Botswana Up Close and Personal

Up close and personal for sure. Click on photos to enlarge, it will put you right there.  I think Mollie tells the story best so here are her own words about this incredible adventure.

"We saw many instances where animals would soon be a meal for the next in line. In these parks and reserves things are left untouched, no help given. Only ivory is removed by park rangers, nothing else is moved. Botswana has a most unusual water supply coming from Angola where the water takes 4 months to travel.  A complex series of events that geologists would know about, the water goes out into the Kalahari Desert, at times even flows backwards, and ends eventually in the desert, not going out into any ocean. This area is called the Okavanga Delta and worth another peek at Google.  Maybe the only place like it on earth. [More information click here.]

Now if  you want to see a close up of an African elephant, try this. 

 

Photo by Mollie Kavanaugh

We stopped to watch an elephant eat a tree and we were soon circled by this big guy, 2 junior bulls who were challenging the big guy for power and a group of moms with babies.  I am not sure what was behind me but no one in our Land Rover moved for about 30 minutes when our guide finally said that we were going to make a run for it when the mom's got out of the road. 

Something about angles of attack....guess we didn't want to show ourselves at right angles so when we went, we went fast. I was closest to the big bull, the photo is not zoomed, he was close. All I thought of was if he gets me I hope that someone gets my camera. When asked by management the size of the herd, the guide estimated plus or minus 20. Scary and yet it wasn't.  There was nothing  you could do if the big bull got interested so why worry.   

And then there was Casper the Elephant, a name I gave him after my Casper the Tortoise...they are similar in that they go straight and take out everything in their way.

 Casper the Elephant - Photo by Mollie Kavanaugh

 

Only Casper the Elephant has the right-away, it is his house.  Casper the Turtle must stay out of my favorite area and gets moved via wagon if he gets where he doesn't belong.

The baboons would climb a tree behind my tent and shake down red berries onto my porch.  Casper the Elephant came around and ate all that he could reach.  Maybe I got a little too close, you are ordered to stay clear of them, put I love my shots...when he got all of the berries he could reach he went to another place where the baboons helped him get his dinner." 

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Mollie, thanks so much for this story. I hope you don't mind my sharing it with my blog friends, it was too good not to share.