Santawani Camp

March 31, 2024

Easter Sunday, Victoria Falls, Finally! Back in civilization! (Not always a good thing.)

But first:

Friday.

We’ve been in the Santawani camp now for just over a day. Santawani Camp is in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana. It’s always very dry here, and in addition to the usual dryness, they are in the third year of a disastrous drought.

We arrived here at noon yesterday, had lunch, and then had a period of free time for a couple of hours. It was so darn hot that it was unbearable in the tent. We’ve been assigned to our cabins. I’m in cabin number six. It’s actually a tent rather than a cabin.

So finally, about 4 o’clock, we gathered for high tea, to be followed by our departure on a game drive.

Our driver and guide, Gully, is a 10-year veteran of driving the back roads here and knows where to find the animals that we want to see. So after leaving the lodge in his jeep, actually, a modified Toyota Land Cruiser with open seating in back,

We searched for about an hour and a half with virtually no results. Sure, we saw the usual assembly of impala, giraffes, zebras, kudu, and some of the other more common animals. But we’re searching for predators rather than prey.

After an hour and a half, suddenly, Gully makes a hard right and heads for some nearby bushes. Sure enough, there is a lion sitting there, a female. But wait! There’s another lion under the next bush, and under the next bush there’s a lion and a cub. Before we know it, we are in the midst of a 10-lion pride. They act like they don’t even know that we’re there, snapping lots of pictures. Finally, one of them yawns and gets to her feet. She stretches and then heads off to our left. Each of the other lions, several adult females, and several younger lions soon follow suit. Almost all of them walked right past the front of our jeep. We were awestruck, paralyzed, not with fear, but with the magnitude of the moment.

But then Gully got a call on the radio. The other group in our party had spotted a cheetah, he says. We were all, like, what are you waiting for? Let’s go.

So he took off, driving hard to catch up with the other group. Halfway there, they passed us, on their way to see "our" lions. When we arrived at the site, there was still one other vehicle there, watching the cheetah. It turns out, there wasn’t just one cheetah. There was a cheetah mom and five younger cheetahs, all resting after a hard day's work. They are so beautiful. It’s hard to describe.

Again, soon, one of them, the mom, yawned, got up, and headed away, followed immediately by all five of the cubs. These are not tiny cubs, but they are not more than about six months old. She is still teaching them to hunt, so they are virtually useless on their own. We followed for a while, grabbing some really great photos, until it started getting pretty dark and we realized it was time to head back to the lodge for dinner. What an amazing game drive!!

We had a beautiful dinner outside under the stars and headed to bed feeling like we had all hit the lottery.

Even though my tent is very close to the watering hole, maybe the closest tent to the watering hole, I didn’t hear much during the night, and our wake-up call was scheduled for 5:30 AM. I was awake at five and heard one large growl from an elephant at the waterhole.

After our usual coffee and continental breakfast, we headed out into “the boosh” to start our day. That’s why our trip is referred to as a “Sleep, Eat, Jeep Tour.”

I’m sitting here watching the watering hole. There’s a kudu walking by, an elephant or two who have been back and forth for at least an hour, and a constant flow of impala and zebras.

Elephant graveyard, don't go here, Simba!