Encounters with elephants

We crossed into Botswana at Kazangula, taking a ferry, of sorts, across the Zambezi and trying not to think too much about what would happen if the ferry’s spluttering diesel engine decided it had had enough (a swift journey downstream before an even swifter plummet over the Victoria Falls). Proving that the colonial powers were not always acting in an entirely arbitrary manner when carving up Africa (a great many of the continent’s borders do seem to have been pencilled in by someone overly fond of rulers and right-angles), Botswana was immediately at odds with Zambia: dryer, dustier and wealthier.

At US$10,500, Botswana’s GDP per capita is higher than any other country in Africa, and the place certainly seemed more affluent than Zambia. Kasane, the first significant settlement we reached, looked like a neglected frontier-town in the American West, or perhaps a forlorn outpost in the Australian bush. Though such towns have faded away elsewhere, their echoes seemed to offer a future for Botswana: a small town serving a farming community (almost fifty per cent of Botswana’s land is permanent pasture) or serving the tourist industry seemed a fitting model for the country.

But I am getting ahead of myself; we have only been in the country a minute or two and already I am proposing how Botswana should organise itself to ensure its continued prosperity.

Jason, Laura, Rachel and I were to spend our first few nights in Botswana in Kasane, from where we would explore Chobe National Park. Our adventures in Chobe were to be dominated by encounters with elephants. On our first evening in Botswana, we watched - enchanted - from a boat as they drank and played along the banks of the Chobe River. The pictures say more than my descriptions ever could.

Being a happy band of carefree adventurers, we decided to drive ourselves through Chobe the following day. The guidebook suggested it might be an idea to keep a safe distance from elephants and we thought this seemed a very sound proposal and so decided to go along with it. The plan though, as it turned out, was somewhat flawed, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, no-one, not even the guidebook as far as we could make out, was quite sure what a safe distance actually was; and secondly, such a plan does not appropriately prepare you for what to do when you round a corner and find an elephant rather closer than anyone’s idea of a safe distance. My first thought, if I can correctly recall, was something like: ‘gosh, aren’t elephants big.’ You might think this obvious, they after all the largest land mammal roaming this planet. But, the thing is, they’re not big; they’re huge. My car/truck is big, but if an elephant had wanted to sit down to tea on its roof it could have done so quite easily and that would have been the end of Arthur (the car, if you recall) and everyone inside of him. Worse, an elephant could have decided it wanted something to sharpen its tusks on and used, well, whichever bit of Arthur, or again his contents, it thought would work best (probably, as I envisioned at the time, the engine to get them nice and pointy and then the upholstery to buff them up a bit afterwards).

We crept through the herd, making sure we did not get between any mothers and their offspring. Just as the road ahead of us cleared, a young male elephant, showing-off to his friends no doubt, thought he would trot after us. In case, I suppose, my attention had been diverted by a particularly interesting bush, Rachel kindly pointed out there was an elephant running after us and that it might be an idea if we were to see what other delights Chobe had to offer and I obligingly hurtled down the track as quickly as I could.

The next day we set off early, heading for one of the lodges where we were hoping to find someone else to drive us around the park (a plan we had formulated shortly after being chased around by the swaggering young pachyderm). Somewhat blurry eyed, I slalomed along Botswana’s pot-holed roads, focusing on the pitted tarmac just in front of the bonnet. What I was not focusing on, and perhaps should have been, was the herd of elephants in the road. In my defence, elephants are quite grey and just before dawn the world is quite grey too, so it might be argued that an animal the size of a bus is not that easy to see before the sun has illuminated their vast form. By steady, some might say heavy, application of the brakes, we managed to stop far enough away to watch them lumber across the road with only slightly elevated heart rates (our rates were slightly elevated that is, I cannot speak for the elephants).

(We did manage to find some animals other than elephants.)

We had opted to be driven around in the hope that someone with a little more expertise might be able to find us a lion or two. After a while chasing tracks that seemed to head in all directions at once, we gave up on the pursuit and instead spent a curiously long amount of time watching an eagle instead.