BEYOND THE FRONTIERS

Join Lorne & Heidi Sulcas on an incredible journey deep into the Kalahari and onto Namibia where they spent a memorable five weeks in the bush with enough excitement to last a lifetime. 

Part Two...

We are often asked what our days were like when we were in the bush and just what camping is all about.

We were never alone in the campsites. One meets some very interesting people from all over the world, Lorne talks to everyone, often asking them where they’ve been and what they’ve seen, actually very important as the parks are very large and you only see a very small percentage from the roads. When someone has seen something you haven’t, it’s nice to know about it.

Our typical day began before sunrise, dressing and getting into truck to be at the gate when it opened at sunrise. (The camp gates are closed sunset to sunrise if you’re not in camp when the gate closes at night, you get fined). We’d leave camp and start our morning game drive and have our picnic breakfast en route in the car. Lorne would often start photographing in the beautiful early morning light. I had the chance to photograph, particularly when we were in extraordinary sightings, I did the digital photography while Lorne shot slides and then  my work would be edited in the evenings. My primary job however was doing all  the changing of film, lenses, camera bodies, cleaning of equipment, etc.  

We spent usually three to five hours in the car in the morning depending on what we saw, then we returned to camp and had lunch. Then it was time to relax. Most afternoons, I did things like laundry (by hand, of course!), start on dinner preparations, fix things that needed attention, or just enjoy a good book. Then at about 15h00, we’d have a snack, and get into the truck for the afternoon game drive for about two to three hours until sunset. Then back to camp at sunset for dinner and bed. The simplicity of the days was wonderful.  

When the time came to leave the Kalahari and continue our trip to Namibia, we decided to go through Botswana for the first 60 km because we were told the roads were much better, which they were, but the border crossings are a bit of a mission. Nobody is in too much of a hurry.  

It was actually quite interesting driving past some of these little villages and mud and thatch huts in the middle of literally nowhere. You wonder what these people do or if they have contemplated the purpose of their lives or if it really matters; maybe we’re the ones who worry about that too much. They seemed friendly and happy-spirited.  

 

It took us the better part of that day to stock up in Upington with supplies, have the truck’s oil changed and the air filter blown out. From the beginning you just have to “make friends” with the dust because by the end of five weeks it was in our underwear! The next day we drove for 10 hours and stopped just south of Windhoek in Namibia to camp for the night. Then on to Etosha the following morning.  

We checked in at Etosha’s Anderson gate, proceeded to our first camp, Okakuejo, stopping via the first waterhole, which was simply packed with animals. It felt like we’d come home. Etosha has a magic, especially in the animals. We had bought an illustrated map of the park, which was an illustrated guide to the most common birds and animals found at Etosha. We sighted almost all the large mammals and without even really looking, about 85 species of birds. 

We set up our first camp, as in the Kalahari, each camp has its resident critters to deal with. In the Kalahari, Nossob, our favorite camp, was also home to the cooler-stealing jackal. 

Okakuejo in Etosha had bold ground squirrels. As Tali said to me the one evening on our stroll back from the restrooms, “Mom, the ground squirrels are a bit of a challenge here.” 

Our second camp in Etosha had a problem honeybadger, which was fun because I had never seen one before he came to visit me one evening when I was in camp by myself.  He also visited us one night at 3 in the morning and gracefully pushed over our trash can to raid it.  Our third camp in Etosha had a band of banded mongooses, which Tali got a real thrill out of chasing around camp.  They were also quite bold and all 30 would come begging for handouts, which unfortunately some folks give to these wild animals. 

Tali continued her investigation of all the little critters in every camp.  In Etosha, she discovered ant lions and was sticking her little fingers down every hole she could find until Lorne taught her how to lure them out of their holes. She was never successful at it, but it kept her busy for hours. One afternoon I was in the bathroom giving her a much needed bath and when I pulled her out of the tub she saw a beetle crawling across the floor.  There was no convincing her to dry off and get dressed; this little soaking wet naked body was off chasing “buggy beetle” because she had to touch him. It was hilarious and she provided much entertainment for other campers who were coming into shower. 

The evenings were much warmer in Etosha, no freezing temperatures and the days quite hot. There are some breathtaking vistas around the Etosha pan itself, spectacular sunsets in the park every night and the usual magnificent sights of zebra, wildebeest and springbok strolling through the blond coloured grass on the way to somewhere.  

One very nice thing about the camps in Etosha is that every one has a lit waterhole that you can view from through the night and see incredible sights without leaving camp. At our first camp there were herds of elephants every night. We saw black rhino there several times. Interestingly, while in Etosha there were sightings of lion and leopard at the waterholes as well.  

Of course, there is always the regular game, gemsbok, springbok, zebra, hartebeest, warthog, etc. The first day in Etosha we saw a pair of mating lions, (though not as close-up as the ones in the Kalahari) and we had a sighting of two lionesses and four cubs right next to the road. We actually had 18 different lion sightings in 14 days!! Fantastic!

 

We viewed a pair of cheetah right at the edge of the pan one morning, not close enough to photograph, but Lorne nevertheless said later that it had been one of his favourite sightings because of the wildness of it, of having found it personally, so far away, with no one else there.

Etosha pan itself is an incredible sight. The animals are attracted mostly to fresh water springs at the edge of the pan, so in the winter months one really only has to drive from waterhole to waterhole to see most of the animals. There are some water holes and seeps however, that are not accessible by roads. The pan floods in the long rains in January through March, but only to about two feet deep across a massive area of about 4700 square kilometers. The pan at its widest point is 110 km by 60 km.

The animals are dispersed during the rains and then when the pan dries in April, the animals congregate again around the springs. It is incredible to stand at the edge of the pan, there is nothing as far as the eye can see. The horizon is a blur and you’re not quite sure where the sky starts, but in the distance there’s a black speck on the horizon that will be a wildebeest or an ostrich walking across the pan, who knows from where, and coming to find water. Such an intriguing sight and one that must be experienced in person.  

There is a point in the park where you can drive out onto the pan and feel the dry soda clay, which of course we did. We had three different sightings of African wildcat, which is very rare and very difficult to photograph. We saw 11 lions feeding on a fresh kill of an adult wildebeest. What a noise! We saw six lions drinking at a waterhole just before sunset and then chased off by a couple of breeding herds of elephants (about 40 elephant in total).  

We sat at one of our favorite waterholes one entire afternoon and had about three to four hours of continuous arrivals and departures of elephant families, huge bulls to several week old tiny little ones, coming to drink and spar, etc. That same afternoon we were chased away from the waterhole by two sparring teenage bulls who decided they wanted to be exactly where we were parked. It was a bit too close for comfort.  

I love seeing elephant, but inside of a 5 m comfort zone for me I start getting nervous. It’s when they’re that close that you realize how huge they are and all it takes is pushing them a little too far and they’ll just roll you over like a tin can. 

One of the waterholes that is in the middle of a large flat grassland area attracts huge herds of zebra, springbok, and wildebeest early in the morning, and a few mornings we went to sit there and watch the procession of thousands of animals come to drink.  It’s not really the drinking that’s so interesting, it’s everything else that happens on the way, the sparring, mating, kicking, fighting, grooming, etc.  

On one of the mornings that Lorne went for a short drive on his own to take advantage of the first light, he found a male lion marking his territory and calling. I could see when Lorne got back that he had one of those special moments being alone with a lion with no one else around at the sighting.

One afternoon we decided to drive one of the very seldom traveled tracks in the park and see what we could find and as we rounded a bend there was an open expanse of grassland with hundreds and thousands of zebra and giraffe. 

On the horizon was an enormous bull elephant strolling purposefully toward a waterhole. It was such an incredible sight. He was so big it took us a minute to decide if he was a tree or an elephant. We managed to get to the waterhole in time to see him chase all the other animals away from the water so he could drink. We had another sighting of a lone bull elephant at one of the waterholes called Goas just as the sun was setting and he decided to have a bath after his drink. 

It was a spectacular sight in magnificent evening light. He was a bit more relaxed and let the other animals hang around while he did his thing. At the same time, a pair of giraffe were fighting next to our vehicle. One of the most spectacular things about the waterholes in Etosha is the variety of species that you can see simultaneously. 

There were a few times that we saw just about every large mammal species that exists in Etosha at the waterhole at the same time, including red hartebeest, eland, kudu, black-faced impala, springbok, elephant, zebra, wildebeest, warthog, giraffe, etc.

We had a brilliant sighting one morning of two springbok rams in a death fight. They had their horns locked and were both dripping blood from the nostrils and mouth by the time they broke apart. It was an unbelievable sight.

We had a fairly rare sighting of a gymnogene, which is a bird of prey that looks like a cross between an eagle and a vulture. We also saw pygmy falcons a couple of times and once, we saw a pair on a nest in a palm tree that was at a waterhole where there happened to be four lion cubs playing, two lioness, and one lion slumbering in the sun. That was a great morning. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That same morning we had a sighting of a magnificent male lion a couple of kilometers from camp at a waterhole nearby.  He had been roaring close by all night, so we knew we had a good chance of finding him in the early morning somewhere near the camp. We saw the pride of lions with the 4 little cubs several times near the same waterhole on different days. They were very good value.  

One morning in the brilliant early sun, they were stalking Egyptian geese and swiping at their reflections in the water. It was so funny to watch.  Lorne was laughing so hard that he accidentally dropped his camera with a not inexpensive telephoto lens attached, onto the hard gravel.  Miraculously, the assembly landed on the viewfinder of the camera body, and not the digital body, thank goodness. The viewfinder smashed to a million pieces, but thankfully we could still use the camera.  

One day we had three different lion sightings.

In the many years Lorne had worked as a ranger in the Kruger National Park area, and particularly with the three-year long predator study he did, he said he’d seen this phenomenon several times. The other female was very old and not looking too healthy and the young males were not interested in her, poor thing. Then we saw a pride of nine lions snoozing in the shade.  The visibility wasn’t very good, but they were there.

There is one area of the pan that has semi-permanent water and is the home to many thousands of pink flamingoes. One morning as we drove past the area, a flock of hundreds took flight and there was just a sea of pink in the sky.  It was another one of those moments that shouts to you: 

This is Africa. It’s so great to be here.

We had evenings like that almost every day that we were at our third camp. For three nights in a row, we photographed giraffe silhouetted by the red ball of the African sun as it set, the tail of the giraffe gently blowing in the dying wind from the heat of the day.  

We photographed giraffe running across the grasslands in the last light of the day, a sight that must be experienced to justify its beauty.

A sight that makes time stand still.

 

One afternoon we drove up to a little spring on the edge of the pan and as we got there a bull elephant was wallowing in the little pool of water. It hardly seemed big enough for him, but he managed to coat himself, every square inch, completely with the green-gray mud from the pan.  As he walked across the savanna away from the waterhole, the sun’s rays rendered him totally green!! 

On our last day in Etosha we spent the entire day in the park, racing to the gate to get out just as the sun set. We couldn’t tear ourselves away. In morning light, a lioness stalking wildebeest…it was a failed attempt, but nonetheless a great sighting.  We saw her four cubs at the waterhole playing and frolicking. 

We viewed an endless herd of hundreds of wildebeest walking in exact single file through the blond grasslands to come to the waterhole, where the lion cubs were waiting. We went to our next waterhole and except for elephant, saw every single species of large mammals drinking. A male lion had just drunk and was sitting in the bush next to the water. There were hundreds of animals there at one time. 

We saw 11 lions lounging in the shade at another waterhole. It was midday, so they weren’t too exciting. We arrived at a waterhole to a sight of about 70 elephant drinking and trumpeting, chasing warthogs and springbok away from the water. 

Then about 500 zebra came through to drink, fight and generally 'behave' at the water. Then all the other plains game followed. The elephant hung out for a good two to three hours.  

We were actually physically sore from photographing we were there so long (it’s actually very physical with changing lenses, shifting/maintaining postures, etc). The elephant eventually had a good wallow in the deep part of the waterhole and chomped at the reeds at the same time, sparring, trumpeting, pooping and farting. It was perhaps the best elephant sighting we have ever had!!  With that, we had to leave Etosha, feeling thrilled and replete. See Part One 

 

Copyright © Lorne & Heidi Sulcas

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