The 2025 Botswana Journals, Ch. 37: Full Disclosure

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     To my great delight, Bellamy drives the safari truck back into the riverbed after we leave the lions.   Just before we peel off the high ground, we find a herd of impalas heading to the water.

    This beautiful stag watches us until it decides it is safe for the herd to move.

    When he gives the go-ahead, the herd comes out of the brush and goes to the river.

    

    Some birds we find while driving along the river bed:

    A blue-eyed white-breasted cormorant.

    And a gray heron.

        We see a couple of warthogs enjoying a drink and a refreshing bask in the cool wet sand.

    Up the hill they go.

    We meet up with the others under this magnificent Mashatu tree.

    I am fascinated by the multi-faceted trunks of these trees and take a few photos.

    Morning coffee/tea break with a few munchies.

In the distance, I see safari vehicles driving down to the riverbed.

    It's a beautiful, scenic spot for a video, so I get my cell phone and start recording.  

    There are two things I want you to note in this video:   1) the bushes on the right at the very end of the reel, and 2) the clear view of the riverbed there at those bushes.

    After consuming a can of Passionfruit juice, I decide it's time to find a "girl bush" so I wander away in the same direction the other gals had gone.

    The first bushes I find don't provide enough privacy, so I keep walking along the high bank over the riverbed.   Finally, quite a distance from the Mashatu tree and the others, I decide one bush affords enough privacy, but just in case, I face toward them as I drop my drawers.

    There's a baboon about 50 feet from me, so I'm concentrating on it and hoping it doesn't take offense at my bare bottom.   They can be dangerous.

    

    I'm paying so much attention to the baboon as I pull up my britches that only now do I see a safari vehicle in the riverbed--in full view of me.  I walk back to the others and tell them this funny story.

    One of the guides assures me that the occupants of the safari vehicle were no doubt watching elephants climb the riverbank and not looking at me!

    I still think it's funny.

    When we continue our game drive after mid-morning break, we encounter a couple of elephants under another Mashatu tree.

    

    

    One has its trunk stuck into a cleft of the tree trunk.   I have no idea why, but I think it's unusual and interesting.   I suspect the elephant has found something edible, perhaps fruit from the tree.

Your bird fix for this chapter--the astonishing Lilac-breasted roller.

    Driving onward, we see a bat-eared fox running away from us, and we follow slowly at a distance.   It lies under a bush, and we take some photos.    I am using every mm of my 500mm lens, plus this photo is highly cropped.

Had I not found the memory card that went AWOL for 2-1/2 months, this would have been my compensatory photo instead of the fabulous close-up shots that were on the missing card.

About Mashatu trees, from the Internet:

• "Land of Giants": The Mashatu Game Reserve is named after these trees, which are often found in areas with large elephant populations.
• Structure: They feature thick trunks, wide, dense canopies, and sometimes have exposed root systems.
• Wildlife Impact: They are a vital food source for elephants, which consume their leaves and fruit.
• Lifespan: These trees can live for 300 to 600 years.
• Fruit: They produce small, yellow-brown, edible berries.
• Habitat: They thrive in deep alluvial soils, often in association with termite mounds. 

    The Mashatu tree, also known as Nyala tree (Xanthocercis zambesiaca), grows up to 90 meters high, or almost 300 feet.

The 2023 Brazil Journals, Chapter Seventeen

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Chapter Seventeen:

Food! Food!

The Necessary and the Glorious

 

“Life is uncertain.   Eat dessert first.”

—Ernestine Ulmer

 

 

 

It’s six o’clock and the sun has yet to rise.

Everything is  still and there’s barely a ripple on the pond we’re passing in the behemoth vehicle we’re riding in.

 

We see a capybara in the water near the shore vegetation and about twenty feet away is a caiman, pointed in the direction of the capybara.   Well, this is interesting, I think, and raise my camera.

 

Just how close will the capybara let the predator come?  There is no surface disturbance on the water as the caiman slowly gets closer.  

 

Then suddenly, with a powerful thrust of its tail, the caiman attacks.   

But the capy isn’t asleep.  Up and out of the water the capy rises like a rocket.   We can see the pink inside of the caiman’s mouth.   It was anticipating the delicious taste of that rodent.

 

But the capybara soars too high for the caiman and escapes being breakfast.

 

That was exiciting!

 

 

 

We move on and soon see an enigma standing against one of the pasture wire fences.  It’s a crab-eating fox and, while it does the eat crabs it finds during the flood season, it isn’t a fox at all.

 

It is a member of the dog family, Canidae.  It looks suspiciously like a brown/black-yellow tinged coyote.   In addition to crabs, found trapped in pools when the annual floods recede, it also eats small animals, fruit, insects, turtle eggs, and fowl.

 

   And then there is me.   I love passion fruit, that hard-rinded red, yellow, or purple fruit grown on a vine in tropical countries.   Not only is its taste appealing, but it's rich in essential vitamins and anti0xidents.

 

Barranco Alto is a passion-fruit-lover’s dream lodge.   Several desserts feature passion fruit and a few times there are pitchers of fresh juice made from the fruit.

 

One day I go to the refrigerator in the bar to get a Coke Zero and instead come away with Strawberry and Maracujà (passion fruit).  There may or may not be any left in the fridge by the time we leave Barranco Alto.

 

Another surprise is cashew juice!    Cashews are grown on trees that can yield a surprising amount of fruit called cashew apples.   And, at the tip of each cashew apple is a single nut we know as cashews.

Cashew apples.   Note the single cashew on each fruit.

Cashew juice.

 

But the juice from the cashew apples is amazing.   It is bottled and sold in Brazil.  In India, the extract is fermented and is very popular—more so than the nuts themselves.

 

 

On a late afternoon boat trip on the Rio Negro, we come upon several caimans dining on piranha.   This is quite a sight to see.

 

We linger there until the sun begins to set and the long golden rays of light turn the caimans a rich color as they chomp and swallow.

 

Photographers hanging out with hungry caimans.

It is almost dark when we return to the boat launch and there, also lingering in the water, are several caiman.   They, too, re waiting for food.

 

Not us, fortunately, but this spot is where fishermen clean their catches and throw the innards into the water for the caimans and other fish to enjoy.

 

Puts a different perspective on the food chain.

 

What makes a trip a success?

I took off Sunday afternoon on the spur of the moment and headed three hours north to go birding with a birding buddy.

I wasn't even there before I decided the trip was a stunning success!!!

Not every day you get to see a wild wolf.


But, that wasn't the last of the wild animal sightings.

She came out of an encounter with a vehicle missing some hair, but otherwise okay.