Botswana May-June trip report. Part I (Moremi)

[kingshaka]

Hello all, warm greetings from Spain,

Had some awsome three weeks in Moremi, Chobe, Vic Falls, CKGR and the delta, intense but amazing holiday-honeymoon.

Before the trip I got tons of advice and info from you guys on this forum so this is my tale. Perhaps too long so let me know if you find it boresome and I'll cut the crap. I'm still working throgh the zillion pics we've taken but I'll post some after the weekend.

20-may car, logistics, supplies. Maun - Marinas Lodge
21-may 3rd Bridge Camping 3rd bridge
22-may 3rd Bridge Camping 3rd bridge
23-may Khwai Camping North Gate --> stayed at 3r Bridge
24-may Khwai Camping North Gate --> stayed at 3r Bridge
25-may Savuti Camping Savuti
26-may Ihaha Camping Ihaha
27-may Ihaha Camping Ihaha
28-may Ihaha to Kasane/sunset boat trip. Water Lily lodge
29-may Victoria Falls The Kingdom Hotel
30-may Vic. Falls to Planet Baobab, Gweta
31-may Gweta to Nxai Pan. South Campsite
01-jun Nxai Pan South Campsite
02-jun Nxai Pan to CKGR Sunday Pan Camp
03-jun CKGR Phokoje campsite
04-jun CKGR Letiahau campsite
05-jun CKGR Deception Valley - Kori campsite
06-jun CKGR to Maun
07-jun Fly to Oddballs Enclave lodge
08-jun Oddballs Enclave lodge
09-jun Oddballs to Maun to Joburg

Land Rover Defender TD5 2004 fitted with snorkel, 120l fuel tank + 2x20l jerry cans. Roof-top tent. Engel fridge-freezer. Dual battery deep cycle. 45l water tank + 2x25l water plastic jerries.
Car in regular to not-so-brilliant shape. Clutch problems shortly after the beggining.

MOREMI CONDITIONS
Water still making many tracks impassable, it's receding but slowly so it might still be as I describe it.
Road from tar to South Gate has sections with quite a bit or corrugation.
South Gate to 3rd Bridge: direct route via Xini lagoon not passable, used Xakanaxa road and took fork to the left before reaching Xakanaxa campsites. No problem.
3rd Bridge to Khwai/North Gate not passable at some point before Dombo hippo pools, you have to go to S. Gate and then reach Khwai from there through direct route but we didn't go to Khwai as we had originally planned.

21/05 Maun to 3rd Bridge
Raining, the freaking landie leaks water like a sieve. There's this bastard leak straight to my right foot, think it gets in through the door hinge. Fun drive with a trickle of constant water on the throttle foot and having to pump often with the left foot on the clutch. Damn landies, peasant's car
After checking in at South Gate the car refuses to start, how nice, we haven't even entered the park yet. The warm-up coil sign doesn't light up but the battery has plenty of power although it doesn't seem to reach the starter engine properly. I don't have a clue but I start checking some fuses from the fuse box I can see next to the gearstick. Nothing. Then this Dutch couple appear at the gate, also with a landie but theirs is from Bushlore, looks much newer than ours. The guy is very keen and helpful, quickly gets his brand-new tow cable out and I think what the hell, let him do... He tows us to the campsite so we can spend the night there while we wait for the recovery guy to come from Maun. But on second thoughts the dutchie decides to have another look at the car, fiddles with some wire on the engine, opens the control box under the driving seat, press some relays and fuses, and voilá, the car starts like nothing happened. Magic fingers. Thanks dude, you're a star, saved the day, I don't call Maun. I take good note of all the bits he's touched so I can repeat if needed. I also put some gaffer tape on the wire he's touched just in case.

Reach 3rd Bridge at dark. The clutch is feeling stiffer by the minute and the gears are incresingly difficult to get in. The car rental guy told me I had to pump the clutch everynow and then because is new but my left leg it's already tired of so much pumping and it's just been a day.
First time setting up the rooftop tent and it's raining, yuck! feel a bit miserable, wet and cold. The swambo moans but not so much. Hehe, welcome to Moremi. What a honeymoon we have in store. This canadian guy on the next campsite invites us to his big fire which is nice so we get out one bottle of wine to warm up. Good wine you have on SA. He has this enduring battle with the baboons that harass him from the trees above, chemical warfare, basically he's smoking them up with the wet firewood. Mad. You can hear the bastards coughing up there on the branches. Tells us that the baboons are on a rampage and on the morning they got inside the ground tent on the next campsite while the owners were out and made a mess of it. There're so many weird noises, including hippos on the marsh. We truly feel surrounded by all kinds of creatures. She doesn't say but I can see the wife is scared shitless especially after hearing from some idiot guide the story about the guy that falled asleep on his chair at night and got bitten by a hyena on the arm. I heard this story on this forum before we travelled but kept it from the wife, by the way, the story by now has been exagerated to the point that the hyena has teared off this poor guy's arm.

Game drives from 3rd Bridge: we were told by other fellow selfdriver that Khwai area was surrounded by water and there was not much to do and see there so we decided to stay on 3rd B. four nights instead of two. Think was a good choice, lots of game and fun with water crossings. No much mud. For every mud hole there is already a little detour track around it, sometimes through the bush though, lots of scratching from vegetation.

3rd Brigde from Xaxanaka: we were advised by our car rental guy to take left immediately after reaching the other end of the bridge, danger of getting stuck in biggish pool in the middle (they had to recover one customer a few days back). Seemed good advice and had no problems.

1st and 2nd Bridge broken. Actually one of them, think its 2nd B. was still holding up but in such a bad shape that better go through water. Met this SA guy that went through it but had to use all his firewood to put in on the gaps left by the loose logs.
Waded both crossings on foot to check depth, water around knee level, compact sandy bottom, deepens very gradually, easy for experienced 4x4ers but for a first timer... did it in low range and diff-lock just in case (perhaps an overkill in this case but I din't care). Entered the water in 2nd gear with a little bit of momentum at about 2000 revs so still plenty of power left to slowly push the throttle further while in the middle of the crossing. Hope this must be the way. These landies feel like tractors and seem to go through anything. I'm starting to like them.

2nd bridge is done through the left side as you come from 3rd B., the right seemed easier but there was a nasty looking hard mud step at the edge of the water on the far end, looked easy to loose momentum/traction as you come out of the water and get stuck there.
1st Br. done through the right. (check this because it could be the other way round with the bridges, my memory is not so good but I'm almost certain is like that).
Apparently the road becomes impassable somewhere after 1st B. but never reached this point myself, mostly did the Mboma routes which seemed to have more game.

On our way back to camp we were in the middle of the water crossing at 1st B. when we saw our first elephants, a group of about 6, females and calves that as it happens, decided to cross the path just on the other end of the water we were crossing. My wife all excited seeing her first ellies in her life yelling at me: elephants, look, elephants!, me trying to tell her how to get them on video with our new photo camera while at the same time trying to control the noise of the car but didn't want to stop in the middle of the water for fear of getting stuck so it was still quite loud on low range. Chaos moment. The ellies weren't happy though, didn't like the noise of the car but there was not much I could do, it all happened at once. Out of the water I stopped the car, but then tought it wasn't such a good idea either, if they charge, we're trapped with the water at our back. The last two adult ellies on the line looked at us very pissed off but fortunately run off the track, ears out, tail streched, trunk up and loudly trumpeting away... truly sorry mums, didn't want to scare your little ones.

At dark before dinner I'm coming back from the shower block and I encounter another elephant standing in the middle of the path, seems a big lone male. Today it's elephant day. I was walking with no light as there was full moon so I nearly bump into him before I realize what's this big dark shadow in front of me. I stand there puzzled like an idiot and wait to see if he goes away but not, he's not moving, just keeps staring at me, then he does this kind of warning display: ears out, rumbles and lifts a front foot like saying go away muppet! so I decide to cut through the bush to get to my campsite as he is blocking the way. Switch on my headlight but cannot resist turning back to have another peek at the big ellie. Wrong. He doesn't like the light at all and does another mock charge display, this time rumbling louder, much more convincing -alright matey, got the message- and I bugger off scrambling through the bush in the dark. No messing with this guy.

Plenty of game on the plains just next to the campsite: lots of impala and giraffe, largish herd of buffalo and zebra and a few ugly wildebeest. They seemed to concentrate between 3rd B and Mboma perhaps due to the high waters. The next night we were suddenly woken up by these very loud lionroars, two lions calling each other. I nearly jump out my sleeping bag and I'm not a light sleeper. I've heard loudish lion roars before in Tanzania but this was much much closer, in fact they were on the campsite next to ours. Sounds like an amplifier full blast, gave me the shivers. They called each other until they met. Don't know if they were a male and female or what but went the next morning to look at the footprints and they were big. I think this sound is somehow hardwired on our brain from the distant past, there is no way one can hear that and not twitch even a little.

Went out to find the lions next morning but didn't see much game nor lions. Back in camp for lunch another lone close encounter with ellies, I seemed to be a magnet for them but I carried no fruit! After lunch the swambo is happily sleeping siesta in the car and I making some coffee, two ellies, not huge but big enough, come out of the marsh and walk into our campsite, I keep quiet, I don't wake the wife up just in case she screams or something and let them do their stuff, they liked the bark from one tree and the earth from a hole on the campsite grounds which they spray themselves with. Then they drank some water from the marsh and move on to the next campsite to mess with some other hole in the ground. They do weird things these ellies but I love to watch them. I take millions of stills but the light it's no so good under the trees, I forgot I could have done video with my brand new camera... damn!

On the afternoon drive we finally see the lions, don't know if they're the same from the other night, two males on the side of the track while they were waking up and stretching after siesta. Magical moment, just us and the beasts: for about an hour we watched them while on the other side of the track lots of impala, some zebra and one ugly tsessebe, all frozen like bloody statues were there just staring straight at the lions, not moving a muscle, just a little swinging of the tails fending off the flies, bizarre, never seen them so perfectly still. You could sense the tension. They seemed ready to run off like the devil the minute the lions made a suspicious move which unfortunately they didn't, the bastards were just lazily walking around and yawing. The funny thing is that all the animals seemed to simply ignore us like we weren't there.

Next day in the afternoon another treat: bumped into a group of 6 young-ish cheetahs. Nice slick creatures. Followed them for a long time, again no other humans on sight, they crossed the road, there was a group of impala on the distance so they "deployed": 2 to the left through the grass, then 2 to the right through some bushes and the other 2 carried on next to the road but the impalas had seen them and fled so at the end nothing happened and some of the cheetahs just started fooling around a bit roughing each other.

We did the Mboma loop, the way there is easy but near Mboma we followed a track that goes through the bush-forest, sometimes it's difficult to see the path amongst the trees, feels like a bloody BBC wildlife documentary. Lots of scratching from branches. By now the car was almost impossible to drive. Had to constantly pump the clutch but it's not good anymore. While in the middle of the trees we're stuck, no gears would go in. Great place to get stuck, while I'm there wondering whether the satphone would work under the trees but it could be difficult to find us anyway even with the GPS coordinates, I hear a car approaching, guess who: the dutchman appears again out of nowhere just when we need him! This is strange indeed. He plays around with the clutch, refills with fluid which was half empty and shows me how to pump properly, not just hastily press the clutch but pump as if you're inflating something. Apparently there is a leak somewhere so we loose fluid and the clutch gets air bubbles in the hydraulics so that's why it gets stiff. Thanks again mate, don't know what to say, he's our guardian angel.

Our next destination is Savuti which is a long way so I decide to call Maun and get the mechanic to fix the clutch for good, I'm sick of so much pumping and refilling the fluid twice a day now, besides I only have half a bottle left. We arrange to meet next morning at South Gate since we have to go there anyway in order to get to Savuti, have to use the transit road through Sankuyo and then Mababe. Some three Kms after Mababe's steel bridge over the river Khwai there is the detour to Savuti to the right, it's signposted.
The mechanic tells me that he had completely replaced the clutch before we got the car except from one part, the something-sleeve which he couldn't get in time so he put that of another running car and that's the cause of the problem as it is leaking. Ok, I should be of pissed off, I should have known that, it's made my life difficult for many days but really I don't care anymore, I'm happy to be able to carry on. After he fixed it we never had problems with the clutch for the rest of the trip, no more pumping and we just topped up with a tiny bit of fluid every now and then. What a relief.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

source: 4x4 community forum