Tag: anti poaching
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Nobody suspects a pigeon….but flamingoes?
We had driven through four landscapes since we left the giant dunes of Sossusvlei. We ambled leisurely through over 120 kilometres down to the coast. Venturing past mountains of rugged rock, more dusty flat pans as far as the eye could see, raggedy, stoned hills covered in tufts of hardy grass, and sporadic, stoic, shadeless,…
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Why did the one-armed man stab the pigeon-killer in the neck?
Side roads, unfit for any mediocre vehicle, lead to places the mind can’t imagine. It’s why we take them. A trip to Diaz Point! Awaiting us was a dilapidated shack of a cafe, some basic, eerily soulless and empty back-packer-esque dorm rooms which were falling apart, a weather-beaten, crumbling house, and some out-buildings which were…
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Leaving the sheep for some sand castles
Swakopsmund is slightly different to other Nambian towns. It has a certain charm about it being on the ocean. It’s a bit like Weston-Super-Mare, but it’s down with the kids. With plenty of busy holiday accommodation, lovely views, fishing trips out to sea, museums, good coffee shops, easy promenades full of arts and crafts wafting…
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Iconic rocks, OCD nooks and Look! A tree!
Packed around forced-manicured grass; a village of A-framed huts and boxy bungalows are agonisingly, tightly and tidily organised into poured concrete conveniences. All anti-organically strewn around an actually rather difficult place to live in an attempt at human consolidation. It just doesn’t quite feel right. When observing the officious people in Namibia in these OCD…
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Hobbits in the desert & checking out the ladies bathroom
It’s as if hobbits built a tiny second home in the desert, with a nod to being OCD and Christian. The accommodation at the border is possibly the most organised, most clean, most “model-village” that I have come across. It’s like a rather useful, miniature Hobbiton with grass that doesn’t quite belong. Welcome to Germany…
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WARNING: CONTAINS MASSIVE SOLIFUGAE…..but there is also a squirrel and a viking)
From Xade (pronounced Kar-déh), along a road with more sand than Sandy McSand’s sand-filled pockets after a day in the sandpit, we covered only 45 kilometers in an hour. Penelope did well, and as the sun began to set we decided to pitch camp in the wilderness buffer area, well before reaching civilisation in the…
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Awkward Nudists! A civilised cornucopia and Tortoise
After the rains, imagine puddles, wet wood, glistening greenery and frolicking beasts – but only for a short while. The sun reasserts it’s magnificence as fast as I can polish off a bag of salt and vinegar crisps. The Kalahari has a few surprises for us and it’s absolute treat. A spectacle that only happens…
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Mother Nature’s ooze
To a certain degree, the Central Kalahari Game Reserve is now familiar territory. While the weather appears to be so consistent in the CKGR, it is astonishing how different the desert can look and feel after visiting it multiple times. No matter what the conditions, or the wilderness, it always demands total respect. This landscape is…
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Fairytales and massive ears
The fourth morning of traversing through the Kalahari began early. The drive was roughly 200 kilometres through more sand and dust and Piper was to be our next camp to the north. Supposedly, we were travelling through one of the beauty spots of the Kalahari. Deception Valley and the iconic salt pans that are a common…
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A shocking privilege
Arriving at the Kutse gate of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve is somewhat of a relief. It’s been an intrepid drive of excitement and expectation, but what’s ahead is what we’ve come for. The drive is about to be left behind and the expedition and task is ahead. Very quickly it becomes apparent that the…
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To the Dessert! With rabies in the moonlight
Jumping back to Botswana, it has been a couple of days drive to reach, in my opinion, the last untouched wilderness on solid ground: The Kalahari dessert…. And it is, the absolute pinnacle of Pavlovas, a stuffed-strudel of a sequel after roaming through the melodramatic peripheral-wilds. It’s a bucket of creme brûlée (my favourite of…
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We Play God
North of Johannesburg is an area famous for a few hot springs. It’s a local tourism hot-spot and nearby is a group of game reserves, holiday accommodations and “wilderness” areas for the creature-comfort-loving nature viewer. It is commercial – with dozens of guides and rangers in each reserve all driving around in well-used vehicles, showing…
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Backpacking Spooners….and Charlie
Charlie was a young Berkshire boy who lost himself backpacking in Malawi over eighteen years ago – back when most of the lakeshore was wild and when backpackers didn’t expect to be lazily-spoon-fed all the secrets that an area has to offer. Queue sweeping statements and controversy…. Having come across a lot of modern backpackers…
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A corpse, a lot of blood, and a Chelsea smile
Back down the river in the bush north of Ruarwe, we found a new splotch of blood on a large rock by the river. This time, it wasn’t from the floods that came spurting out of my finger. Apart from my unfortunate digit, I haven’t called for the medic for many weeks now! On the…
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Perfect for a paddle…and a few cannonballs
As far as we know, and as far as we like to guess, no human has travelled up this river valley since the mid 19th Century. We assume there was some exploration at the time of slavery, and it may even have been used as a route to escape the lakeshore horrors. There really is…
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Look what we found! …and a Side Stabbing Snake
Tasting with their feet, an abundant and colourful butterfly population are constantly around us as we expedite up the river. Green water snakes hunt fish, spiders cast their webs as sails to catch the wind and transport themselves hundreds of miles, the rare blue-faced monkeys that live here (which actually have a red tint in…
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Leopards, Crabs, and Unknown Poison
Last night, Matt cooked dinner. As he picked up some kindling to move it onto the fire, he was bitten or stung by an unknown creepy crawly. A regular occurrence in the wild if you’re not paying a lot of attention. Losing feeling in his hand and with the numbness spreading up his arm, he…
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A thirst-quenching cauldron full of vivid hallucinogens
Sleeping in a hammock is rather good for keeping you off the jungle floor, if you can sleep! It’s perfect for catching a few winks, but to sleep through the muggy night is rather like trying to sleep in a kitchen drawer as someone is trying to close it shut, while at the same time an electric…
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Barbecuing Beer, Intelligent Pigeons and Chuck Norris…
At last! You say. This one isn’t about how terrible humans are to the unfortunate wildlings. I had goaded one of the more social park rangers to join us for a game of shot glass-battleships. It can’t all be elephants and heffalumps when in a colonial-style lodge! After our ranger had energetically announced that together,…
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Marrying Sharron…
Compared to a few other nations on the continent, Malawi has remained relatively peaceful. Even through the historically volatile and ongoing trials of Southern Africa, the people here remain extremely welcoming and friendly. Understanding life in places such as Malawi is one aspect to my travels. Ultimately though, sharing my experiences and hoping to bring…
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Mobile cash machines in a war zone
Life isn’t all covert operations, investigations into convolutions or apprehending unfortunate forest folk. In truth, as much as I enjoy and appreciate the experiences to understand what “protected wilderness” is, making the much required military-style efforts part of my adventurous lifestyle isn’t MY desired calling. It is however, why these parks are called PROTECTED. It…
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Should we accept a sad fate?
Six months ago, the village we found yesterday, where we apprehended a man, was burned to the ground and returned to the wild. We saw remnants of scorched earth, charcoaled shacks and blackened beams as we stealthily operated under the sparse forest canopy. The people living in the park are doing so illegally. There is…
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Jealous of my lifestyle? Read this one
Three sounds concerned me as I tried to fall asleep in the Kasungu bush. One, chickens. They shouldn’t be here. Two, gunshots. They weren’t for the chickens. And three, the sound of snoring. Nobody needs to hear that, especially any encroachers with their weapons. It’s also as hot a sauna, and I don’t fancy being…
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Hopefully, without getting shot…
Hopefully, without getting shot, stabbed, sliced with a machete or even just damaged by anything in the bush…. After an early start to pack our bags with appropriate and thoroughly checked equipment, we had to wait a few extra hours for the ranger to show up. Here, timekeeping is a rare skill and even if…
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Kasungu National Park
While at the triathlon in Cape Maclear, and through no late night liquid coercion, Bjorn and I accepted a welcoming invite from Matteau, Remi and Leonie to visit them in Kasungu National Park. Matteau currently runs the volunteer anti poaching unit, operating with the permission of the government and the Malawian department of national parks.…
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