The 2025 Botswana Journals, Ch. 40: Leopards, Lions, and Baobabs

     We leave Mashatu Lodge in the Toyota Land Cruiser, and I can tell we're heading to the river beds.  How I know our destination is a mystery, because once again I am thinking about how utterly lost I'd be if I were to be separated from the group.

    Lost.   Utterly.   I would not know what direction to go to try to get back to the lodge.   

A beautiful iridescent skink that lives in the rocks outside my lodge room.

    Follow the road?   Perhaps.   That would get me a little distance, assuming there weren't any lions in the vicinity.  Or snakes.   Or venomous spiders.

    Utterly lost and vulnerable.

    I certainly don't need to fear the little skink that lives at the lodge.

    Since this is a privately owned reserve and entry is restricted to guests only, there aren't many trails, but there are some.  What would I do if I came to an intersecting trail?   Probably cry.  If the lions hadn't found me yet.

    My reverie is interrupted by a couple of impala stags.   I have no idea what they are doing when one raises its head and places its mouth close to the other.  Some kind of male testosterone thing, I guess.

Gossping?

   The river bottoms are my favorite places in the reserve.   Now that the guides know where the lioness and her three young cubs are hanging out, that's the first place we go, stopping for any other sighting along the way.

As usual, the cubs show evidence of playing in the water, as they are wet and sandy.

    We find a kudu and a crocodile.

    And, of course, some birds.   The sandpiper below is a wood sandpiper, a LIFER for me.

    And, one of my favorites, a three-banded plover.   They are tiny little birds with awesome eyes.   In my travels, I have "saved" a baby plover and a plover nest.  The baby was left in the road at Amboseli Park in Kenya when its mother and siblings scattered before an approaching vehicle.   I asked the driver to go back because I knew there was a reason the mother was lying in the road.   Sure enough, there was a hatchling there.

    The nest I found in a gravel pit when I pulled off the Denali highway in Alaska.   I spotted a tiny plover running at my vehicle and stopped.   The bird immediately squatted down.   She was protecting her nest, a nest just out in the open where anyone could drive over it unknowingly.   I built a "guard" around it with the biggest rocks I could carry.

    We circle back to the lions and find them resting in the shade of the river bottom.   

Mom, the jungle gym.

    In the photo below, one cub is nuzzling Mom, one appears to be nursing, and the third is playing with her tail.

    Now that you have it, Little One, what are you going to do with it?

    We come across a sleeping leopard.   She is not annoyed at our presence, but neither is she amused as she changes positions behind a log.

        And then, it's time for sundowners.

The incredible, easily recognized baobab tree with its slim, pear-shaped trunk.

    Toasting the day.

    The plan was to stay out after dark and photograph stars with the baobab in the foreground.   Once there, we realized it would be quite some time before it was dark enough to do that.

    As the Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote, "The best laid plans o' mice and men, gang aft agley."   Lots of wisdom there, Sir Bobbie.

The 2022 Africa Journals, Chapter 27: Leaving Our Home away from Home

(Note:  To view photos in a larger format, click on one.   A film strip will open at the bottom of the page and you can click through them there.) 

Chapter 27:

Leaving our Home away from Home

“It is always sad when someone leaves home, unless they are simply going around the corner and will return in a few minutes with ice cream sandwiches.”--Lemony Snicket

It’s moving day and we have a long drive to make.  After six nights at Enkewa camp, our home away from home, we are heading north to meet up with the drivers from Great Plains Expedition camp, our fourth and final camp of this safari.

I will also miss the wonderful food at Enkewa.

 

I’m not at all ready to leave.   Oh, my luggage is packed and waiting by the front flap of the tent—inside so the vervets don’t mess with it.   I simply love this camp and its staff and don’t want to leave.    Its relative isolation  provides us with many wildlife sighting with few, if any, other safari vehicles around.

 

However, off we go at the appointed time.   Marg, Virginia, and I are in Dominick’s truck.   

 

Our first sighting is a lion have breakfast, although from the condition of the wildebeest carcass, I think he might be having fourths or fifths.

 

 

 

 

He walks away, and a lioness approaches for her multiple serving.   Both of their bellies are huge, indicating they have been eating for a while.

And, yes, the rumors are true.    The males will eat first even though the females might have brought down the animal.   If the males aren't around, the adult females are first, and then the cubs.

 

Lions are very social and affectionate with each other, though a male might growl at little cubs climbing all over him.   They make a number of vocalizations to communicate.   The loudest, of course, is the roar which can be heard, they say, up to five miles away.

The roar is usually made to locate another lion in the pride.   Contrary to the song about the lion sleeping in the jungle, lions prefer the savannah grasslands.  They spend most of their days lolling about and sleeping.  Most hunting tends to occur at night, though there are exceptions.

Then we find Luluka, the leopard who has two cubs tucked away somewhere.  She has a small antelope down and is moving it.   

 

 

She is soon surrounded by safari vehicles.    The trucks are supposed to stay on the established trails unless the occupants have purchased an off road permit.  Some of the vehicles on the right mat or may not have the permit, which must be displayed on the vehicle.

 

Luluka is to the right of the tree.   Just a little spot.

 

We watch Luluka for a long time, hoping she will carry the carcass up  into the small tree.   

 

 

Then, as we have a timeline to follow,  we’re off and moving again.

 

Eventually, we stop for breakfast.

Under the shade tree.

L-R:   One Ten, Virginia, Sylvia, Peter, Marg, me, Ben, Pere, Shelly is hiding in the back, Cory, Randy, and Johnson.

 

Dominick

There was a lot more to start with.

 

Still heading north, we meet the Great Plains guys and transfer into different vehicles.   Frank is driving and Alex is the spotter.

It’s overcast and raining lightly for most of the trip.  

  

These are the sightings during the journey to camp:

 

 

 

Lark

Gray-headed kingfisher

Sacred ibis.

This variety of ibis got its name from ancient Egyptians, who consider the bird to be the god Thoth, who protected the country from plagues and serpents.   The Sacred Ibis is an ancient species with fossil records going back 60 million years.

A fig tree with its roots exposed by erosion.

Little bee-eater.

Female agama lizard.

 

Safari ant trail.

The below photo from Fact Animal shows safari ants, also known as army ants and driver ants, on one of their trails.    They are voracious predators and will attack anything with protein.   Their colonies can number up to 50 million ants.

NOT MY PHOTO.

Spurwing lapwing on a nest.

Blue-eared starling.

Topi with her calf.   I love the hair patterns inside their ears.

Two topi calves.   The one on the left is starting to grow horns.

Warthogs and a Thompsons gazelle.

This bird is called a water thick-knee.   Look at the huge eyes.

Great Plains Expedition camp is lovely.   It’s located on a parcel of privately-owned land, surrounded on one side by the Maasai Mara, the private conservancy Naboisho, and another conservancy called Olare Motorola, or OMG for short.

 

 

 

Remembered to take a photo before I messed it up.

Where all the photo-editing gets done, batteries charged, etc.

 

The main dining room and lounge tent.   We occasionally had lunch on the deck.

Just for starters.   There was lunch after this.

And a zebra joined us for entertainment.    Expedition camp is fenced, but only to keep out the elephants that can be so destructive.   Anything else can wander through the front gate if it can fit under the overhead cross bar.

After lunch, we were treated to a wee bit of rain (she says facetiously).

  Click on the arrow to watch the short video.

This jackal is gobbling the termites that came up from the wet ground.

Hadada birds.

To top off the day, we visited a hyena den to see the pups.   Hyena pups have black hair that slowly turns to the usual black-spotted ginger color.

We had dinner back in camp and then roamed the grounds watching bushbabies leap from acacia tree to acacia tree.

Bed time.   It was a long, thoroughly enjoyable day.