Mutale

Sunday 22nd April – To the Limpopo River and South Africa

With the prospect of a less demanding day ahead we did not break camp till the relatively late hour of 8.30am. Because the day was a Sunday and, since Botswana is a devoutly Christian country with very conservative morals, we noticed many groups of people making their way to their local churches. We also found that we had to regularly stop to make way for numerous donkeys, goats, cows and assorted other animals crossing the road in front of us.

Our first major stop was at the Limpopo River, which marks the border between Botswana and South Africa. With quickly cleared all the immigration formalities, even though one of our participants did not have the required Yellow Fever Vaccination certificate. We said goodbye to Botswana with a growing sense that our safari really was nearing its final stages. The simple fact was that we had all had such an amazing time that no one wanted it to come to an end, yet in two day’s time we would be flying out of Africa and heading back to Australia. On the other hand there is always something extra special about being back in your own bed and enjoying the luxury of your own toilet.

Crossing into South Africa you immediately notice a big change in the standard of the infrastructure. Large modern farms with modern tractors were growing crops with the aid of irrigation from the Limpopo River. In many places you could be forgiven for thinking that we were already back in Australia and driving through somewhere in Victoria.

At midafternoon we pulled into the Mabula Game Lodge and were excited to find that we had the option to upgrade to small bush huts instead of erecting our tents. Although our tents were spacious and we had all become quite proficient in erecting and packing them away, faced with the choice of a tent or a real bed, I grabbed my bag and headed for the nearest hut. It was a relief to be able to leave the tents in the bus. This also gave us some extra time to relax and explore the surroundings.

One sour note on the atmosphere was that Mabula is a Game Lodge, meaning that foreigners (mostly Americans) can pay a fee and then come to shoot the animals that are within the park. In the office there were dozens of photos of the smiling faces of rich Americans carefully posed with their massive guns and their dead springboks, warthogs, wildebeest and the rest. In fact it looked like they had carte blanche to shoot anything with four legs. There was a family of tame donkeys wandering about the campsite and we found out that some shooters from the USA had recently shot the male donkey to use for bait to attract leopards so that they could shoot them. Personally, I cannot begin to understand this mentality. I will never be able to regard it as “sport” as the Americans do.
Perhaps it would be more “sporting” if they faced a lion in the wild armed only with a spear like the Masai warriors do. That way the lion would at least have a sporting chance at survival. When a rich westerner armed with a powerful rifle with a telescopic sight and sitting in the back of a 4 wheel drive confronts a defenseless grazing springbok, it does not seem like an even competition to me.
We had been warned not to wander far from the campsite lest we too become unintentional collateral targets for trigger happy shooters. The following morning, we heard the sound of a large calibre weapon being fired close to camp and could not help but wonder what type of innocent animal the victim had been.

After dinner we had time to express our thanks to Tickey and Richard for the fantastic work they had done for us. We also shared some of our reminiscences of the trip we had enjoyed together. I retired to bed with a jumble of memories and emotions rushing through my head. The world that we had been so immersed in for the past few weeks would soon be nothing but a memory as we all returned back to our regular lives in Australia. I wondered how much each of us would be changed by the sights and sounds that we had witnessed together.Read more