Wildlife immersion: Africa safari is critter lover’s dream trip

Our rustic African safari camp, with chairs around a central fire pit and eating tables under a tarp canopy, was much like a group site you’d find in the forests of Washington, Idaho or Montana – except for the elephant by the tent.

Standing 10 feet tall, weighing around 5 tons, with one of its ivory tusks inches from the canvas, the giant pachyderm stopped at the guy lines of one woman’s sleeping tent and raised its trunk in the air to sniff us out. After a 5-minute eternity, it calmly turned away to resume feeding.

Our 22-day wildlife safari in Botswana had started with frank talk about safety. Maun-based outfitter Johnny Ramsden (www.royalewilderness.com) and guide Pat Malatsi had warned us to be especially alert at water’s edge to avoid dangerous encounters with hippos and crocodiles. They also emphasized that elephants, hippos, lions, leopards, hyenas, lethal snakes and other critters could show up in camp at any time, especially at night.

We had no guns or pepper spray.

“Use your headlamps to scan ahead and to the sides as you walk from the tents to the campfire or to breakfast and dinner,” Ramsden said. “If you see shining eyes, keep the beam on them. The light is your shield. They can’t see what’s behind it, so they’ll usually turn away.

“Without a light,” he added matter-of-factly, “you’re easy prey.”

Living close to a new cast of critters is why my wife Meredith and I traveled halfway around the planet to where the sun swings east to west in the northern sky.

Nearly every morning I eagerly woke just before 5 a.m. knowing that before sunrise – as a cacophony of bird songs and critter calls grew louder with the gathering light – I was going be in an open-air Land Cruiser looking for wildlife adventure.

I hesitate to call our Botswana safari a vacation. For a wildlife enthusiast, it was like going to school for classes you’ve dreamed about since childhood.

North America is no slouch at providing wildlife spectacles, but Africa serves up another level of awe.

Every night we shut our eyes in the darkness of our tents absorbing the wild sounds of owls, grunting hippos, yelping jackals, giggling hyenas, rumbling elephants, and on a few occasions the spine-chilling roar of an African lion.

We went in March, near the end of the rainy season.

Tourism and prices hadn’t yet ramped up. Temperatures weren’t too hot, and the generally flat landscape was green and blooming.

Botswana is but a fraction of the massive African continent, which is larger than Canada, the United States and China combined.

But the stable republic stood out among the many good wildlife destinations in Africa for having the sparsest human population on the continent and the highest concentration of elephants, the largest animals walking on earth.

We relished observing elephants in the bush as they used their trunks for drinking, foraging, spraying themselves with mud, shaking nuts from trees and interacting with each other.

These complex, intelligent animals make a big impression. Safaris offer public exposure and discussion of the continued decline of the African elephant due to drought, conflicts with agriculture and poaching for ivory.

Royale Wilderness planned a custom itinerary for the diverse interests in our private party of 11.

We toured the northern half of Botswana, beginning in Nxai Pan and Makgadikgadi Pans national parks, where we began adding African bird, plant and wildlife species to our life lists at a furious pace.

The first day near a waterhole, the landscape was swarming as far as we could see with springboks, impalas, wildebeest … let’s call it a mirage of antelopes.

The next day in the same spot, the antelope species had thinned out, but there were more zebras, giraffes and elephants. The cast was constantly changing.

The guides introduced us to all sorts of natural features, such as the termite mounds that stand like tombstones across expanses of pans and savanna.

We learned that most trees and shrubs are booby trapped with thorns that make a hawthorn tree look tame.

We ate sandwiches at Baines Baobabs, a remote cluster of huge millennia-old trees made famous in an 1862 painting by explorer Thomas Baines.

Mostly we based out of comfortable rustic camps shared with a crew that supported us.

An open-to-the-stars vestibule, extending from the back of each couple’s sleeping tent, offered some privacy for the latrine that was dug into the sand in one corner.

In the other corner was a pole holding a 2-gallon bag of water for our shower.

During one transition we moved into a “glamping” compound called Camp Kalahari (tents on platforms with flush toilets).

The camp with its luxurious thatch-roofed reception and eating facility was surrounded by electric fencing to keep out elephants and other large mammals.

“You can put your clothes in a bag to be laundered, but they won’t do your underwear,” Ramsden said. “It’s a cultural thing.”

From there, our two rigs drove out and soon found our first lions. We parked within 10 feet of a female and her two yearling cubs.

Our group spent another afternoon walking with San Bushmen, who demonstrated their hunting, foraging, fire-making and survival skills as well as their traditional games and songs.

We spotlighted springhares and African wild cats during night drives, and we experienced a delightful afternoon embedded with a mob of weasel-like meerkats.

Several times as we watched them forage, a sentry would scamper up one of our shoulders and stand tall on a head and scan the horizon for danger.

After two days, we rejoined the outfitter’s camp crew, including the cook who made our food from scratch and baked fresh bread daily over a fire.

They had moved our entire camp to a site called Khumaga, where we intercepted a zebra migration estimated at roughly 20,000 animals. A dazzle of thousands could be seen at one time up and down the valley along with tons of other wildlife along the Boteti River.

We drove to the Okavango Panhandle and based for a few days in the luxury of Drotsky’s Cabins near Shakawe.

From here we launched a range of outings including self-guided walking tours for birding and boat tours to see hippos, crocs and rare birds along the Okavango River.

A day hike into the Tsodilo Hills, a national monument, led us to remnants of stone-age human activity dating back 100,000 years.

Pictographs painted on the rocks as much as 3,000 years ago clearly depict critters such as rhinos, giraffes and antelopes. It’s a sacred place.

With the help of our two-expert guides, we recorded a whopping 310 species of birds during the trip.

Birds in Botswana are a whole new world for the first-time visitor with binoculars, from the little bee eater to the turkey-size kori bustard (the national bird) and up to the ostrich, the largest and fastest-running bird on the planet.

The birding experts among us were as keen as anyone on seeing apex predators such as leopards, but they were stimulated to giddiness one afternoon in the Okavango Delta after checking off rarities, such as the lesser jacana and the secretive Pel’s fishing owl.

We also devoted a day to crossing the border and exploring Namibia’s Mahangu National Park, where we saw critters ranging from monkeys and warthogs to antelopes, cape buffalo and, of course, more elephants.

The outfitter spared us from hours of rough driving by setting up a prop-plane flight from Shakawe to the airstrip at Khwai River Concession Area.

At this wildlife preserve bordering the more popular Chobe National Park, we reunited with the Royale Wilderness camp crew, who welcomed us, as usual, with a chanting song, big smiles, juice and a repitched camp.

In the next four days we spent more time with now-familiar species while continuing daily to see new ones, from mongooses to leopards and more of the two dozen or so antelope species in Botswana.

On two occasions, nervous starlings squawking in trees gave away the nearby locations of black mambas, one of the most venomous snakes in the world.

Jackals (similar to North American coyotes) hunted around us daily and we saw vervet monkeys, a troop of baboons, and fleeting glimpses of a wild dog pack and one honey badger.

One morning, our guides found a pride of lions moving through the bush. Anticipating their route, they drove off-road ahead of them and parked.

We could see no more than about 40 yards in any direction when the lions emerged from openings in the brush two or three at a time, walking directly at us until nine of them were drifting around the two Land Cruisers as if they were water flowing around midstream rocks.

The guides had given us strict rules for safety in the vehicles. Don’t stand up when encountering wildlife. Stay calm and quiet. And never exit without asking. Movements and noise can trigger aggressiveness or defensiveness in animals.

Good to know at this moment … as a lioness, passing close with nothing between me and her, glanced up, her mouth open just enough to display an impressive rack of teeth.

I could see the scars and a slight limp owing to the hard-knock life of high-speed chases and tackling prey with teeth, horns and flailing hooves.

She paused briefly and fixed her eyes on mine just 5 feet away. Powerful moment.

Also powerful is the word “pula,” which means rain in the Setswana language. Pula also is the name for Botswana currency. As our guides explained, water is life in the Kalahari Desert, and therefore rain is revered even more than money.

Nearly every day at sunset, the guides would park the two Land Cruisers at a scenic spot for the traditional “sundowner,” where we’d briefly gather at a portable mini bar before heading back to camp for showers and dinner.

(Incidentally, the sundowner originated as the quinine break British travelers would take routinely during African journeys to fend off malaria. As these breaks became more social, they trended into happy hours with biltong, a type of jerky, nuts and other snacks. Although various beverages are offered, gin and tonics are a staple at sundowners as a sentimental link to the dash of quinine that’s in tonic water.)

At one sundowner, as we toasted satisfying sightings of rare birds and lions in the bush, Malatsi raised his glass to mine. Instead of saying “Cheers!” he said “Pula!” in a tribute to a particularly fine day.

“We say ‘Pula!’ when we feel rich,” he said.

Legendary American wordsmith Ernest Hemingway wrote three novels specifically inspired by his safaris.

In “True at First Light,” he wrote, “I never knew of a morning in Africa when I woke up that I was not happy.”

After fulfilling a big tick off my wildlife adventure bucket list and feeling equally inspired, I will stop short of a novel and simply conclude, “Ditto.”