Young travelers

We are a family of four, currently spending our waking and sleeping hours in close company with each other as we adventure through African wilderness. Brothers in a back seat and parents up front for what is at times hours and hours of driving on rutted and dusty roads. At night we share tents which are perched on the roof of our vehicle. 

When not driving, the children stay close to us and more extremely so after dusk, due to the presence of predators. Our days are physical and at the mercy of the elements, rutted roads and whatever the elephants, giraffe and lion are doing. We are up before dawn in search of nocturnal predators before the heat of the day sends us to shelter in whatever shade we can muster. At night elephant trumpet ferociously and the deep rumble of lion calls keep us awake. The kids have learned to eat foreign food and sleep in beds not their own. Early wake up calls are tough on our 11 year old whom we  rouse from deep sleep each morning. For a modern parent used to tending to the details of my children's comfort, it is quite liberating to see them happy to sleep draped over a camera bag in the back seat, whilst bouncing along rutted tracks, with mid afternoon heat acting like a soporific.

Kids are wonderfully resilient if given the chance, it's funny how giving them that chance is such a big deal.

magnificence fear awe & beauty

We have landed in Maun, a true safari town and supply post placed in the heart of Botswana's National Parks. We arrived dust covered and filthy, looking forward to showers, beds and something cold to drink. We have been here before and the route we just took was a mirror of our previous trip two years ago. It has been surprising to find ourselves recognizing  bends on a dusty road or the face of a man who sold us firewood, when those details were ones we thought we had forgotten. There was a moment when I wondered why we would come back to a place that we had travelled to so recently, when there is so much in the world that I still want to see. Now that we are on the other side of an intense experience, I have no doubts as to why we are here. We have driven vast distances, worked hard and been uncomfortably hot and dirty; yet what this effort gave us access too, is worth every ache and exhausted sleep. We have witnessed within feet of us, extraordinary interactions between species and also within family groupings of animals. We were in a place that is a long drive from which ever direction you approach it from and that remoteness brings with it the reward of vast areas of wilderness with little evidence of humankind's impact. No lights, no trash, no asphalt covering the earth. Just fires burning in the vast dark of the African night, there to cook on, provide light and keep predators at bay. A pretty pure form of simple.

During game drives, we encountered herds of Wildebeest racing across the veld, spotted light footed jackal in the first rays of sunshine and seemed to come across a giraffe behind every shrub. So many of the animals that we observed had their young with them and our presence without fail saw adults moving to place their bodies between us and their babies. The care and tenderness of parent towards child seemed no different whether a human or animal. Is it purely survival of the species that leads them to protect their young or is there tenderness there too? Hard to know, but it feels like there is. 

We watched in awe as elephant almost ran to water holes on sweltering days, their delight clearly evident as they wallowed, splashed, drank or simply stood, taking in the pleasure of water on days of blazing heat. Babies were always flanked by adults and younger elephant rollicked while elders took a more dignified approach to the celebration of muddy water going on around them. In a memorable moment, we watched a massive bull elephant leave a waterhole in order to escort an uncertain youngster to it, when his access to the water had been cut off by vehicles which had pulled up more intent on their photo opportunity than allowing what was happening to take place. The bull was forced to walk within feet of us in order to "fetch" the youngster and made his displeasure clear. He walked with the slow power that these massive creatures do, stopping along the way to give us a long, hard look, putting us in our place. Our windows were down and we didn't move a finger or take a photo as he stood feet away, with us at this mercy and in his sights. Like him, we were trapped by the other vehicles and could do nothing but sit quietly and hope no one around us angered him. He eventually moved on and we breathed again. 

We were continually struck by the difference between the herbivores and the predators who hunt them. They are two such different kinds of creatures - herbivores gently grazing all day with an almost meditative grace and predators whose hunting creates a maelstrom of activity and their lazing under the shade of a thorn tree, is accompanied by the knowledge that simply standing up will create a stir. (A stir amongst the hunted, but also amongst all of us hoping to get a glimpse of their tawny fur!)

Lion are always high on everyone's safari bucket list and our early mornings were often rewarded with lion sightings. One lioness gave herself away by the twitch of a dark-tipped ear above golden grass as we drove passed her. We stopped and watched as she lay in the morning light, us wondering if her breakfast might walk passed. We held our breath as a lone giraffe grazed her way over to the lioness's hiding place. The lioness crouched, her body tight and muscles bulging as she sized the situation up, ready to launch an attack. She held her position, but eventually must have thought better of the potential injury that trying to take down a giraffe on her own could mean. She eventually lay back down and waited for something else to come by and the giraffe grazed on, oblivious to the drama that she had played a part in. 

The gift of information that we gave about a lion we had spotted, was rewarded by information given in return a few hours later. A guide whom we had tipped off, tipped us off in return about a pride of lion a short detour off of our route to Maun. We had a long drive ahead of us that day but took his advice and were rewarded immensely with a pride 10 lion sitting in the shade at the edge of a water hole, waiting and watching for what might arrive to drink on a hot day. We watched them sizing up elephant - a smaller group with babies piqued their interest and one young male took the chance to prowl closer to the water, following an elephant as it walked down. He was young and foolhardy and so backed off when he realized that no one else had joined him. That elephant group moved on quite quickly, possibly aware that the lion were there. Shortly afterwards a massive herd slowly moved in, threading past our vehicle as they emerged out of the bush around us. We watched as they walked within feet of the lion, very often unaware of them - the first of the group walked so silently that we watched as he and the lion all jumped in fright as he passed them, all of them noticing each other in the same moment. Dust, nerves, adrenalin all lifted and then settled again. More and more elephant came down, either walking on the far side of our car - herding their babies away from the lion, using us as cover, or walking between us and the lion - who were at the most lying 20 feet away from us, putting us all in close proximity with each other. It was awe inspiring to be in the thick of this tinderbox, wondering if it all might explode. Ultimately the herd was too big and the lion backed down, letting the elephant revel in the waterhole undisturbed. We stayed until the latest we could and eventually had to leave, knowing the distance that we had to drive and the heat which was building and with two boys who had already been in the back seat for 5 hours at that point and were getting wriggly. 

We pointed our Landcruiser south and headed for Maun, away from the magic of the bush but with hours of dusty and rutted roads to get through before we were there. We had time to decompress and digest the world we had immersed ourselves on a road that made us appreciate were we had been even more.

A place of magic and giants.

Two years ago we embarked on an epic adventure with our young boys through the country of Botswana. We wanted Africa become a part of our American born sons, we wanted to see wild Lion while there still are some to see and we wanted to drop off the grid for a while. We did all of the above and more, but as we headed home, we knew that we were not yet done and needed to return.

Crossing the border into Botswana a few days ago, the kids whooped with delight - vast landscapes, the warmth of the Setswana people, living simply out of our vehicle and the thrill of adventure all lay ahead of us. As always we had made careful plans but always with room for a meander or two. Our first nights were spent somewhere new to us, but one we already hope to return to - the Goo-Moremi Gorge in the Tswapong Hills. Our campsite was pristine and perfectly simple, with a solar heated shower - a luxury we didn't take for granted, knowing what lay ahead of us. A huge tree stood at the center of our site, it's branches a canopy over us.

The Tswapong Hills are spiritually significant to the local community and have been so more as long as people have lived here due to springs that provide year round streams, waterfalls and deep, dark pools. The hills are also one of the few breeding site of the endangered Cape Vulture. A walk up the in to gorge was one of cool, green contrast to the otherwise dusty sun baked surroundings. A black and white patterned Monitor Lizard slipped away across a stream shortly after we spotted him and we watched Cape Vultutes circling high above us, before swooping through the gorge, close enough for us to see them clearly without binoculars. There was no one other than us and our guide. He moved with the languid pace of someone who knows to slow down on a hot day, pointing out trees, leaves and birds, with references to conservation, traditional medicine and magic all woven together.

Our next stop was a place that two years ago had left us needing to know better. Lekhubu Island once looked out over a vast lake, now it is perched above a vast salt pan. It is a place of magic, with a long history of inhabitatian and ritual. It is still used by local communities for supplication to rain gods and then there are the travelers like ourselves in constant pilgrimage to this vastly beautiful place. It is an outcropping of rocks in a salt pan, covered with ancient Baobab trees, cairns, stone walls and otherartifacts of ancient inhabitatian. The road there was long and hard-driving on a day of shimmering heat. We finally found ourselves driving across a dreamscape of salt pan, with Kubu Island rising above it in the far distance. We got there in time to make a cup of tea in the shade of the Baobab at the center of our campsite before walking out on to the pan to watch the sun set and dusk's gentle light envelope us. As the sun dropped low, the day's brutal heat lifted and the kids ran as far and fast as they could in every direction, while land and sky turned in to mirrors of each other. 

We took a family selfie to capture the exuberance that this beautiful and hard to get to place had rendered in us. Then we walked back to camp where another one of Africa's mighty giants was sheltering us for the night.

Sea and sky and a false bay

Cape Town is a city in large part defined by its geography - Table Mountain rises majestically over the city center and it is flanked by two Oceans and miles and miles of coastline.

 The mountains that run away from "the table" form a peninsular that runs out in to the sea, with the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meeting at it's tip. False Bay is a vast bay that sits on the Indian Ocean side and was given its name by explorers  who ran their ships aground when they thought they were following a coastline, not entering a bay.

I recently spent some time at the foot of the Overberg mountains in a small beach town that looks across False Bay towards Cape Town. Our days were governed by the sea, sky, clouds, wind and the views across the bay. 

A balmy blue skied winters day gave us views of the bay, that was a jewel-like shimmering blue with Table Mountain and the peninsular clearly visible across the water. The day slowly changed, hinting at what was to come. Clouds moved in and treated us to a magnificent sunset, but by morning the mountain across the bay had disappeared from sight and the wind gradually picked up, with an iciness that sent us inside. By nightfall the only place to be was indoors, along with anything that might blow away. We hunkered down, lit a fire and listened to rain pelting the windows and the wind battering windows, walls and roof.

It was about 48 hours of wind and howling rain before the sun came out and the world became calm again. We walked down to the beach to find the shoreline transformed - littered with the bright colours of a myriad plastic bottles, wrappers, caps, buckets and plastic fragments. The wind had blown seaweed on to our shore, but with it also a bays-worth of plastic debris.

It was plastic debris that told stories of carelessly discarded trash, waves that had swept away a child's bucket and spade and rainwater that washed streets clean but swept with it trash in to the ocean. It is as if False Bay has a gyre, a small version of the North Atlantic gyre and it had landed up on our beach. What was there to do, but clean the beach before the plastic got washed back out to sea. The power of a few people making a big difference turned out to be the lesson of the day as 3 of us (2 adults and a 10 year old boy) filled bags of recyclables and trash over the course of an afternoon. Once we were done, we headed back over the dune and looked back to see the beach restored once more to the colours of sand, shells and seaweed.