Africa 2006 Botswana, Notes: Botswana took an innovative approach to deal with tourism (its biggest income producer after diamonds). They set up system of high quality, low volume tourism. The idea was not to destroy what people are coming to see by keeping the numbers low. The safari camps are leased out to safari companies which must train and employ local people and must pay for the privilege of using these areas. Botswana has set aside nearly 40% of the country for wildlife. And it is working. What we saw:
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Above, African hawk eagle Right, a red-billed francolin quickly scurries across the road to cover. The mother bird was careful to keep her charges together and under branches or clustered around the base of plants when they stopped. She was on the lookout for hawks and eagles. Below, impala and zebras. |
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Above, wildebeest graze together in a pack like buffalo. Below, a black-backed jackal hunts for rodents. It is amazing how cat-like these little guys are. |
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The rising moon and setting sun made for some incredible skies. There were some of the largest herds of zebra here that we had seen so far. |
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Above, Karl, Karin and Scott enjoy another sundowner as the moon rises over their shoulder. Right, the moon rises behind a termite mound. Below, on the road back to camp we came across a group of giraffe. The giraffe were being followed by wild dogs. Once they moved past us we saw a lone hyena. While we were looking at the hyena it is suddenly surrounded by the wild dogs. I was afraid that we had made dinner out of the hyena by having a spotlight on it. The snarling and growling was very frightening. Scott was thinking that the hyena might jump into the Land Rover for safety. He was hoping we wouldn't have to figure out how to throw him back out. It was all over in a couple minutes. Turns out this hyena was a little lazy; he was following the wild dog for scraps. The wild dogs occasionally knock him around a bit to get him to back off (probably so that he doesn't follow them back to the den to eat the pups). The wild dogs were careful to keep to the back of the hyena. The hyena has such powerful jaws it could injure a dog pretty badly, fairly quickly. |
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