Family travel through a slightly twisted lens. Sense of humor required. Shoes optional.
One of the prettiest birds we saw during our trip was the national bird of Botswana, the Lilac Breasted Roller. In fact, I could not stop taking pictures of it.
Mashatu:
Mala Mala:
This pair of Lilac Breasted Rollers was clearly nesting in this tree on the lawn at Mala Mala.
On our very last day, as we were waiting to leave for the airstrip, I managed to get a photo of one in flight.
Leopard at Mala Mala
20-22 September 2009
My brother and mother have done a brilliant job delivering the blow-by-blow of the vacation over at Mashatu Tiger; here’s a link to Doug’s summary of our arrival at Mala Mala and here’s Mum’s rundown on our time there.
I’ll bottom line it for you. Mala Mala Main Camp is beautiful and very elegant. We saw some amazing animals, including the Secretary Bird and the Ground Hornbill. Lots of lions, leopards, elephant and giraffe. We had a tremendous sighting of two bull rhinos on the last morning. We saw a mother and baby hippo walking across the lawn around 11 pm from our room. Our ranger, Lucky, was phenomenal. He was even able to spot a chameleon in a tree at night.
For most of these photos, you’ll need to visit my brother’s photo gallery because I managed to delete a whole bunch of my pictures from Mala Mala when I got home (don’t ask, I am still pissed about it.)
Nevertheless, we preferred Mashatu. Why? Mala Mala is elegant and the hospitality is impeccable. It just didn’t feel as friendly and down to earth as Mashatu. In fairness, our experience of Mashatu may be a little colored by Mum’s friendship with Afke and deep knowledge of the native animals due to her time spent “at the Pond.” Likewise, our first night at Mala Mala was not the smoothest — starting with the long delay of the plane and ending with some confusion upon arrival, well detailed in my mom and brother’s posts linked above.
However, I’m a pretty objective person. Even after I eliminate all of that, if your budget is limited and you can only do one “luxury” game reserve, I would recommend Mashatu over Mala Mala. If you can visit both, by all means do. The landscapes are completely different, and there are animals in each place that you just won’t see in the other.
But if you have to choose, make it Mashatu.
That said, here are some of my favorite pictures from Mala Mala.
Photo Sets: September 20, 21, 22
Links:
We went to Africa because of Pete’s Pond.
A few years ago, my mom got involved in the online community for the National Geographic webcam at Pete’s Pond in Botswana.
Pete’s Pond is an artificial watering hole created to give the animals on the Mashatu Game Reserve an alternative water source to the nearby Limpopo River where they are easy targets for poachers. The webcam shares the activity at the Pond with viewers around the world.
Including my mom.
Last year, at about this time, my brother got the idea that we should take Mom to Africa. Amazingly, we made it happen.
The webcam is located in a hide, and runs 24×7. At night, it is on an automatic sweep, but during the day, there is a camera operator to find and follow whatever action is happening at the pond. In our western mentality, we think, how much could happen at a pond? Quite a lot actually. Especially in a semi-arid climate like Botswana where there isn’t much water most of the year. And, unlike the game drives, where the animals and birds are aware of the vehicle, at the Pond, they are mostly unaware (unless there are unexpected loud noises from the hide.)
When our plane from Mashatu to Mala Mala was delayed by four hours, we were privileged to spend the time at the hide. Afke, the volunteer who runs the webcam, had come to see us off, and when we had the long wait, she graciously invited us to wait at the Pond.
My full set of pictures is on Flickr, but here are some of my favorites.
It’s hard to get good pictures of warthogs. They scamper off PDQ. I got my best shots of them from the hide.
A Bee-eater
And a Pied Kingfisher
George & Gracie, the Egyptian Geese and GuineaFowl
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Sunday September 20 2009
On our last drive at Mashatu, we got closer to an elephant than any of us ever thought we’d be… without zoo bars in between, that is. I knew we were pretty damn close when I heard Elvis mutter something like “that’s right mama, keep going…”
We also saw another leopard, ostrich and the ever-present impala. It was so interesting to see the different species interact, something we rarely see in zoos, even wonderful ones like San Diego’s Wild Animal Park.
More pictures from the morning drive.
All too soon it was time to make our way to the airport and say our good-byes. Afke, my mom’s friend who runs the camera at Pete’s Pond, came to see us off.
(Mum on the left, Afke on the right)
A mighty good thing that was, as our charter plane to Mala Mala in South Africa ended up being delayed by about four hours. Instead of hanging around the airfield or going back to Main Camp, Afke cheerily and without hesitation invited us to come to the Pond.
So all five us, Mum, Doug, me, and our now fast friends and traveling companions Michael and Gary made our way to Pete’s Pond for a completely different and quite unique wildlife viewing experience. One that you can share thanks to National Geographic’s 24-hour webcam.
More on Pete’s Pond in my next post.
Saturday, September 19 PM
Here are a few images from Mashatu Main Camp, including the resident bushbuck.
We had decided to do the Predator Drive instead of the regular game drive, so that afternoon we separated from our friends Michael and Gary, and our regular team of Elvis and Aaron, and went off with Andrei Snyman of Mashatu Research in search of one of the recently tagged leopards. The animal led us on a merry chase, but eventually Andrei was able to spot him and download some data from his collar.
We didn’t see nearly as many other animals on the Predator Drive as we had on previous drives, so if you are there for a short time I wouldn’t recommend it. However, we were at Mashatu for three days and had plenty of opportunity to see a variety of animals, so it was very interesting to see how the research process works.
If you would like to know more about the predator research at Mashatu, check out tulipredatorproject.ning.com
Andrei Snyman tracking a leopard
Impala