16 September

16 September

Woke up very late this morning at Linyanti – 6:40 am!!!! We did last night’s dishes and the friendly white South African nuclear plant worker wished us a good trip. He had been travelling alone for 2 months and sleeping in the back of his jeep.

The campsite maintenance people showed up and began to clean the spot where he had camped. A big elephant was browsing threateningly not 10 meters from them, lifting an entire tree trunk with his tusks to get at the leaves beneath. Eventually the cleaning lady had to scare him off by banging her broom on the hood of their car.

The manager advised us to travel 10km east if we wanted our power steering fixed. We had discovered that the belt had come off. There is a lodge at that location and we drove into their service camp (where the staff sleep). They were very friendly and we were lucky enough that the mechanic was there for the week from Maun. He fixed it for us as we all talked about the last football world cup, and decided not to charge us after we told him, that we too believed in god. We did give him a big donation anyway.

We then drove south for 40km through the worst and deepest sand tracks of the whole trip, meeting only one other car on the way. Driving inland from the rivers, the forests are dry and barren and there is basically no sign of animal life.

Eventually the forest turned into a grassland plain and we knew we had reached Savuti. To the right through the bush we could see a narrow channel of water flowing peacefully. We crossed a bridge to the other side of the channel and after a few more sand tracks reached our lodge. It is always a little odd being welcomed to such beautiful lodges when you’re bare feet are black from the dirt and your hands are grimy.

The lodge is amazing. There is a big fence around that only keeps out elephants; we are not allowed out of our rooms at night and have been provided with a horn in case lions decide to sleep on our deck. The deck is right on top of the channel and there are so incredibly many elephants in bathing in it – Ive seen a lot of elephants throughout the whole KAZA area but never so many in one spot. They are mostly old bulls – scratch that, a huge herd with babies has just arrived, running down to the waterside thirstily.

This may be my favourite place so far. After a brief lunch and tea, we went on our drive. Our guide is called Gwist, and we share him with 4 others – one young couple and one old couple, both German.  

What I like about Savuti is the landscape - big open yellow grassy plains with the occasional tree and black forested hills standing out solitarily. Our game drive didn’t begin too well. We saw a lot of elephant as usual – is it bad that im beginning to find the sight of them too common?, and some antelope but not much else. He took us to known leopard territory without luck, and then as we stopped to observe a big elephant it appeared we had a flat tire. We had to wait in the heat for 15min while he fixed it (very quick might I add), and were off. Luckily this was still early on.

We reached the Savuti marsh a short while later, and I spotted a wild dog jogging through the grass and pointed it out to Gwist. Then two more appeared and all 3 of them were trotting in search of prey scattering the elephant herds in their path. As Gwist radioed it in to our fellow lodgers, other vehicles began to notice and soon there was a herd of cars parked at the side of the road.  The dogs crossed the road (which is completely flooded) ahead of us, but Gwist was hesitant to drive through the water. After a few other vehicles went, and finally another guide from our lodge we went for it. We caught up with the dogs but eventually they were lost in a bush and didn’t come out, so we decided to move on.

We saw a spotted hyena run off, and decided to step down to watch the sunset with some drinks. Most interestingly, two small long-legged birds were screaming at us and opening their wings trying to warn us away from their nest which must have been nearby. Despite their small size (maybe 30cm tall), it actually became a little frightening. Especially as I was bending down to film it from their height.