Elephants, Zebras, and Airplane Wine, oh my...

“There’s a rawness to Africa. The US is well done… perhaps too well,” said Murray, the middle-aged South African sitting next to me on the flight to Africa after sharing several bottles of airline wine. Sitting on a safari vehicle several days later in the pre-dawn African wilderness, surrounded by wild beasts, watching the fiery red dawn slowly devour the blackness, this concept leapt to life. Being in these spaces, it’s like your mind and soul actually expand to try to comprehend the vastness, a subliminal longing for our ancestral lands. Seeing these magnificent animals outside of sad little zoo cages filled me with awe. Against their native background, it was instantly apparent why they are shaped and colored the way they are – enormous elephants at first glance can look simply like large boulders, and a lion’s tawny fur blends him effortlessly into the grass. I’m not entirely sure what’s with the crazy zig-zagging stripes of zebras, but they certainly have a delightful effect as the giddy animals neigh and frolic across the savanna.

We went on two game drives – one at sunset, one at sunrise. We saw far more animals at sunset, but there was an absolutely ethereal quality to the quiet, lonely drive into the dawn, a few meager humans tracking a leopard across the sparse landscape. We didn’t find him, but just being “on the hunt” for one made my hair stand on end and senses come alive. The Big 5 are lions, leopards, elephants, rhinos, and Cape buffalo, and we saw all but the leopard, plus zebras, giraffes, wildebeest, Steenbok, Kudu, and an abundance of these funny little chickens that ran very fast. It was an incredible experience, and I have an intense longing to go back.

Madikwe was only a 45 minute drive from Gaborone, and is the fifth largest game reserve in South Africa. It has an interesting story. In the early ‘90s, the government decided that the best use of the infertile farm land in the area would be to turn it into a game park. Over the next two decades, this project became the largest ever relocation of wild animals as they were moved from other reserves in Africa. It was also developed closely with the local community, to ensure that they were included in the planning process and job opportunities.

Parts of Botswana that I didn’t have the chance to see may be amazing, but the capitol city of Gaborone is regrettably bland. It was pleasant, but there simply was nothing distinctive about it. My colleague compared it to a West Texas town, sprawling, scrubby, strip malls here and there. We took a humorous private city tour, humorous because it was like trying to take a tour of a nondescript big city suburb.  “Here’s our mall. Here’s our other mall. This is where people with money live. This is where people without money live.” Thanks, guy…

Luckily, the trip only got exponentially better from there with the trip to the South African game reserve and Madagascar and Lemur Island still to come.