no contesting the mathematics of ecology. Then there's the whole dominant male gig (I think I gave the impala and elephant examples the other day), and I haven't even mentioned termite/ant societies. Then there's the South Africans with their black guys trailing around in tow to serve them, all survivors of the apartheid era. Then there's the actual governments in many of these countries, which seem more inspired by the image of the male ruling the herd until another guy muscles him out than to the vision of modern social democracy that is supposed to be sweeping all nations, ending "history". But we're in Botswana now, where there is a stable democratic government, little violence and supposedly a brotherly feeling of nationhood and no political prisoners.
We drove from Savute down to Moremi today, being the first people to leave Chobe at the southern exit (I asked the guys who work the checkpoint). From a wildlife perspective, the theme of the day was animal young: we saw young elephant, zebra, kudu, vervet monkeys, baboons, wildebeest, warthogs, hippopotamus and crocodile. Our new pitch is pretty, with marsh land to one side, in which we can hear hippos who will probably visit us tonight (ps - they did) and grassland to the other, being convenient for the lion that Alan has seen before here. The shower block is less spectacular, veering to the gulag end of institutional, with no warm water or lighting.
Posted: Tue - April 12, 2005 at 12:17 AM
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Published On: Feb 08, 2006 06:20 PM
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Published On: Feb 08, 2006 06:20 PM