The wilderness of Botswana

Well unfortunately, I'm back in Pretoria after a week in the Kalahari of Botswana and South Africa. We traveled with 9 people-Andrew, Ben, and Jorge from Pretoria and a some of Andrew's friends from Cape Town. The company was great and thanks to Jill, Ben, and Cilla, the food was unbelievable.

We started the trip with a night at Tswalu before driving on sand roads to Mabuasehube in Botswana. Three nights of camping there in a remote site with no fences to keep the animals away led to close night time encounters with hyenas, black-backed jackals, cape foxes and a honey badger. From Mabua, we traveled over 200 km (125 miles) on two track road across the dunes to Nossob camp on the South Africa side of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. We spent two nights there, where the highlight was the lion waking us up at 4 AM by roaring close enough to camp you could almost feel the vibrations. We found him about 500 meters from camp later in the morning. Another night at Tswalu on the way back finished off the trip. All in all, it was an amazing trip that I won't soon forget.

The upcoming weeks and months will be exceedingly busy for me. We've got two projects-one on mole-rats and one on sunbirds-starting in the next week and it looks like I'll be in Poland from the 7th to the 27th of April. Until then, I'll be in Pretoria, so I'll be easy to contact.