Dance Intermission. Botswana Trilogy Part 1½.

I mentioned in the last post that the guys at Chitabe Camp in Botswana put on a dance just for the two of us.

Here it is...

Hope you like it as much as we did!

Phil & Annick

Ugg the Entrepreneur. Botswana Trilogy part 1 Chitabe Camp.

I sometimes ponder on the things that have happened to bring me to this place, here and now. What rolls of the die were played? Not just in my lifetime (like that time I stumbled upon a shy French girl in a dark corner of a dubious public house), but the random chances that led to me even being here at all.
Take as an example; my Dad. If he had not been called back to London from the trenches in the Second World War, he would have been killed along with ALL of his friends. Because of a stupid clerical error, I am here.

In every generation, there will be errors like that, chance happenings that lead to this point in time. How far back does the hand of fate go? 

I guess that the random asteroid that wiped out most dinosaurs counts as a biggy. Thankfully that big rock didn’t kill them all. Imagine life without these:

A million random events. 

Take another example. One of my ancestors (and yours too if you happen to be human) was key in what happened to our species.

His name was Ugg the Entrepeneur.

I can picture the film poster now. Ugg standing in front of a wild African sunset, holding not a barbarian axe, but instead one of those things that entrepreneurs hold. You know, er, I cannot think of it now but it would certainly look very impressive.

(Ugg was not available for the photo shoot)

Ugg was the guy who led us out of the trees. He could see the writing on the wall. Not that they had writing 300,000 years ago. Or walls come to that. 

Trees, he thought, were passé. Who’d want to live in a tree?

Current wisdom was that we lived in trees for safety. Well, maybe at one time that was true, but those pesky cats soon figured out that it was to their advantage.

Even the biggest cats decided that climbing trees meant fast food...

Ugg felt that there had to be another way. 

Anyway, climate change meant the trees were dying out in preference to savannah. 

Those big tree-eating machines weren’t helping either. 

Plus they gave Ugg an inferiority complex.

Ugg decided to get down from the trees, stand upright so as to see his prey, lose his hair so that he could sweat (and ogle the women), and generally live a long healthy life. The fact that his kids screwed it all up by settling on farms 290,000 years later was not his fault.

Being one of his offspring, I thought it worth visiting the tree where Ugg lived. 

Thus we found ourselves in the Okavango Delta, Botswana.

Well, so much for our heritage. 

We stayed in a camp very near where Ugg lived (within several thousand kilometers!). I have to say, things have moved on a lot in the last 300,000 years. 

Still living in trees though.

Admittedly we had to slum it. Our tent had only one (enormous) bed, two sinks, flush toilet, shower and handy baboons. The food was the best I’ve ever had in a camp on Safari, and the staff were absolutely magnificent. Mama Jo made us feel at home and part of her family. I miss my Mama....

That’s her on the left, keeping me from the bottle like all good Mamas.
She even organised a dance just for the two of us... .

And came on game drives with us as a spotter. 

We spotted a lot! 

Whilst we were spotted even more...

It has not escaped my attention that the most successful of the predators are cats. This is probably of no surprise to those of you who keep cats. 

Or, more accurately, those of you whom are kept by cats. 

Dogs seem to be lower down in the pecking order, cornering the market in scavenging. 

This should also come as no surprise. 

The one exception are wild dogs. One of our key objectives was to see them, but here at Chitabe we missed them by just two days. Out hunt for wild dogs was to reach a startling climax in our third camp Kwango Lagoon) but for now our next stop was to be further north in the Okavango Delta, leaving behind an amazing camp.

To be amazed at all the photos from Chitabe, click here. 

Next up: the Botswana Trilogy part 2, Shinde Camp.