Africa Adventure Part II: Wildlife, Water and Wound Care

[Mike again...]

We moved from Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe to Chobe, Botswana along roads. Botswana is very protective of their border, so they restrict cars from entering, and force all people to wash their shoes. Many years ago, they had an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease that wiped out much of the country's cattle and wild animal herds. What this meant was that we were driven to the border where we walked on foot through 4 checkpoints before we washed all of the shoes we traveled with and then were able to cross to where a new van was waiting to pick us up. About 15 minutes later, we were in Chobe.

There’s a reason nearly everyone we spoke with traveling in Africa made a stop in Chobe. Chobe Park is located on the Chobe River, which is the name Botswana gives to the Zambezi. As expected, Angola has yet another name for this amazing river. Namibia is across the river, and a couple miles upstream is the only place in the world where 4 countries come together at a point - Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana and Namibia. All four are very different on nearly every measure. Botswana was the first to embrace eco-tourism over farming, and as such is the richer of the four.

The bridge behind us is where 4 countries meet

Because of its protected status, Chobe Park is an incredible destination for seeing a wide variety of wild animals all in one place. Our first encounter was a family of mongooses (mongeese?) protecting their home from a 6 foot python. We were happy to be in the safari truck! [Apparently, seeing a python in the wild is quite rare. We were very fortunate that this was our first animal sighting!]

Mongoose chasing away a python

Before too long, you encounter elephants, giraffes, pumbas (wild boars), lions, hippos, impalas, kudus, baboons, monkeys, jackals, and more. It feels like you can’t travel more than a couple minutes before you stumble across another group of animals. 

[Laura here…]

One of the most special sightings on safari is getting to witness an actual hunt. We were lucky enough to see two different kinds.

The first was the black-bottomed Land Cruiser (genus: Toyota). The herd (usually 10–15) initially disperses in search of prey—or predator. Over generations, they have developed sophisticated communication mechanisms involving antennae and radio waves to alert one another when one spots something of interest. At that point, the herd quickly regroups, surrounding the prey (or predator), with each vehicle jockeying for the best position.

We’ll talk about the second hunt we saw (leopard) in a later blog post.

[And now, back to Mike…]

What is amazing during these safaris is that the animals are completely ambivalent about the gaggle of safari trucks roaming around them. For us, this was the only complaint we had with Chobe - you bump into other groups of humans almost as often as you do animals. In the case of the pride of lions we found, there were 8-10 Toyotas all following them around.  But I will say the lions acted like we weren’t even there.  The guides would park the trucks 100 meters ahead of where the lions were walking and they would walk right by us.  We were probably less than 10 feet from some of the lions.

At another point, we parked next to a river and watched a group of 40 elephants cross towards us. We had parked exactly where they came out of the water.  At one point, one of the elephants walked so close to the car as to brush up against it.  It wasn’t upset.  It was just clumsy about where it was walking.

We talked to some people who had spent a lot of time on these types of safaris in Africa.  When we mentioned being concerned about how this might impact the animals, their response was “If those cars weren’t there, the animals would be dead.  Either poachers or farmers would kill them.  The fact that tourists come means they are protected.” 

Unfortunately for me, the abscess on my leg decided to rupture. I was still taking the antibiotics four-times a day, but their efficacy shifted and things quickly started getting worse. During our second day in Chobe we met up with a very nice German family of three where two were medical doctors. They noticed my leg and got very concerned. When we returned from the afternoon game drive, they insisted on taking a closer look at my leg and the antibiotics I was on. Within minutes, they got very anxious and sent their daughter back to their room to get medical supplies they had traveled with. According to them, I was hours away from sepsis. Oh joy.

They quickly went to work disinfecting everything with sterile gauze and medical wound scrub… which is about as pleasant as it sounds. They then drained the wound of all the … 'stuff' … that was not supposed to be in there. When they finished, there was literally a hole in my leg where the abscess had been. After a very thorough field dressing with sterile bandages and a wrap to hold everything in place, my leg was again heading in the right direction. Now the questions came. My new German friends were completely dumbfounded that any doctor would send me to Africa with 'medium' strength antibiotics and nothing else. All I could answer was, "Because Dutch". They said I was hours away from needing to be airlifted out to a hospital.

My Dutch doctor and I will have a conversation…

When they heard I only had 2 more days of antibiotics, they insisted I take their entire emergency stash of medical supplies, including a full prescription of heavy-duty antibiotics they brought just in case. As luck would have it, they had just enough sterile bandages to last exactly to the end of our trip while changing them out every morning. This was a good thing as we were leaving the next day to the most remote portion of our trip, Kala Camp.