An Elepant Dies on the Makgadikgadi Pan

Water pools along the Boteti River in the Mkadikgadi, Botswana

After leaving Cape Town, South Africa we traveled by air to Maun, Botswana to prepare for our seven day safari into the Moremi Game Reserve, Savuti Marsh, Chobe National Park, and finishing in Livingstone, Zambia where we visited Victoria Falls, one of the seven wonders of the world. While waiting to start our safari in Maun we decided to rent a four wheel drive pickup and travel the 70 or so miles to the Makgadikgadi Pan. 

The Makgadikgadi Pan, together with Nxai Pan forms the Makgadikgadi and Nxai Pan National Park. The park contains a number of diverse habitats including riverine woodland, scrubland, grassland, and salt pans. Large areas of the Pans are covered in lush swathes of mixed grasses that offer a banquet for thousands of animals including species like wildebeest, zebra, springbok, oryx, kudo, and steenbok among others. Predators including lions, leopards, cheetah, and extremely rare wild dogs are attracted to the Pans where they hunt this abundant bounty. The grasses of the Pans, like 'prickly salt grass,' are adapted to the alkaline soils of the region and you can sometimes see salt crystals on their blades. The grasses are also adapted to dry conditions as the Pans receive very little rainfall. As a result, the rivers of the Pan, like the Boteti River, only flow during the rainy season between November and April if at all. The precipitation of the rainy season supports perennial pools located in the riverbeds and flood plains that attract waterbuck, bushbuck and resident hippos. These rains are also essential lifeblood for the grasses of the Pans, which are revitalized and spring back to life after going dormant during the long dry period. The Pans are truly captivating and you can feel their ancient appeal as you travel through them.

An oryx peers through the burnt bush of the Makgadikgadi

We entered Makgadikgadi National Park through the Phuduhudu Gate where upon leaving the black top of Botswana’s Highway A3 we instantly found ourselves driving through the deep sands that dominant the Makgadikgadi. The truck felt and drove like maneuvering a bicycle through thick pudding. It took a while to figure out the correct gears to navigate in, but eventually we were able to maneuver easily through the soft sands without ever getting stuck. Within a hundred meters of passing through the gate at Phuduhudu we entered a barren, burned landscape that stretched for as far as the eye could see. The Makgadikgadi, which we later discovered had suffered a massive bush fire two weeks previous to our arrival, had been transformed into a blackened moonscape. The only area having been spared was the riparian woodlands of the Boteti River, which itself had just started flowing again in 2009 after 20 years of drought. The area was desolate, silent, eerily devoid of almost all animal life, not a single singing bird, and the few wildebeest, giraffe, and oryx we did encounter appeared as if a surreal mirage against the blackened background that confronted us.

An elephant carcass lies within the burnt bush of the Makgadikgadi

Leaving the Boteti, we traveled deep into the burned area when miles in front of us we began to see numerous vultures circling almost directly above the sandy two-track we traveled on. As we approached closer we were able to make out a hulking mass just off the road to our left. “It’s an elephant, a dead elephant,” we exclaimed! As we pulled up and shut down the engine we were at once exhilarated and deeply saddened by the image before us. Elephants are incredibly intelligent, have complex social structures, and seem able to feel grief for their dead. All of this made our encounter bittersweet. We left the truck, approached the lifeless hulking mass, walked around it, snapping photos in complete silence for what seemed like an hour. Having never been so close (we touched it!) to an elephant in the wild, there really was nothing to say. We knew this was a once in a lifetime experience. The carcass was splattered with vulture droppings, its eyes long since eaten from their sockets, the stench abhorrent, yet we stood mesmerized before it. What had happened to this individual? Its death didn’t appear to be a direct result of the fire. Had it become disoriented and separated from its family by the fire? Unable to find food, water, and alone had it simply succumbed to the brutal landscape left by the fire? Was it disease that killed it? We would never know the answer, but we will never forget having come across its lifeless form lying among this desolation.

We finally left the carcass and began our return to the blacktop highway and the safety of Maun. As we looked back at the sun setting over the pans we reflected on our experience and thought how the beauty of a Makgadikgadi sunset is like no other, how the vastness of the Pans seemingly endless desert brings one face-to-face with true isolation, and that the landscape left behind by the fire made it seem even more so. Memories of our visit to the Pans will remain with us forever.

For further information on the lives of elephants and their conservation in Africa a fascinating read is Martin Meredith's "Elephant Destiny: Biography of an Endangered Species in Africa."

We will be taking a break over the holidays, but will be back with another interesting story from our recent travels in Africa after the new year.

Cape Town, South Africa a Truely Cosmopolitan City

Cape  Town and Table Bay as viewed from Table Mountain

We started our recent excursion to Africa in Cape Town, a beautiful city with a population of over 3 million people, making it South Africa’s second most populous city and at over 900 square miles it’s largest in land area. Cape Town is located on Table Bay at the northern end of the Cape Peninsula. The Peninsula is an amazingly rocky, mountainous land mass that juts out from the southwestern tip of the African continent for some 40 miles into the Atlantic Ocean. It is at the southern tip of this peninsula, Cape Point that travelers flock to, camera in tow, to snap photos of themselves at the southern most point of the Africa continent. Cape Town and the surrounding region are unlike most all of the rest of South Africa. The city has a distinctive European flavor, it is considered one of the most multicultural cities in the world, has been designated a “Places of a Lifetime” by National Geographic, and is much more affluent than the rest of South Africa.

The V&A Waterfront with Table Mountain in the background

While there, we visited the upscale Victoria and Albert Waterfront or the V&A Waterfront, as it is locally known, the actual working harbor of Cape Town. Trendy bars, upscale condominiums, and two world class aquariums makes the V&A Waterfront Cape Town’s top tourist destination. The offerings of the V&A include two world class aquariums one of which we visited. While there we saw amazing animals native to the regions oceans including the ribbon eel (Rhinomuraena quaesita), a peculiar and secretive moray eel inhabiting lagoon and seaward reefs, where buried in the sand or hiding in rocks or reefs it dashes out to feed on shrimp and fish. This strange animal is the sole member of its genus and the only moray eel that undergoes abrupt changes in coloration and sex: it is a protandrous hermaphrodite, meaning that functioning males can reverse sex to become females, a strange creature indeed.

Juvenile ribbon eels at  the at Two Oceans Aquarium

Proteas atop Table Mountain

While in Cape Town we also visited Table Mountain, a giant monolith that towers over the city and forms a large portion of Table Mountain National Park. While atop the mountain we walked through a landscape of strange vegetation, a unique plant type occurring nowhere else in the world except for along 120 miles of the Cape of South Africa's coastline. This flora is so unique it is assigned to its own floristic kingdom, the Cape Floristic Kingdom, which for the most part is covered in fynbos, an Afrikaan word meaning “fine bush.” This arid bushland mimics the dry mountain shrublands of the western United States. Coming from Colorado, it was eerie walking through this landscape filled with plants, although unrecognizable, were very similar in appearance to plants of Colorado’s arid west slope. The fynbos contains plants with strange names like the proteas, the grass like ericas, and the rush-like flowering restios. I hope you have a chance to visit this amazing part of South Africa and experience the fynbos for yourself, visit the T&A Waterfront, and maybe even take a trip to Cape Point for a photo at Africa’s southern most point. Visit us again next week when we will begin a discussion of our experiences in Botswana.

Great White Shark Diving in South Africa

Traveling is so exciting and our October trip to southern Africa, including Botswana and South Africa was no exception. My partner Dan Hopkins and Ashwini Kumar, a mutual friend, started our trip in Cape Town, South Africa. A beautiful city perched at the base of Table Mountain along South Africa’s magnificent South Atlantic Coast. While there, the three of us toured with White Shark Ecoventures out of Gansbaai, South Africa on a great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) cage diving excursion and what an adventure it turned out to be!

All of the photos were taken during the actual tour and you can also see a video of our tour at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=GrassTrackSafaris#p/u/0/yBA_HvhSW4s

A Great White Shark going after chum

Great White Sharks are found in the coastal waters of California–Baja California, Australia–New Zealand, and South Africa. Management and conservation of this rare and threatened animal have been limited, partly because its migrations and the linkages between populations were poorly understood and difficult to research until the development of sophisticated telemetry instruments. In the early 2000s, tagging with acoustic satellite telemetry transmitters and subsequent tracking of great white sharks off the Western Cape of South Africa in the vicinity of Gansbaai has proven for the first time that these magnificent killing machines frequently undertake extensive migrations from the waters off Gansbaai, through the open sea to Australia–New Zealand, and back again. This research has shown that great white sharks are seasonal visitors (from June to December) to the Gansbaai area and that they make this transoceanic migration on a regular basis. Our African expedition took us to Gansbaai on 28 September 2010, perfect timing for viewing the sharks off of Gansbaai.

A shark trailing the chum line, approaches the dive cage

The morning was cold and breezy as we boarded our boat and traveled a few miles off of the southern tip of the African continent to the great white shark viewing area. During our boat cruise the wind abated and the temperatures steadily rose, making it warmish when we reached the viewing area. Still, few of the 20 or so of us on the excursion were prepared to make the initial plunge so Dan, Ashwini, and I along with two brave Australian women clamored over the edge of the boat into a cage strapped at the surface to its side and dropped into the icy waters, the initial group of five people to view the sharks. We did not actually dive, but rather outfitted with goggles, snorkels, and wet suits were to enter the cage and drop beneath the water’s surface at our guides command to view  these magnificent beasts as they trailed after a chum line pulled past the front of the cage. I had barely entered the cage, still in shock from the chilling effect of the water when I heard our guide shout, “dive.” Beneath the surface, confronted by a gray-murkiness I was disoriented, trying to focus on anything when suddenly all I could see was a mouth agape with huge teeth and snout, boom, a great white smacked into the cage right in front of me. I instinctively recoiled against the back of the cage and the boat behind me. Pumped with adrenaline, both at once ecstatic and terrified, I shot to the surface as the shark disappeared and I let out a loud whoop! I will never forget the very moment that shark came into focus and I encourage all reading this to seek such an experience at least once in your lifetime. Return next week for another interesting story of our recent trip to Africa!

A Great White Shark takes the chum