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Tag: chobe

  • African shoestrings – Botswana Day Eighty Two Chobe

    Audi had arranged a local tour guide to take us on a game drive into Chobe that afternoon and then a game cruise along the Chobe River the next morning. Our new tour guide didn’t show for a while and in his absence, led by yours truly, we organised with the agents at Tebe camp, where we were staying, to swap the two tours around. After all, watching the sun go down on the water from a boat surrounded by animals sounded much more romantic than being stuck in a vehicle. Not too mention that early morning is a better time to go for a game drive.

    Andre had now left us and returned back to Ngepi. He had done all right for his first time; nothing had been too much trouble and had often bent over backwards to make us comfortable. Humble that he was he was also a nice guy with it. The poor bloke was also just a little bit emotional when he left.

    Our new guide was a different animal!

    Chris was an Ethiopian brought up in Sweden (we actually thought that he was bullshitting when he told us that but we found out much later that it was true). With his long platted Bob Marley look alike hair and a fairly relaxed and casual attitude to his job; he was also an ‘expert’. Now I know he’s meant to be an expert certainly as a tour guide but I mean he knew it all and there was no doubting that the most important thing in his life was whatever worked for Chris. Which is why he was not too happy that we had rearranged the schedule. But we held fast despite his efforts to convince us otherwise.

    The cruise was pretty bloody good!

    From the boat we could see elephants and buffalo on the shore and hippos in the water, watching us with those beady eyes that live just above the surface, not to mention the abundant bird life.

    The most impressive sight, though, was the sunset that seemed to happen just at the river edge. At home, in Perth, we get some pretty awesome sunsets over the ocean so when I say the Chobe sunset was pretty bloody good; I mean it ‘was’ pretty bloody good. I shot off a few shots after Sue had made the suggestion. One of these shots sits proudly on our dining room wall and when anyone remarks on it, Sue turns to me and says with great satisfaction “and you never wanted to take it!”

    Driving through Chobe early the next morning was a totally different affair. Safari trucks are open in the back and at 5.45 am it was bloody freezing. Obviously the animals thought so as well because none of them were anywhere to be seen. We drove around for around an hour along dusty sandy tracks with Chris barking instructions to the driver up front and scratching his head as to why we hadn’t seen anything yet. The night before despite our rearrangement of the final leg of the tour, he had promised us an abundance of wildlife and so far his promise seemed to be pretty empty. Two lionesses saved his embarrassment. They were chasing a squealing warthog 100 metres away across a water channel. We stopped and watched as the two got closer to their prey that was running at great speed first one way then another. I turned to look behind us and to my amazement saw another interested onlooker, another lioness, a mere five metres away peering around our vehicle in effort to see what her mates were up to. We had unknowingly parked right in front of her!

    After that the wildlife just kept coming! It was as if someone had sounded the wake up call because everywhere we went we saw something. A herd of buffalo chewing and nonchalantly looking at us quizzically, two hippos wondering around on the river bank, kudu and impala springing away as we neared.

    Back to the water channel and we just caught sight of two of the lionesses walking away into the bush. We drove on back towards to the park gates and our campsite and then suddenly around the next bend, as surprised as us, were all three lionesses walking across the track and within spitting distance of the truck.

    More buffalo and a crocodile were spotted near the waters edge and then reluctantly our time was up.

    Chris was crowing. “See, I said we would see lots this morning” he said in his sort of British, Swedish and African accent. My remainder that it was actually our idea to do this early morning game drive was totally ignored as he continued to crow all the way back to camp.

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    Sunset on the Chove River in Chobe National Park, Botswana
    Sunset on the Chove River in Chobe National Park, Botswana

     

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day one

    Last time we flew to South Africa via Qantas we were upgraded to business class. No such luck this time! We were once again mere mortals packed in with our fellow passengers into the Airline industry’s version of the mini.

    Now that’s not to say that travelling economy with Qantas is a hardship. It’s not. In fact I think that they’re terrific. Good service, facilities, food and most importantly an unparalleled safety record makes any long haul flight reasonably comfortable. If that doesn’t get me a free flight nothing will!

    But a long flight is a long flight and quite tiring.

    Some eleven hours and two movies later we arrived at J’burg airport. Once ‘processed’ by the authorities we claimed our bags and moved out into the arrival lounge. We had been to J’burg before and sort of knew what to expect but nonetheless J’burg’s reputation as violent crime capital of the world makes you view everyone with a great deal of suspicion. In fact the biggest danger seemed to be the frustration caused by the ceaseless touting by reps of J’burgs many backpacker hostels. These guys hone in on anyone who looks even faintly potential. I think we got picked because it was such a quiet night and they were getting desperate.

    We managed to eventually find our hotel shuttle, which was driven by a young white guy. I make a point of this because several years ago these ‘menial’ jobs were done by black or coloured people, never by a white person especially a young white person.

    A lioness enjoys the late afternoon sun in Chobe National Park, Botswana
    A lioness enjoys the late afternoon sun in Chobe National Park, Botswana

  • African shoestrings the plan part one

    Early this century at the ripe old age of just over 45 we backpacked around South and East Africa on our way to an extended stay in Europe.

    The ‘plan’ was to travel from Johannesburg (J’burg) by land as far as maybe Kenya or Tanzania and fly on to London from there, allowing time for the TAB factor. TAB stands for “That’s Africa Baby” a common shrug used in times when a plan falls apart due to the many variables that are lacking in the African infrastructure or bureaucracy. For example a bus or even a plane failing to turn up (we had experienced an Air Zimbabwe flight being cancelled at the last minute on our previous visit due to one politician that needed to go shopping in London) or even a hotel being closed, you know the type of thing. So we were well aware of the potential for this factor to change our timing from time to time.

    After several visits later to see Tina our travel agent we finally came up with the ideal flight. We could fly Perth to J’burg and then Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania to London via Paris by Air France. Wow! Paris was high up on the list of places to visit and the ideal place to start our proposed exploration of Europe. However we made one vital mistake, we didn’t book it there and then. When we went to book a few months later that flight had been stopped and we ended up booking the equivalent Qantas/British Airways flights that didn’t stop in Paris. But we did get a free internal flight in South Africa so the gods hadn’t completely deserted us.

    An elephant shows us his rear end by the edge of Chobe lake in Botswana
    An elephant shows us his rear end by the edge of Chobe lake in Botswana

  • Photo tip no 3

    Cameras need light and when there’s not enough of it the picture taker has a couple of options. A tripod is the preferable option and I’ll cover that in another tip. So lets talk about ISO. In the days of film you couldn’t change the ISO easily  You had to change the film or using exposure compensation “push” or “pull” the film a couple of stops but you couldn’t change back again until you changed the film again. But now the ISO can be changed at a whim. All cameras, including compacts and smartphones these days, have an ISO setting. So there are two options. Have the ISO setting on auto which is fine for the majority of the time. But auto is usually set at a maximum of say 1600 which may not be high enough. Alternatively change the ISO setting to suit the conditions. E.g. in low light select a high ISO. However whilst the top end DSLR’s have amazing results from ridiculously high ISO’s there are some models where grain or noise becomes more pronounced the higher you go. So its worth taking a few images at various settings to see how your model performs at high ISO’s. Having said that grain does add mood to certain scenes. For now though, find that ISO setting!

    Sunset on the Chobe river in Botswana ©2013 Nick Katin
    Sunset on the Chobe river in Botswana ©2013 Nick Katin

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