Alone

Friday 18th September

Mokolodi Nature Reserve, Botswana

We're in the middle of nowhere... well, we're all alone, deep in Mokolodi Nature Reserve.

 

A ranger dropped us here around noon with just a backpack, some matches and a can of Jungle Formula and he'll be back tomorrow morning to pick us up.  Apart from that, we're alone, with only a remote control panic button as a means of contacting the outside world.

 

Mokolodi Nature Reserve

We're staying in a small rondavel overlooking a dam which has almost dried out due to the serious drought currently gripping the country.  When we arrived, we were greeted by a rather large ostrich, but it didn't hang about long.  A single eland drank from the waterhole, but after that, all was quiet.  Until, that is, the warthogs came along - one family at a time to roll in the mud next to the water.

 

Soon after, a troop of baboons arrived and were fascinating to watch.  The alpha male sat back, arms folded and in a pose like Buddha, surveying the scene while the rest of the troop, including several infants, drank from the water and foraged in the mud.  Then, after a good half-hour or so, he changed posture and this signalled they should get ready to move.  He led the way and the others soon followed him over the horizon.

 

While the baboons were at the water's edge, a giraffe and a hartebeest arrived, but each held back and formed a queue.  The giraffe got bored od waiting and left for other pastures, but the hartebeest patiently waited until the last baboon had gone then proceeded to the water for a drink.  Clearly the baboons rule the roost around here.

 

Springbok

As the midday sun began to cool, a herd of springbok arrived, but to our surprise did not approach the water.  Instead, they climbed the bank and began to graze around us.  They came to within 3m of us and didn't seem bothered at all by our presence.  Each had three or four birds on its back, presumably they were eating some kind of parasites from the boks.  They stayed beside us, freezing if we moved but not running away, for about fifteen minutes until they were chased away by our next visitors - monkeys.

 

About twenty vervet monkeys surrounded us, their leader with his bright blue balls choosing to sit alongside us.  Unlike the springbok, they never froze or startles at all - quite the opposite.  These monkeys had arrived with the sole intention of terrorising us, or so it seemed.  They prowled around us, refusing to be chased and one proceeded to rip open our bag of charcoal and strew its contents around.  Not frightened of us in the slightest, they were rather intimidating with their group movement and their incessant chatter, which was clearly monkey-Tswana for "Come ahead!"

 

Vervet monkey

Like the springbok, they were only to be chased away by another group of visitors - this time baboons.  They stayed with us until darkness fell, but kept their distance unlike their smaller cousins.

 

After that, a single wildebeest coming down for a drink brought in the sunset.  As darkness fell, the chatter of the baboons ceased, replaced by the barking and howling of wild dogs and the gentle trill of crickets.

 

There's a lot of action around the waterhole at the moment, and something large is splashing about, but it's too dark to tell what it is.

 

Sunset

Our eyes are instead drawn upwards to the most spectacular sky imaginable, with distant galaxies clearly in view.  The scale of it all reminds us of what a tiny part we play in this vast universe, and for such a short time, rather like the fleeting visit of animals to the water.

 

"When I consider the glories of the cosmos, I cannot help but see a divine hand behind it all." - Einstein