We both sat there – frozen to the spot – staring at it, willing it not to move as it stared back at us. Only 25 metres away and we were most definitely in the danger zone.

My hand remained where it was – at my mouth – it had flown up as soon as we’d rounded the corner and seen it, and John had stopped the car.

We’d been advised not to surprise them. That they were much less used to humans here than other National Parks, and therefore much less happy to see us, and even less happy when surprised. And, just yesterday, as I was driving, John had been reading the wildlife guidance from our book so that we were reminded about how to behave around them.

The seconds ticked by. That expression ‘time stood still’? It certainly felt interminable. I was willing it to stay still and silently willing John not to move the car in any way. We were both genuinely too frightened to speak. Suddenly, it moved…[continued below the highlights section]

Where visited since last blog: Makgadikgadi National Park, via Kubu Island and Khama Rhino Sanctuary
Place: Botswana
Average temp: 38 degrees
Funniest moment: either one of us thinking that we’ve seen or heard exciting wildlife, for it only to be, for example; a large man snoring in the next campsite (not a lion roaring!); a large grey termite mound (not a rhinoceros!); a large dead branch on a tree with brown leaves (not a leopard!); the top of a interesting shaped tree (not the head of a giraffe!)
Scenery highlight: the desolate beauty and utter solitude of Kubu Island; our first glimpse of the Boteti River
Writing this from: the Makgadikgadi National Park, Khumaga Camp site No. 10
Successes: I managed the pretty tough bits of the drive from Gweta to Makgadikgadi National Park, really enjoyed it, and was super proud of getting us here.
Piece of gear of the day/week: my 1 litre yoghurt pot (with a fixed lid) that I was advised to use for a wee in the night in the tent – as you cannot go to the ablutions block after dark, it’s too dangerous. So far, it’s a winner!
Fear of the week: the danger of being out of the tent at night and getting eaten by wildlife (leopard, lion etc).
Wildlife encounter of the week: Too hard to choose. Very exciting to see leopard prints in our campsite one morning; and have an elephant come and eat its lunch about 40m away from us as we ate ours. I just watched him for 90 mins solid. Also seeing giraffes – such a distinctive and beautiful animal.
Wildlife fact of the week: Botswana is currently over-populated in elephant numbers.
Mistake of the week: using pretty much every electrical appliance on our first night wild camping and watching the leisure battery drain away (although not to nothing thankfully)! Something we both should have known better than to do – but it takes a while to get back into ‘camping brain’ mode!
Simplest pleasure: simply just sitting and watching all the small (and occasionally large!) wildlife in its natural habitat. The binoculars and wildlife/birding books are getting well-used.
Fact of the week: due Covid there are still very few tourists, but bookings for next year are already at 75% at many places as people have pushed them back.
We were right to bring… the extra portable solar panel. Thank goodness we did

The large bull elephant shook its’ head, clearly deciding we weren’t a threat after all, and carried on crossing the road. We both let out an enormous relieved breath.

“Has it gone? Shall we move yet?” I asked.

“I’ve no idea”, said John. “That was too close”.

We sat there for five minutes the engine idling (if you turn off the engine, it’s also dangerous, as the sound of it starting up can startle them).

Finally, we agreed to inch our way, painfully slowly, forwards along the track keeping our eyes to the right, in the direction in which it had gone.

We peered round the large bush that it had moved behind and saw – still far too close – its unmistakable, wrinkled and extremely large behind.

“Nope!” I exclaimed. “It’s still there – reverse, reverse, but slowly!”

We reversed as quietly as we could for quite some way and then discussed what to do next. We decided to go in the opposite direction for now. It was 7am and we were on a ‘game drive’, simply pottering along to see what we could find. Due to the heat, most animals are most active in the early mornings and later afternoons, so the days in National Parks consist of early starts to spot wildlife, followed by restful days and possibly exploring again later.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I have this (hopefully quite normal!) slightly conflicting desire to both enjoy incredible wildlife experiences, to marvel at the creatures we often only seen on our screens, and also, when they are as ‘exciting’ as this encounter, for them not to be quite as exciting! I think this is part of the thrill of adventure. Animals are unpredictable, you can never be 100% certain, or too cautious.

The encounters make for great stories when they turn out ok, but, in the moment, you are very, very aware of how little control you have over the situation – and how not ok it might turn out.

We had been so very lucky already with the wildlife that we’d seen in just a handful of days. Driving yourself is always riskier and a little more guesswork than having a guided drive or walk – but the benefits are great. (Not being on anyone else’s timetable and stopping when you want to, and just doing your own thing, being some of them).

I usually (and would suggest if anyone is self-driving), do a combination – hire a guide for an excursion, learn information, safety and sighting tips etc, and then take this knowledge off on your own. We’d had an exciting guided rhino tracking experience a few days earlier at the excellent Khama Rhino Sanctuary, and had met a great guide – Will - by chance here at Makgadikgadi with his two clients, who had been most generous with his time and advice when we were just chatting.

The rhino tracking had been equally exciting – although I felt slightly more protected as we had a guide with a gun ahead of us. I was surprised that, although this is a sanctuary, it was definitely wild – I think perhaps I had envisioned something like Longleat Safari Park! There were many wild animals here, including leopards, and of course, the white and black rhino.

We’d been following the white rhino tracks with the guide – that of a mother and a calf – and spotted them suddenly, about 60 metres away. We crouched down and had to be as quiet as possible. Of course, sod’s law dictated that this was when dry crumbs remaining from my quick cereal-bar-breakfast decided to cause me to need to cough, but I did my best to stifle it as long as I could, no mean feat!

This was another ‘once in a lifetime’ moment that we’d currently been feeling we were having every day. There was a mother rhino and calf, just metres away, and another moment when I felt that yes, this was completely amazing, and also, after a little while, could we retreat to a safer distance please?!

gorgeous sunset of Penelope the 4x4 in Africa

As John had said to me a couple of days before, it was almost an ‘embarrassment of riches’. We kept saying how lucky we felt and so delighted that we made this happen. There are moments that we have been dreaming of and talking about for months, and, so far, it’d been even better than we had hoped.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of things that are either irritating, slightly harder or more uncomfortable or nerve-wracking (more on this ‘low-lights’ in a later post!), but at the moment, it is totally worth it.

It was a long drive through the Makgadikgadi National Park from the north-east gate to the south-western edge where we were camping at Khumaga. The distance isn’t far, but it’s the time it takes when you’re doing a maximum of 20kms an hour. We’d been elated to glimpse our first herd of elephants in the distance on the way through, and had hoped for slightly closer encounters (just not as close as the one this morning!).

About 4:30pm, we drove towards the Boteti river, and as we rounded the bend, we both exclaimed “wow!” in unison. Utterly picturesque, the Boteti was laid out before us, the late afternoon sun’s rays were streaking through the cloud and reflecting off the grass-filled waters, the large green Lilly pads with their contrasting white flowers strewn across its surface.

A lone elephant stood – as if perfectly placed in the scene just for us – and began ambling gently towards the bank.

This. This was what we’d been dreaming of for months and we couldn’t have imagined it more perfectly.

Our three nights in the Makgadikgadi Pans National Park and our visits to Kubu Island and the Khama Rhino Sanctuary gifted us with such an abundance of incredible moments like these – we saw herds of game (including zebra, eland, springbok, steenbok) – watched 11 giraffes enjoy their evening drink, spent 30 minutes watching the hippos (do very little!), saw ridiculous amounts of bird species – John’s birding list is getting ticked off pretty quickly - and the sunsets and sunrises were stunning and, as Will (the kindly and knowledgeable guide we met) said “this is what we come to Africa for”.

We’ve experienced a mechanical issue with Penelope – thanks to the terrible state of some of the tracks and roads that we’ve driven on – and will detail more on that and what’s happening in the next post.

For now, we’ve safely reached Maun – the ‘gateway’ to the famed and huge national parks and reserves of Moremi and Chobe in the Okavango Delta. We’re excited to experience a mokoro trip for a few days, get Penelope fixed up and back ready to go driving again in a few days’ time.

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P.P.S. If you haven’t checked out our beloved Penelope yet, I will shortly be adding some videos of the trip, too (just waiting to get to wifi that is good enough – happily we’ve been too remote up until now!), so pop over onto the Youtube channel and have a look:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRbSZPWB_Twv89FecOfNG2w - currently there is an introduction to her and our set up.